Elliott Maltby, Landscape Architect

Elliott Maltby, a landscape and urban designer, is a founding partner of thread collective, a multi-disciplinary collaborative design studio that explores the seams between building, art, and landscape. Elliott believes that art and design can improve the sustainability and vitality of the urban environment; she is particularly interested in how an ecological systems perspective can support both architectural and landscape interventions. Her current work includes defining the idea of the urban backstage, both conceptually and through design proposals. The backstage is the shadow or counterpoint of branded public space, a space to be found and explored, to wonder about, to wander around, a place to speculate. A survey of New York City backstage spaces demonstrates a common pairing of productive spontaneous ecologies and aging infrastructure; these are novel landscapes. Rather than seeing them as derelict or underutilized, she is interested in documenting and supporting the stealth success of these spaces. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Graduate Architecture and Urban Design at the Pratt Institute.

moving with pause

October 13, 2021 by

After a several-year hiatus, iLAND relaunched its symposia series with this new retreat, moving with pause, in May/June 2021. Through regular meetings on zoom and select in-person meetings with participants local to NYC and Puerto Rico, 18 practitioners engaged in interdisciplinary practice to consider racial equity and environmental justice across communities transformed by COVID.

The retreat culminated in a hybrid in-person/virtual workshop where dance performances were shared to the general public. Seven of the contributing artists presented the next stages of their work in a via performance format, titled Partitura / Particular / Participar, in September 2021 at WeisAcres.

moving with pause is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Urban Backstage

April 4, 2017 by

Urban Backstage explored spaces in the city that, through accident, intention, design, loss, and/or neglect, allow urban residents to remove their masks, to make mistakes, to hide and/or expose thoughts and actions that may not be allowed elsewhere. The collaborators investigated this backstage quality in the waterfront and urban infrastructure of the Lower East Side, where the mechanics of the city are
generally hidden. In the same way that the distinction between back and front stage is often blurred or eliminated in contemporary performance, this residency generated movement toward making visible these supporting services of the city.

Fallow Time

May 27, 2014 by

Movement Research Spring Festival in Collaboration with iLAND

Tuesday May 27 – Monday June 2

fallow time was curated by Elliott Maltby, Jennifer Monson, Aisha Ohs, and Tatyana Tenenbaum in partnership with the Movement Research Spring Festival. iLAND Symposium events included a workshop and performance with Through Earth, Through Body, Through Speech at Flushing Meadows Park and the Queens Museum and Sensing to Know/Analyzing to Imagine: a talk and walk exploring the dual perspective of the artist-scientist with artist scientists Amy Berkow, Kathleen McCarthy, Jason Munshi-South and Hara Wolz. The symposium also included two days of fallow time at Floyd Bennett Field, Gateway National Recreation area camping site.

For more information check out the Fallow Time Brochure or the Movement Research website.

Curatorial Statement

A fallow field is one that is plowed – it is prepared but then left open. fallow time is a festival that invites emptiness or the unanticipated. The festival is prepared space and time for open action, or inaction, to take place. It creates a platform for participation, intergenerational meetings and intersectionality to support all bodies in their creative potential. We are providing time for concrete and insubstantial ideas to be tested, to take hold and grow…or fail. fallow time is a time of rest, where unexpected actions and materials make contact and allow for new forms and systems to flourish: a chance for us to be together that is not dictated by any need to produce. The festival examines both urban ecologies and artistic production in our society. Inviting the multiple meanings of sustainability to rub against a range of creative practices, we will enact scenarios for thriving in our increasingly unpredictable environment. fallow time allows us to ground ourselves and to recuperate the values that are so central to dance: the values of the body to listen, feed, touch, see, taste, deliver, heal, digest, produce, die.

Overview

Tuesday May 27 – 11-6pm – Flushing Meadows Corona Park and the Queens Museum – Free

Through Earth, Through Body, Through Speech Join Fantastic Futures and Jason Munshi-South for the workshop and per formance listed below, a continuation of their summer 2013 iLAB residency in Flushing Meadows Corona Park and Willets Point. The collaboration uses a cross-pollination of ar tistic practice and scientific method to engage the local community in a conversation around personal and family histories of the park and their visions of the park’s future.

Workshop – 11am-3pm

Meet at the north end of the Unisphere. Rain or Shine.

A movement and mapping exercise based on Munshi-South’s study of white-footed mice, “Urban landscape genetics: canopy cover predicts gene flow between white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) populations in New York City.”

A light informal lunch will be provided. Activities are appropriate for all ages.

Performance – 4-6pm

In the Queens Museum of Art A multi-channel sound installation and per formance that represents the scientific concept of an urban to rural gradient. Field recordings of the park are layered with interviews in which visitors are asked to express their memories and hopes for the park, and with a spoken narrative from a mouse’s perspective based on urban landscape genetics. participants in both workshop and performance: Fantastic Futures (Julio Hernandez, Huong Ngo, Phuong Nguyen, Solgil Oh, Sable Elyse, Or Zubalsky) and Jason Munshi-South.

For additional information for Tuesday’s events, email info@ilandart.org or call 917-860-8239.

Moving into the Out There

April 4, 2012 by

Presenters and participants included New School professors Ivan Raykoff, Philip Silva, Danielle Goldman, Neil Greenberg, Victoria Marshall, and Robert Sember; PARK collaborators Kathy Westwater, Seung Jae Lee and Jennifer Scappetonne; iLAND board members Elliott Maltby, Kate Cahill, Carolyn Hall and Julia Handschuh, Jennifer Monson; choreographer and improviser Susan Sgorbati, social scientist at the U.S. Forest Service, Erika Svendson; artist Kyle deCamp. Performance created by Athena Kokoronis. Workshops by E.J. McAdams; Liz Barry, Jessica Einhorn and Lailye Weidman of Higher E.D.; and Clarinda Mac Low of River to Creek.

Overview

Moving Into the Out There is iLAND’s fourth annual symposium on dance, movement, and the environment. The two-day event in the heart of New York City brings together dancers, choreographers, designers, ecologists, advocates, and scientists for interactive panel discussions, field workshops, and networking opportunities. This year’s symposium features an in-depth review of PARK, an environmental performance project at Fresh Kills Landfill supported by the 2011 iLAB Residency. Moving Into the Out There will also highlight iLAND’s recent efforts to synthesize insights and discoveries from the past seven years of iLAB collaborative residencies. Detailed event descriptions are attached.

Moving Into the Out There is an open forum for exploring new methods of understanding urban ecosystems through innovative collaborations between practitioners of movement, dance, science, and environmental management. iLAND cultivates a deeper engagement with urban environmental issues through its cross-disciplinary approach, and the annual symposium invites the general public to experience and explore recent works emerging from the iLAND community. Moving Into the Out There features the work of iLAND’s 2011 iLAB Residency, opening up the results of that collaborative experience to a wider audience for discussion.

Throughout the Symposium, participants share in the process of searching for shared language and collaborative processes that cut across the arts and sciences, focusing on dance and the body as primary mediators of experience, imagination, and knowing. Through Moving Into the Out There iLAND aims to generate conversation about collaborative practice throughout communities of art and science, instigating new ways of understanding and intervening in contemporary environmental problems – particularly those related to over-development and climate change.