Join us online or in person at Building 14, Nolan Park, Governors Island, New York, on Friday 29th October where we present a new material and a new approach to making public spaces and buildings based on the FIELD Project, followed by a panel discussion on their possibilities in the built and green spaces of New York, voiced by leading institutions working on climate justice and social resiliency in the city.
We propose that grass should be more than the monoculture, flat, green backdrop to our lives in institutionalized spaces, and that it can play a pivotal role in bringing nature into the urban and reconnecting us city-dwellers to a diverse and wild creativity. Come and feel the innovative grass-based bioplastics we have created, and discover how we will use them as environmentally restorative fabrication and construction materials.
Field is a collaborative project by artists Supermrin, Jessica Fertonani Cooke, material scientist Jil Berenblum, architects Ane Gonzalez Lara, Xenia Adjoubei & Alejandro Haiek, supported by Emily Gordin, and Merav Gil Ad. Carried out with the support of the Inclusive Ecologies Incubator, Pratt Institute, the Franklin Furnace Fund, New York Foundation for the Arts, City Artist Corps Grants, ProArts Gallery, Guerilla Science and the University of Cincinnati.
About the Project
Field is a research-led landscape intervention that investigates the widespread use of manicured lawns in public space. A partnership between artists, material scientists, architects, historians, design institutions, and local municipalities, the project interrogates the ways through which public urban projects are assessed and built. Presently focused on two sites in Governors Island and Oakland, the project will develop internationally on sites in São Paulo, New Delhi and Russia.
Urban manicured grasses are the focus of Field. They represent the homogeneity, control, and order visible in most contemporary civic spaces. They are ecologically unsustainable, require extensive resources, and comprise of mono-cultured, usually genetically modified seeds that do not flower. We have developed a consortium of grass-based (biodegradable) bioplastics that utilize lawn clippings harvested from our sites. In collaboration with city partners, we temporarily pause the routine mowing and fertilizing of civic lawns for one season. Bio-sculptures, impregnated with native wildflower seeds slowly dissolve into the growing grasses, introducing new birth cycles on the lawns. Generating unexpected encounters amongst people, birds, animals, weeds, and flowers, Field creates a living archive, a transitory zone of interaction between natural and constructed systems that reimagines the presence of the body within an ever-changing landscape.
The FIELD Climate Provocations Pavilion will open in Nolan Park and historic Fort Jay site at Governors Island, New York in November 2022.
Title
FIELD // a Formation From a FieldType
Panel DiscussionWebsite
Organizers
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October 29, 2021 05:00 PMUntil
October 29, 2021 06:00 PMVenue
Governors Island, New YorkAddress