PROJECT: SOILS
Welcome to Project: Soils, a repository of temporary public art projects and community-based activities that spread knowledge and enthusiasm about our human connection to the natural—including urban—environment. The projects profiled below reflect USI’s ever-growing, dynamic and diverse community working, observing, creating, collaborating, questioning.
Some projects stem from the residency at Swale House on Governors Island; others are independent projects that have found new audiences and potential collaborators under the USI umbrella.
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DIRTBALL and KOSMOLOGYM
2020- ongoing
Dirtball invites humans to join a soil making game along with birds, bugs, plants, minerals and weather. Created by Walker Tufts and Greg Stewart who collaborate with/as Kosmologym, Dirtball is played on a soil remineralizing basketball court that uses specially formulated concrete alongside collaboration with plants and animals to improve the carbon sequestration capacity of the surrounding soil. A second iteration of a project first realized at Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota, Kosmologym’s court on Governors Island will explore the forms basketball courts take in urban areas. The court will connect individual human actions to ecological issues faced by the surrounding landscape through an invitation to a game that is always going on beneath our feet. As we await the reopening of Governors Island in a Covid-safe manner, Kosmologym is working on a fantasy Dirtball league and possibly a card or board game, in advance of the court at Swale Garden.
RL Martens, Perfect Knowledge of the Ground
May 27 - Jun 18, 2020 (and ongoing)
RL Martens and Washington Project for the Arts invite local DC-area residents to participate in Perfect Knowledge of the Ground. The project aims to reframe capitalist understanding of the roots of our current ecological crisis, by sharing Black and Indigenous agricultural alternatives through a virtual bookshelf, mail-order care packages, and an online film screening. The mail-ordered care package includes: a limited-edition reader, seeds and instructions for planting, and a guide to harvesting clay from the soil around you.
Bee Build Symphony + Lecture, with Sam Droege and Sue Stockman
July 5 - 6, 2019
Renowned bee expert/ insect wedding photographer Sam Droege and artist Sue Stockman collaborate for a bee lecture and unique bee habitat building project at Swale House, as part of the Project: Soils residency.
Susan Main + MJ Neuberger, Yard of the Yard
ongoing
A continuation of the collaborative project with Rahraw Omarzad, Director of the Center For Contemporary Arts Afghanistan (Kabul, Afghanistan). We pointed webcams at the ground and exchanged one yard (36” X 36”) of our yards via the internet. The live videos of our yards were projected onto two 36” X 36” X 6” plinths in Kabul, Afghanistan and at University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, Maryland.
The C.U.R.B.
ongoing
Adapting to climate crisis by meeting (and eating) our non-human neighbors; a multi-species experiment in many parts. The Collaborative Urban Resilience Banquet (The C.U.R.B.) uses the act of urban foraging and the projected “what if” disaster scenarios of climate change to examine critical issues around food and food sovereignty, land access, environmental remediation, multi-species interdependence, and right relationship(s) with the (un)natural world. Artist Candace Thompson’s field work observations and citizen science experiments are documented via the project’s Instagram handle and shared at a series of seasonal community meals foraged largely from the streets of New York City.
Urban Soils Room at Swale House
June 2019 - October 2022
Urban Soils Institute collaborated with artist Margaret Boozer and NJ Soils Scientist Dr. Richard Shaw to expand the pair’s collaborative project on the Reconnaissance Soil Survey, first displayed at Museum of Art and Design in2012. This Informative and interactive exhibit encourages learning and stewardship.It dovetails with Urban Soils Institute’s office and soil testing lab, also on site.
Chia Sculptures at the US Botanic Garden
August - November 2019
The U.S. Botanic Garden and the NYC Urban Soils Institute collaborated to request artist concepts for sculptures to be sprouted with chia seeds. Selected sculptures were planted and maintained by their Horticulture team. An artists’ panel discussion and horticulture lectures accompanied the exhibition.
Toxic Tour Beer Coaster and Soil LabLand/Trust exhibition at Maryland Institute College of Art
January - February 2018
Boozer and Martens teamed up to support the work of East Baltimore environmental activist, Glenn Rossand his Toxic Tours. At Soil Lab, the in-gallery workshop, Boozer and Martens produce sets of Toxic Tour Beer Coasters composed of materials collected at each of Ross’ Toxic Tour sites. Gallery patrons are invited to help in collecting site samples, creating beer coasters, and soliciting community engagement. The coasters are tangible objects, connecting purchasers and participants to Ross’ work at the most basic level, the ground. Funds from sales of the coasters go to Ross’ education and outreach efforts.
Correlation Drawing/Drawing Correlations: A Five Borough Reconnaissance Soil SurveyThe Museum of Arts and Design
Feb – Aug, 2012
A collaborative project by Dr. Richard K. Shaw, former State Soil Scientist for the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service in New Jersey, and Project Leader for the NYC Soil Survey Program, and artist Margaret Boozer. Correlation Drawing/ Drawing Correlations contains soil samples from all 5 boroughs of NYC, extracted over the span of 15 years by Shaw and team for the recently completed New York City Reconnaissance Soil Survey. Previously, soil mapping was about improving agricultural practices. With the worldwide population shift toward mega-cities, soil mapping is beginning to focus on urban areas as well where soils information is useful for restoration and revegetation efforts, stormwater management, land use decisions and most importantly, studying the effects of human disturbance on the environment. The Survey as a document is meant to increase public awareness and appreciation of a valuable resource, and this art piece is meant to invite public curiosity toward that end. 2012 Correlation Drawing (MAD)
Public Soil Memory for the Plantationocene, 2017
RL Martens + Bii Robertson
Public Soil Memory for the Plantationocene was RL Martens + Bii Robertson’s site-specific multimedia work installed on the grounds of the Sandy Spring Museum. Using soil as a starting place and medium for remembering, the piece told the elided story of the severe soil degradation that resulted from the plantation system’s tobacco monoculture and slave-labor practices. Based on research conducted in the Museum’s archive, this piece challenged the dominant historical narrative of manumission and invited viewers to think about the contemporary ecological crisis in the context of enslavement and racialized violence.
An accompanying essay was published online in Edge Effects magazine, and later published as a zine with funding from the NYC Urban Soils Institute.