Social Practice Queens (SPQ) Green Lab is a one-day art event featuring experimental projects and workshops by CUNY students, alumni, and faculty, rooted in their ongoing research-based creative practices. Hosted in the new  Lab at the Urban Farm, these site-specific projects address our multifaceted and often troubled relationship to the environment. They consider our use of land over time: from the colonial past to the future of climate change, from microorganisms in the soil to our own bodies in the landscape, from local conditions to the global community. Join us!

DATE: Saturday October 5, 2019

LOCATION: Governors Island, The Lab at the Urban Farm (See full map and directions here)

TIME: 11:30AM–5:30PM

RSVP on Facebook; free and open to the public

SCHEDULE: 

11:30-12:45 Cooking and Communing: a Lenape recipe by Touching Leaves Woman

12:45-2:45  Resilient Thinking Collaborative Workshop

2:45-4:00   Glomalin2020

4:00-5:30   Tierra espacio para habitar: How to fall in love with a river, pt. 3

 

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS

Cooking and Communing:  a Lenape recipe by Touching Leaves Woman – Jamerry Kim

In response to the plaque that tells the historical story of the Dutch settler who bought Governors Island from the Lenape Indians for “two ax heads, a string of beads, and a handful of nails in 1637”: To welcome the Fall season and to acknowledge the land we stand at Governors Island, we will cook a traditional Lenape Indian recipe using grapes to make dumpling soup. The recipe comes from the cookbook titled “Lenape Indian Cooking with Touching Leaves Woman.” Kim will give a small presentation of Lenape cooking history according to Touching Leaves Woman, facilitate the group preparation of grape dumplings and corn fritters and enjoy them together.

Resilient Thinking Collaborative Workshop – Rafael de Balanzo

Professor de Balanzo and a group of Queens College students will facilitate a workshop in which we will identify the different short- and long-term stresses that Governors Island has experienced in the past or may experience in the future, including climate change, government programs or future real-estate development. We will explore how these different challenges generate a window of opportunity for change, in which different actors unify forces to create change—also known as creative destruction process.  By the end of this workshop, participants will be familiar with concepts such as resilience thinking approach or urban sustainability, and will engage in brainstorming on the future path for Governor’s Island.

Glomalin2020 – Bethany Fancher

An interactive presentation with t-shirt prizes – Come learn about the literal underground candidate, Glomalin, and learn how building healthy soil can reverse the worsening CO2 levels in the atmosphere, increase yield and profitability for farmers, and grow vegetables with higher nutrient value and deliciousness to keep us healthier. Glomalin is the great connector, not the divider! Your purchase power becomes your vote.

Tierra espacio para habitar: How to fall in love with a river, pt. 3

– Erin Turner & Alix Camacho-Vargas

Turner and Camacho-Vargas will present their collaborative walking project that invokes Governors Island’s ecology in order to create a dialogue between the human body, the regional landscape, and the larger context of world affairs. We will explore walking as an aesthetic practice through a series of ‘games’: Inspired by Roland Barthes, “Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse,” we will utilize archival photographs and digital photographs taken by the participants to create collages, love letters, walking scores, and/or ephemeral artworks. We will examine a variety of perspectives to consider how we connect to space and to our natural resources. At the end of the workshop, participants will have the opportunity to utilize their works as a form of resistance to urgent and significant landscape issues in the United States.

 

ARTIST/PRESENTER BIOS

Jamerry Kim Kim is an artist currently working on a socially engaged project that addresses language, history, and place in Flushing, Queens for the SPQ Certificate Program.

Rafael de Balanzo, is an adjunct professor in the QC Urban Studies Department, Director of “Actions Without Borders” for the International Union of Architects (AWB-UIA), and a frequent collaborator with SPQ.

Bethany Fancher is a transdisciplinary sculptor, photographer, performer, video maker and community-based artist who holds a certificate from SPQ.

Erin Turner is a graduate of the QC MFA in Social Practice as well as a site-specific installation artist who is interested in land-based practices, preservation, and collaboration. She is a collaborator and nomadic resident of Tierra: espacio para habitar.

Alix Camacho-Vargas is a Colombian artist. She holds an MFA in Social Practice from CUNY, Queens College and a specialization in art education from the National University of Colombia. She is the founder of Tierra: espacio para habitar, a project and nomadic residency that generates collaborations between art, pedagogy, and landscape.

 

SPQ Green Lab is supported by the office of the Associate Vice Chancellor of the City University of New York, CUNY Arts, as well as The Shelly & Donald Rubin Foundation.