Sunday, August 23rd, 8:00 pm
Join us for a public discussion with the curators and artists of Chance Ecologies, a public art project currently taking place in Long Island City, Queens. This event will be a roundtable conversation about Hunter’s Point South, a historic post-industrial site on the East River which has been left to become a wilderness over the past 30 years, and which will soon become a residential development. A group of artists is currently creating new artworks focused on this unique site, and will discuss some of their initial findings with the community at Radiator Gallery on Sunday, Aug. 23rd at 8pm, over drinks and light refreshments.
This Sunday is the third in a month-long series of events for Chance Ecologies – Exploring the Wild Landscape of Hunter’s Point South, a public art project is bringing together a coalition of artists and thinkers to creatively explore and document a large plot of publicly-owned land in Long Island City, Queens. Over the last 35 years, an unplanned ecology has taken root in this fenced-off post-industrial landscape, which will soon be razed to make way for a new residential development. During the month of August, we are organizing a series of events celebrating this wild site, leading up to a winter exhibit at Radiator Gallery.
This Sunday will feature a performative walk with artists Chris Kennedy and Ellie Irons at 5pm, an unguided tour with author Daniel Campo at 6pm, and a public discussion with the curators and artists of Chance Ecologies, hosted by Radiator Gallery, at 8pm.
SUNDAY, Aug 23rd
5 – 6pm:
Endangered Surfaces Walk: A movement-research investigation with Ellie Irons and Chris Kennedy
Join us for a guided walk through the re-wilded landscape of Hunter’s Point. We’ll follow desire paths that flow through the site, exploring the overlaps, edges and frictions between the man-made and long re-wilded. Along the way we’ll identify wild urban plants, take rubbings, and engage in movement-research to create an archive of endangered surfaces found amongst the ruderal terrains soon to be developed.Meeting Point: East River Ferry terminal in Long Island City / Hunter’s Point Park
6 – 7:30pm:
Accidental, temporary and wild: An unguided tour of the Hunters Point waterfront by Daniel Campo
Through this (mostly) unguided tour, explore one of New York’s last accidental waterfront wild spaces before it is swallowed by the voracious development practices that have transformed Queens’s East River edge and the waterfront of the greater city. Through intimate and unmediated immersion into this unique postindustrial site, the tour will draw upon all of your senses in exploration of thoroughly contradictory conditions and contexts. At the fulcrum of land and water, nature and city, abandonment and reclamation, history and possibility; this experience will incite a similarly contradictory range of emotions. The tour will culminate with an open discussion led by urbanist, critic and professor, Daniel Campo (author of The Accidental Playground).
This tour is limited to 20 people, please RSVP via this link to sign up!
For a sneak peek, check out this photo essay and interview with Daniel Campo, by Nathan Kensinger for Curbed.
Meeting Point: East River Ferry terminal in Long Island City / Hunter’s Point Park