<div dir="ltr">Dearest empyre,<div><br></div><div>Greetings from the urban weeds garden at the <a href="http://www.environmentalperformanceagency.com/">Environmental Performance Agency</a> (EPA)! And thanks to Margaretha and Ellie for the introductions!</div><div><br></div><div>Right now I'm sitting next to a sea of mugwort - its a bit chilly, so I'm wearing a big red scarf and laying on a giant camping mat that was once home to a colony of sac spiders.</div><div><br></div><div><img src="cid:ii_15f2ae2f6ea9d057" alt="Inline image 1" width="544" height="125"><br></div><div><br></div><div>I wanted to continue with Ellie's thread about vegetal agency and "urban commons". As an EPA agent, its been an incredible 6 months of witnessing the growth and evolution of our 1900 sq. ft living lot in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. As a partial response to the dismantling of the US EPA, we've been creating space and finding ways to relate, talk and listen to over 50 species of spontaneous urban plants (aka weeds) and a complex network of human and interspecies lifewebs. Right now there is a forest of mugwort and horseweed hugging the walls, pepperweed absorbing some of the heavy metals in an area we call the dessert, and weedy islands swallowing the asphalt - mixed with aster and fleabane, with wild grasses and wormwood, and other multispecies friends. To be somewhat vulnerable - its also been a challenging experience to encounter the changes on our block -- developers are looming, people experience homelessness are being swept to other parts of the city, a once vibrant car repair sidewalk economy is disappearing, and lots like ours are being transformed into highrise condos and entertainment complexes. As a white queer man, I often feel complicit in these transformations; powerless against rampant forces of capital and the endless flux of cocktail bars and coffee shops that are also hair salons.</div><div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12.6667px;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></div><div><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:12.6667px;white-space:pre-wrap">Yet the weeds at the EPA have helped me learn that "resistance" is happening all around us. And sometimes its merely a matter of </span></font><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12.6667px;white-space:pre-wrap">honing </span><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:12.6667px;white-space:pre-wrap">what John Cage describes as our "powers of observation" so that we can see all the mushrooms in our lives -- a Tsingian potential of finding possibility in the contamination of disaster capitalism. </span></font><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:12.6667px;white-space:pre-wrap">Ellie and I think about this as a kind of "weedy resistance", developing an ability t</span></font><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12.6667px;white-space:pre-wrap">o overcome our plant blindness - literally and metaphorically. To see</span><span style="font-size:12.6667px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"> the in-between networks already fighting homogenous systems of power, literally cracking the asphalt and the patriarchy; troubling notions of so-called "beautiful" or "biodiverse" landscapes. The weeds at the EPA have also taught me that we need to center movement in our practices, to remember we all have bodies, and that we are already more than human (see Scott Gilbert's "we are all lichens now"). For in fact our "bodies already consist of four times as many microorganisms...than human cells, our own DNA." (B.A. Huseby) We are basically just giant mushroom sacs walking around -- aliens ourselves.</span></div><div><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:12.6667px;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></font><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12.6667px;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div>This is all to say -- I would like to offer a score on behalf of the weeds -- a voice for them, an invitation for movement and reflection. They have so much to say... and at the EPA were developing all kinds of ways to translate between the human and non-human entanglements all around us.</div><div><br></div><div>Feel free to adapt and translate, to try out and share with the list or a friend. And throughout the week I'll try and give y'all more glimpses of our garden and to be a liaison for the weeds here in NYC:</div><div><div><br></div></div><div>
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<div><b><font size="4"><br></font></b></div><div><b><font size="4">Urban weeds guide to mapping the present: Mentors in cracking the patriarchy / collaborators in decolonizing land</font></b></div><div><span style="font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">*Co-developed by EPA agent Catherine Grau</span></div><div><span style="font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Part 1:</span><span style="font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> Choose one urban weed to approach. </span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:9.5pt;white-space:pre-wrap">Using pen and paper write down the following exploration. Speak in the voice of the weed. Let your observations, imagination, and ruminations unfold as narrative. You can let one or several of these questions guide you:</span><br></div><ul style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:9.5pt;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Who is this weed? - Introduce yourself!</span></p></li></ul><ul style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:9.5pt;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Describe the 360 degrees and below the surface surrounding. What does it feel like? (you can choose to ‘see’ through other senses, such as temperature, texture, sounds, color, or smell) Are there any obstacles you have to deal with?</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:9.5pt;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Who is your community? (are you part of a larger whole that is not represented here?)</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:9.5pt;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">How did you get here? (explore the movement of weeds, and how their use of space questions our understanding of space, borders, and ownership)</span></p></li></ul><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Part 2:</span><span style="font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> Let the urban weed give you an immediate embodied action score. You can draw from their mode of movement to get you started, or you can follow something that came up in the writing. Here are a few examples, but try to hear specifically what the weed has to tell you, it might lead you in a different direction: </span></p><ol style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:decimal;font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:9.5pt;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Follow a stranger as a seed stuck to their shoe / let them carry you for a few blocks / when the seed (you) drops from the shoe to a destination - try to stand still in that space for 5-10min and consider: how does this space ask you to adapt or challenge you? </span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:decimal;font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:9.5pt;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Let the wind drift you until you find a place of opening to the earth (ground). Make a list and dismiss (scratch out) everything you think you may need in order to feel a sense of radical belonging here. </span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:decimal;font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:9.5pt;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Move through the earth below as a rhizome. Come up in a place that feels neglected. Take a physical action that shows care for that place.</span></p></li></ol><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">(Don’t be startled if the weed continues to talk to you - even when you are no longer in their physical presence, even days after you finished this exercise. Just listen to the many things they have to say)</span></p>
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</div><div><span id="gmail-m_8167278080042647344gmail-docs-internal-guid-f9690481-2ada-4c5b-0faa-e67a97bcd45c"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><br></p><div>Lots of love,</div><div>Chris</div></span></div><div><br clear="all"><div><div class="gmail-m_8167278080042647344gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="http://christopherleekennedy.com/" target="_blank">Christopher Lee Kennedy</a></font><div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><a href="tel:(201)%20981-1576" value="+12019811576" target="_blank">(201) 981-1576</a></font></div><div><span style="font-size:x-small"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></span></div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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