StrataSpore

Collaborators: BIG CAAKe

BIG CAAKe is a collaborative team including Chris Kennedy, artist, engineer, educator; Athena Kokoronis, choreographer and cook; Caroline Woolard, artist and designer; Kate Cahill, architect; and Gary Lincoff, mycologist.

Project Website: http://strataspore.ning.com/

StrataSpore is a platform for collective knowledge about mushrooms. Initiated by Kate Cahill, Christopher Kennedy, Athena Kokoronis, Caroline Woolard, and mycologist Gary Lincoff, Strataspore uses mushrooms as material and metaphor for latent potential and unseen infrastructure. Right now, mushrooms are eating oil spills, connecting members of Fluxus, feeding communities, and growing as alternative packaging material. Mushrooms are the pivotal orientation point for members of Strataspore to explore urban systems. We dance, eat, build, and learn with mushrooms.

StrataSpore is BiG CAAKe’s platform for collective knowledge about local NYC ecosystems and urban sustainability. The platform will cultivate “spores” of knowledge by combining elements of task/performance-based art, experiential learning, and experimental design practice

• Monday, October 5th, 6pm – Dinner, Performance and Discussion with StrataSpore and Waterways, at Gabriel Rivera’s facade/fasad, 373 Columbia st. #1 ground floor, Brooklyn NY
  Exploring the cross-cultural significance of mushrooms, we will serve an all mushroom meal. Inspired by Haitian, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, and other approaches to mushroom mania, we will present the discoveries of a day of foraging. The participants will learn where/when to find mushrooms, what is edible, and how to prepare a meal that represents disparate cultures with the foraged food. This involves a choreography throughout, with a formal performance interspersed throughout the phases of finding, identifying, picking, preparing, serving, and feasting. The Waterways residency team will also discuss their residency. FOR RESERVATIONS, PLEASE CALL 212 -375-8283. Limited seating available.
• Tuesday, October 6th, 7pm – Performance “Above at the Middle” at Conversations @The Flea Theater, 41 White Street, New York, NY 10013
  “Above at the Middle” is an experimental dance performance using concepts of mycroremediation and weather to create temporal and spatial systems that respond to NYC’s natural history. Strata will be explored through choreographic and architectural forms. Musical composition will be derived from rain data collected over the past several months.
• Saturday, October 31st, 6pm – Halloween Dinner and Performance at Gabriel Rivera’sfacade/fasad, 373 Columbia st. #1 ground floor, Brooklyn NY
  Bring Halloween back to its Celtic roots! Come to a dinner and performance at Gabriel’s Project Space. As a celebration of the end of the harvest season and the border between life and death, we will provide an alternative to contemporary traditions of candy and horror movies by celebrating the cycles of life, made possible with mushrooms as decomposers. FOR RESERVATIONS, PLEASE CALL 212-375-8283. Limited Seating Available.
• Monday, November 2nd, 8pm – Performance “Below at the Middle” at Movement Research @ The Judson Church, 55 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012
  “Below at the Middle” is an experimental dance performance using concepts of mycroremediation and weather to create temporal and spatial systems that respond to NYC’s natural history. Strata will be explored through choreographic and architectural forms. Musical composition will be derived from rain data collected over the past several months.

Directions:
Gabriel Rivera’s facade/fasad Project Space is located at 373 Columbia Street (btw Luquer & Coles Streets), #1 Ground floor entrance, in Brooklyn, NY -accessible from the F & G trains at either Carroll Street stop or Smith-9th Street stop.
Click here for a map of Gabriel Rivera’s facade/fasad

To The Flea Theater:
The Flea Theater is located in Tribeca at 41 White Street (between Broadway & Church Streets)—accessible from the A/C/E, N/R/Q/W, 6, J/M/Z to Canal Street or the 1 to Franklin Street.

To Movement Research @ The Judson Church:
Judson Church is located at 55 Washington Square south (between Sullivan & Thompson Streets)-accessible from the A/C/E, B/D, F/V at W.4th Street stop, or the R/W at 8th St. stop.

Collaborator Biographies:
Christopher Lee Kennedy is a project-based and installation artist based in Brooklyn, New York. His work explores the idea of recipricocity, exchange and relational situations through a re-imagining of objects, persons and situations as vehicles for situated learning. Mr. Kennedy holds a degree in Environmental Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Masters of Arts in Education from New York University serving as Director of Education for Solar One, NYC’s Green Arts and Education Center and a former Research Fellow of the Environmental Health Clinic. His most recent projects have included Urban Epiphyte a participatory project exploring issues of psychogeography and ecology and Collective Despacho a re-imagining of ancient Peruvian rituals as a means to engage community in slowing down their body and embracing an ethic simplicity for the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art.

Born on an island in RI and based in NY, Caroline Woolard is currently working on a barter network for artists (OurGoods.org) and a sustainable design-build project. Woolard received her BFA from Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and is a recipient of The Field’s Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists, a MacDowell Colony Residency, a Watermill Residency, a Pilchuck Scholarship, the Leon Levy Foundation Grant, and The Elliot Lash Award for Excellence in Sculpture. Her interventions are presented publicly in the urban environment and have been investigated by media like NY1News, TimeOut NY, and Wallpaper* Magazine. At times, the projects become affiliated with psychogeographic events like Conflux in NY, Cryptic Providence in RI, and Unoccupied Spaces in Montreal, but more often they move independently.

Athena Kokoronis an interdisciplinary artist based in New York. She graduated from Maryland Institute, College of Art in 2004 with a BFA in General Sculptural Studies. Her work is usually participatory and involves food, dance and music. Her works have been presented in Movement Research at the Judson Church, Socrates Sculpture Park, ABC No Rio, Alexander Gray Associates, Dinaburg Arts, Lumen House, Center for Performance Research, and at her own live/work/performance space, The GWB Ramp House. Outside of New York City, she has developed, collaborated, and presented works in Baltimore, Andes, Wassaic, Cambridge, Bellows Falls, New Haven, Cologne, and Aix-en-Provence. In 2007 Kokoronis began her semi-formal training in dance and studied vigorously in classes taught by Juliette Mapp, Laurie DeVito, Dianne McCarthy, Martha Chapman and Neil Greenberg. In the winter of 2008 she began studying routinely under Daria Fain. She will perform in Fain/Kocik’s Phoneme Choir Project in May 2009. She will be joining in at Mildred’s Lane (www.Mildredslane.com) as food mentor for her second summer. For more info visit: http://athenakokoronis.blogspot.com

Kate Cahill arrived in the world of architecture through a will to combine her love of chemistry and of art. She is fascinated by the stratification of social, political and infrastructural systems in cities, and believes that urban public space is enriched by architecture that brings clarity to these complex interactions. Past projects have included ultra-efficient sustainable low-income housing for a depressed area of Syracuse, New York; a personal survival shelter adaptable for any climate condition anywhere on Earth; and an ongoing investigation into the inscription of memory on the contested landscapes of Berlin, Belfast and Sarajevo. Kate holds a B. Arch from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She currently enjoys collaborating on interdisciplinary design teams and practicing architecture in New York City.

Gary Lincoff teaches courses on plant and mushroom identification and use at the New York Botanical Garden. He’s the author of a number of books on mushrooms, including “The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms.” He leads mushroom study tours abroad and has taken people to over 30 countries on every continent except Antarctica to hunt for mushrooms and discuss mushroom use with local peoples. He co-founded the Telluride Mushroom Festival, now in its 29th year. He is the consultant on, and stars in, the 2009 documentary “Know Your Mushrooms,” which just won the Best Feature Film Award at the NYC Food Film Festival.