OOZing: A Public Workshop with Natalie Jeremijenko :: December 4, 2008; 6:30 - 8:30 pm :: Van Alen Institute, 30 West 22nd Street, 6th Floor, New York City.

Van Alen Institute invites you to join artist and engineer Natalie Jeremijenko for a workshop that demonstrates productive cohabitation with urban nonhumans and teaches “table manners” for sharing nutritional resources with birds, bees, and other intelligent creatures.

What does biodiversity look like in New York City? Who wants to share the urban context with nonhumans and why? What are the present and possible roles for animals in urban infrastructure? Can human/nonhuman interaction be productive, fun, and improve the environmental performance of human habitats?

While urban migration once described the movements of rural poor human populations into cities, the term can now describe the movement of animals, formally known as wild, into urban centers. Geese, pigeons, coyote, rhinoceros beetles, luna moths, raccoons, bats, and wild turkey have increasingly accepted invitations for cohabitation that every street tree and greenspace arguably extend – colonizing diverse urban habitats, forcing us to account for the environmental services they provide, and provoking us to re-imagine our relationship to natural systems in an increasingly urban world.

This workshop introduces a series of interfaces and rationals towards realizing a brave new biodiverse urban lifestyle. Workshop participants will be challenged to take on the strongest animal in the world, and a reception afterwards will celebrate the launch of Jeremijenko’s “OOZ” project in the Bronx.

Natalie Jeremijenko is one of Van Alen Institute’s 2008-2009 New York Prize Fellows in Sustainable Cities and the Social Sciences, supported by a partnership between Van Alen Institute and the Social Science Research Council.