RealTime Arts – Magazine – issue 121 – Dreaming Cities , published 2 JULY, 2014

 

In New York I can start a conversation mid-sentence addressed to no-one in particular and be sure that whoever is nearby will pick it up and carry on. I can walk the street, give directions to a stranger and end up at dinner with same, a dogma changing neuroscientist.

For me, New York is a place I can turn up in and feel like I’m home. A similar summer 11 years ago seasoned me with lifelong friend collaborators and artistic turning points. I was enamoured to see if we still feel the same way about each other. We do.

2013 was a year of cumulative cities for me, rolling in from a retro media art and feminism party reunion, Berlin; a winter retreat with plants and edible olfactions, Brussels; pounding through ideas, SXSW, Austin, Texas; spilling sensory performance and brittle papers, London; and balancing unbalance in Noosa. When I arrived in New York I carried the politics of touch from Performance Studies International 19, Stanford, packing stinging debates on methodology and mind blowing science from the Plant Signalling Conference, Vancouver along with a personal preview of Michael Marder’s Plant Thinking. Within four days of arriving I had an unexpected exhibition of my work in progress for Transcontinental Garden Exchange at point b. Simmer on high in the midsummer heat of New York for seven weeks. Season to taste.

So begins lucid dreaming in New York: public lectures on demand, Weird Wednesdays, behold intelligent slime mould, Secret Science Club, DNA sequencing, Genspace, library daze from florilegia to perfume, the Centre for Feminist Art, conversation with strangers, Live Sound Cinema, Amateur Night at the Apollo, rooftop thinking, urban foraging, the tall green of the Catskills shimmering in my ears, Beaverkill’s Ladybake Art Hole 3000.2 Extreme Croquet, art that grows, eats and sleeps out on the banks of the Hudson and the greenest queerest performance heroine introduction demand “Who is this eating my front lawn?”.

For all the links plus images visit RealTime Arts – Magazine – issue 121 – Dreaming Cities , published 2 JULY, 2014.