adaptation – Art Spiel

Walking through MoMA PS1 for the first time in several years, I realized how much it has changed and how much I still remembered from my first visit, before officially becoming a New Yorker. The meandering, bustling energy of the building remained, each turn and new corridor offering discoveries. It was special to witness how eclectic and unique each artist’s vision and process was and how many identities and stories are gathered under one roof. Organized for the first time by MoMA PS1’s full curatorial team, the exhibition emphasizes the forces that shape daily life in the city today. This includes strategies of resistance and adaptation in the face of increased surveillance, shifting identities, economic uncertainties, how we view ourselves and others, and the ever-changing technologies around us. This exhibition notes both optimism and anxiety throughout all of the artists’ attention to the layered, eclectic lived textures of New York City and the people intertwined within it.

David Brooks, installation shots of *Budding Bird Blind,* at Planting Fields Arboretum, Oyster Bay, NY, and maquettes showing the future forest succession as the trees supplant the building

On April 23rd, Earth Day, 2023, at the Catskill Art Space in Livingston Manor, NY, I moderated a panel on artists’ responses to the climate crisis titled “Envisioning Adaptation.” The panel was one of the many events the director of the CAS, Sally Wright, has hosted at the arts and performance space newly refurbished in 2022. The concept for the symposium was to create a forum of artists whose practices addressed the idea of adaptation to, as opposed to mitigation of, the climate crisis. The panel participants included David Brooks, Simone Couto, Alexandra Hammond, Brian Kelley, and J. Morgan Puett.

Tag: adaptation

Envisioning Adaptation – Symposium on Art and Adaptation to the Climate Crisis at the Catskill Art Space