NEWS
We are up to lots of things, and most often we don't get around to getting everything on the website (sorry!). The best is to check in with us and subscribe to our email list. As always we would love to hear from you so please, don't be a stranger! Please be in touch: spurse01@gmail.com
Eating Place: Five Urban Walks
We have just launched our five eating place urban self-guided walks that can be done from anywhere. For more information check out our post. (These were developed with Block Ecology & Flourish Lab and the assistance of many).
Eating Place: Vienna (for example)
We have also just launched our five eating place urban self-guided walks in german specifically designed for Vienna. We are doing a series of five live events. For more information check out our post.
(These were developed with Block Ecology & Flourish Lab and the assistance of many).
more than us thriving where we are (not yet)
As part of the exhibit ECO-URGENCY -- NOW OR NEVER at Wave Hill NYC we have developed a two part research project to reconsider how we are part of urban ecosystems. For more information check out our post.
(These were developed with Block Ecology & Flourish Lab and the assistance of many).
COLLABORATIONS WITH BLOCK ECOLOGY
This last year we have been collaborating extensively with our dear colleagues in BLOCK ECOLOGY -- you can check out what they are up to here.
THE IMPROBABLY DESIGNED AWARDS SHOW
October 21: SPURSE event of MDW 2020: This is not your typical design awards show! -- we'll be giving props to designs that veered off their intended path, and managed to come out way more radical and transformative. Most times, designs like these emerge out of completely unforeseen circumstances, blindsiding our expectations and catapulting us into new territory. Join members of SPURSE, as they ween us off of recent design fads, and challenge all of the sacred fish of creativity, design and human exceptionalism.
Our urban environments look hard, but when we look closer we'll also find an edible landscape! How can we retune our relationships with our abundant environment, and see the possibilities of a town-wide edible landscape? In this walk, learn how to identify and harvest the five most prolific and important plants that are rich in nutrients and grow spontaneously without human consent or aid. Participants will also receive SPURSE's "Eat Your Sidewalk" Codebook. We will end with a discussion while roasting seasonal mushrooms over a fire. Please be in touch for details.
September 13: Workshop: Wandering in(to) the Multi-Species Commons: A
Walking Workshop on Novel Urban Ecosystem (SPURSE). As part of ARS ELECTRONICA 2020 (Telluric Vibrations).
September 12: Panel Discussion: On Urban Ecologies. As part of ARS ELECTRONICA 2020 (Telluric Vibrations). Please be in touch for details.
Fall 2020 @ University of Maine. We did our annual worldmaking workshop for graduate students in the Intermedia Arts.
For spring 2020 we continued our SPURSE residency at the University of Maine. Our goal this spring was to finish designing and beginning to fabricate our Marine Commons Research Boat. By the end of the spring we had finished the building of the components and successfully completed our two-year residency. We are hoping to launch the vessel in the summer of 2021. Stay tuned! Please be in touch for details.
Drain Magazine. Great idea from Gregory Bateson: we need to have an ecology of bad ideas. We participated in the project with an interview and a longer essay (see below). http://drainmag.com/eat-your-sidewalk-an-interview-with-spurse/
A longer essay, first written for the closing of Grand Arts. On the question of what comes "after art". http://drainmag.com/after-art/
For the Miller ICA artist bibliography project: A limited annotated bibliography summer 2020 --ongoing. We have since expanded and developed further. Will be publishing more on this (and collaborating more on this in the spring of 2021. We would love to hear people's thoughts on this. https://miller-ica.cmu.edu/varia/750/remote-control-3-annotated-bibliographies-by
Workshop: Eating & Being Eaten
Saturday, June 15 2019
1pm-3:30pm and 7-9:30pm
What does it mean to talk to rocks or furniture? What does it mean to model the human on plants? Join SPURSE for a series of exercises and conversations over a very light meal on living well after Nature in the age of the Anthropocene. A series of exercises and conversation with SPURSE about how to imagine and live in a world without Nature or Culture. Eating and conversing with a rock. A geo-cosmological tasting and conversation. 1-3:30pm An evening conversation with fungi. A myco-cosmological conversation and sampling of spontaneously fermented beverages. 7-9:30pm
https://moca-tucson.org/program/spurse-workshop-eating-and-being-eaten/
Research Hub: On Animism, the Agency of Things, & Novel Political Forms
April - July 2019
"WELCOME DELEGATES: Learning to Live In Commons." This collaborative research project is part of SPURSE’s ongoing work to collectively develop new modes of how we understand and engage with reality. This project asks us to speculate about how to think about and engage with the things that make up everyday life: plants, tables, floors, shoes, insects, breath, communities, rocks, etc. Drawing inspiration from Animist and other traditions that understand and interact with these items as beings with a similar status as humans, SPURSE asks us to speculate on what this might mean for us (whomever shows up at the research space) today as we face many massive environmental and social crises. This project is a work of important on-going participatory research: please join them groping in the dark towards new possibilities. As part of “Groping in the Dark” at MOCA Tucson, AZ.
Workshop: Foraging, Ecology & Action
June 3-7
Nomad9 MFA Program University of Hartford Summer 2019
Lecture: On Sidewalks, Weeds & the Multi-Species Commons
WHEN: Thursday, April 18, 6:30-8:30
WHERE: Nutrition and Food Studies, New York University, 411 Lafayette St. 5th Floor. A discussion with SPURSE. More information.
Lecture: Aesthetic research at the edges of the academy/anthropocene
April 4th UCLA
ARTS based RESEARCH in times of CLIMATE & SOCIAL CHANGE
California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI)
Workshop: Foraging & Eco-Materialism
April 5th 2019 UCLA
We will be out at UCLA doing a workshop on Urban Ecosystems & Foraging as part of WHAT’S NEXT? Eco materialism & contemporary art. EDA, Broad Arts center.
Workshop: Creative Research as Aesthetics
September 22, 2018
We will be up at the University of Maine @ Orono leading a workshop developing Creative Research Practices (September 27-30). We will be giving a public talk on Friday: Creating Creativity & Innovating Innovation. Please email us for details.
Rethinking Science Workshops & Lectures: Science After Nature
FALL 2018 - SPRING 2019
Foraging the University Commons:
Join Ecological Art & Design Collective SPURSE to forage the campus. Many unique edible plants will be identified, discussed and picked. SPURSE will host a deeper discussion into the pleasures and politics of foraging over a lunch of wild greens and spontaneously fermented drinks.
The Art of Citizen Science after Nature
How do we as citizens participate in the making of the sciences? What does it mean to be a citizen-scientist after the logic of “Nature” has been abandoned as un-scientific and politically problematic? Join the ecological design team SPURSE for a fascinating discussion of a critical topic.
Constructing Scientific Truth in a Post-Truth Age
Scientific facts long ago ceased to be a simple and uncontested matter. In an era where science is both challenged and held up as the final arbitrator of truth -- it there another way to approach these debates? Can we advocate for a new slower and more engaged science? Join the ecological thinkers and designers from SPURSE to explore this immensely important issue.
Urban Ecosystem Education : Greenwich School System
Asking new ecological questions
September 22, 2018
This fall we are working on a project with the Greenwich School System to develop new ecological questions and methods to become engaged with the world around us in new ways. We are doing a series of collaborative environmental engagements and an exhibition of speculative proposals.
Research Report: Beirut
Report from Eat Your Sidewalk Beirut
October 17, 2017
Here is a series of blogs from our time in Beirut: 1, 2, 3, 4
https://eatyoursidewalk.org/blogs/eating-your-sidewalk/beirut-1-foraging
https://eatyoursidewalk.org/blogs/eating-your-sidewalk/beirut-2-cooking
https://eatyoursidewalk.org/blogs/eating-your-sidewalk/beirut-3-the-dinner
https://eatyoursidewalk.org/blogs/eating-your-sidewalk/beirut-4-responses
Workshop: Creative Research as Aesthetics
September 22, 2018
We will be up at the University of Maine @ Orono leading a workshop developing Creative Research Practices (September 27-30). We will be giving a public talk on Friday: Creating Creativity & Innovating Innovation. Please email us for details.
Food & Ecology Research: William Patterson University
Breaking Bread
October 8, 2017
November 1 through December 13 we will be participating in an exhibition Breaking Bread at William Patterson University. "The exhibition Breaking Bread: Artists Explore Food Practices features painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and performances that examine our multifaceted relationship to food. While eating is generally a mundane daily routine, this exhibition considers how we find our food, who we consume it with, and what meaning is created through these experiences. Artists include: Ruth Borgenicht, Juanli Carrión, Alison Kuo, SPURSE, and Marion Wilson."
Screening + Discussion: The Gleaners & I
The Gleaners & I
October 8, 2017
Tuesday, October 10 12:30 pm Come watch and discuss "The Gleaners & I" with SPURSE at William Patterson University. Cheng Library Auditorium. Admission: FREE "Considered one of the ten best documentary films ever made, The Gleaners & I, by Agnes Varda, a founding figure of the French New Wave, focuses on gleaning -- the practice of salvaging what is left in farm fields, markets and elsewhere. The film makes us rethink our connections to food, each other and even ourselves. This documentary will be presented by the design collective "SPURSE," in conjunction with the WP Galleries exhibition "Breaking Bread: Artists Explore Food Practices," featuring work from their new critically acclaimed book: "The Eat Your Sidewalk Cookbook."
Urban Ecological Fieldwork: Beirut
September 22, 2018 Sharjah Biennial 13
October 11 - 15th We will be in Beirut as part of the Sharjah Biennial 13. "Themed around the keyword culinary, Upon a Shifting Plate... where talks, workshops, walks, cooking sessions and other events explore the production and consumption of culinary heritage and how our eating habits condition and shape our psychological and cultural dispositions." We will be leading a foraging walk on Oct. 13 at 11am, then hosting a cooking session Oct 11 at 10-12pm. We are serving an experimental dinner "Eating into Future-Past Cosmologies - Tasting the Future" Oct. 13, 2:30pm at STATION. Come join us for what promises to be a series of really remarkable events.
Publications: The Eat Your Sidewalk Cookbook
Cookbooks are critical ecological tools
May 19, 2017
What is the radical and transformative potential of cookbooks?
https://eatyoursidewalk.org/blogs/eating-your-sidewalk/the-i-avant-garde-of-i-cook-books
On walking away from the Native+Invasive Paradigm
https://eatyoursidewalk.org/blogs/eating-your-sidewalk/on-walking-away-from-native-invasive