RESEARCH

Current:

2021-2019 Choreographing Climate: A Phenomenological Study

This is a blue planet, but it is a green world. - Karl J. Niklas

This body of work extends my previous research on relational architecture to the relational capacity of the body and climate systems. By casting a philosophical eye on the metaphysical nature of evapotranspiration and climatology, this research project builds on critical theory that underpins Emanuele Coccia's 2018 publication, The Life of Plants, A Metaphysics of Mixture, to develop a narrative that argues for an intimate relationship between people and plants as living entities within the larger atmosphere.

By engaging these multi-sensory and open-ended processes through design, this urban design and engagement project pushes these ideas forward, of respiration, earth and sky, illuminating innovative approaches to urban ecology and the management of cities in light of the unpredictable nature of climate change.

Associated Works:
Climate Cities, 2021-2019; Breathing Room, 2020; Touch, 2020

2021-2019 Conservation Networks

This work began as an investigative study of emergent systems in a public park in 2019. Thinking beyond the scope of traditional notions of conservation, this research-based art + design project engages critically with notions of identity, the relational capacity of plants, and preservation techniques in protected landscapes, finding new ways to conceive of ecological management practices in urban settings.

Associated Works:
Conservation Networks, 2021-2019; Gates; Relational Ecologies: emergent systems, 2019

2020-2016 Experiments in Environment: The Body, Choreographing Space and Time

Looking at overlap between experimental methods for choreography in performance art and landscape architecture, this body of research is based on the understanding that landscape architecture and performance art share a common history. Through a study of techniques developed by Anna Halprin and later reperformed by Janine Antoni in 2016 this work examines common threads that inform a shared language in both disciplines.

Considering Anna and Lawrence Halprin's early life in New York, this analysis looks at how chance-based operations pioneered by John Cage, Allan Kaprow and others in the 1950-1960 New York art scene influenced time-based thinking and practice in both the trajectory of performance art and landscape architectural design methodologies, specifically those based in hermeneutics, over the past 60 years.

Experimental works in co-production with the body in this series are designed to open up discourse around shared methods of practice that span multi-disciplinary methods of thinking and making. The purpose of this research is to lay the groundwork for discourse that is cross-disciplinary, to establish an experimental basis for making space, and to explore methods of contemporary social practice that can enrich public engagement.

Associated Works:
Pleats: Relational Systems: The body and climate, 2019; Folds, Relational Architecture: The body and space, 2019; City Choreography, 2019; Methods for Writing, 2016

2014 Salt & Sage | Banff Springs Memorial

In this series of works, I reconsider how meaning is ascribed into landmarks of national importance, considering the landscape of the National Park itself as an iconic cultural signifier. The intent is to create a memorial - a place - that redefines the ground in Banff National Park as ceremonial and integrates the layered and complicated histories that make up its sedimentation as vital components to understanding and appreciating the role of protected landscapes and cultural identity in contemporary culture.

By daylighting this layered history and bringing these narratives to the foreground, Salt & Sage reconsiders the meaning of National Park spaces in Canada and re-inscribes these places as important cultural landscapes that embody meaning beyond areas of sublime significance rooted in romantic notions of travel, leisure, and the picturesque.

Associated Works:
Passage, 2016; Salt & Sage: Banff Springs Memorial, Banff Center for the Arts, 2014; Steveston Nikkei Internment Memorial, 2018