[size=14]OOZing: A Public Workshop with New York Prize Fellow Natalie Jeremijenko[/size]
Thursday, December 4, 2008, 6:30 - 8:30pm
at Van Alen Institute
30 W. 22nd Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10010

Van Alen Institute invites you to join artist and engineer Natalie Jeremijenko for a workshop that demonstrates productive cohabitation with urban nonhumans and teaches “table manners” for sharing nutritional resources with birds, bees, and other intelligent creatures.

While urban migration once described the movements of rural poor human populations into cities, the term can now describe the movement of animals, formally known as wild, into urban centers. Geese, pigeons, coyote, rhinoceros beetles, luna moths, raccoons, bats, and wild turkey have increasingly accepted invitations for cohabitation that every street tree and greenspace arguably extend - colonizing diverse urban habitats, forcing us to account for the environmental services they provide, and provoking us to re-imagine our relationship to natural systems in an increasingly urban world.

This workshop introduces a series of interfaces and rationals towards realizing a brave new biodiverse urban lifestyle. Workshop participants will be challenged to take on the strongest animal in the world, and a reception afterwards will celebrate the launch of Jeremijenko’s “OOZ” project in the Bronx.

Natalie Jeremijenko is one of Van Alen Institute’s 2008-2009 New York Prize Fellows in Sustainable Cities and the Social Sciences, supported by a partnership between Van Alen Institute and the Social Science Research Council.

Space is limited; please RSVP by email to rvsp@vanalen.org by Tuesday, December 2.

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[size=10]Van Alen Institute is an independent nonprofit architectural organization whose mission is to promote inquiry into the processes that shape the design of the public realm. For over a century, the Institute has cultivated a fellowship of architecture and design practitioners and scholars, awarded excellence in design, and fostered dialogue about architecture as a public practice. Today, as conventionally defined fields of knowledge give way to new disciplines and alternative methodologies, Van Alen Institute reclaims its legacy as an architectural institute that is dedicated to critical inquiry surrounding contemporary forms of public space and new configurations of spatial practice. The Institute develops and presents programs that inform debate and advance design through competitions and fellowships, related forums, publications, and exhibitions. © 2008 Van Alen Institute[/size]