Art Event: Natalie Jeremijenko

On November 19, Natalie Jeremijenko came to the DPC to promote her art and environmental awareness.  Natalie Jeremijenko is an art professor from NYU that combines art and engineering to create projects that promote environmental awareness.  She founded the Environmental Health Clinic, a place where people can come and express their environmental concerns and develop a locally optimized solution.  The sentiments behind the Environmental Health Clinic were to create an external and shared version of health between people and the environment.

Past projects of Jeremijenko include bird perches that trigger recorded messages when birds land on them.  The messages are symbiotic, telling people to feed and respect the birds.  She has also organized biochard samba parties, where people get together and burn papers to create biochard, which sequesters carbon from the atmosphere.  Among other projects, she has been part of the creation of the butterfly bridge, which helps butterflies follow flower to flower by planting flowers and hooking them to power-line poles.

The Butterfly Bridge, from environmentalhealthclinic.net

My favorite project of hers is the amphibious architecture she created in the rivers of New York City.  This is made up of buoys with sensors that trigger LED lights to turn on when fish swim under them.  This reminds the people in the city that fish actually live in those rivers.  A phone app also allows people to feed the fish through the buoys, which will in turn cause more fish to swim under the buoy sensors.  This is an example of the environmental reciprocity that is Jeremijenko's goal.  She wants people to be able to work together with the environment and the animals within it to benefit both sides.

Amphibeous Architecture, from Animal Architecture. Org

She promotes city farming through agbags and vertical farming on the sides of buildings.  To prevent competition with rural farmers, Jermijenko advertises the uses of flowers in cooking.  By growing flowers in cities, they will be able to filter the air and not raise food prices.  The flower petals are high in nutrients when they are first plucked and can be used in a variety of dishes, including black pansy vodka.

Jermijenko uses her art to advertise her hope that we can save the environment through not radical change, but simple deviations to our normal lifestyle.  She wants to make self-interests of one person into a collective interest of a community.  The Environmental Health Clinic is in communication with other similar organizations throughout the world, and even though they all have different problems, they can use similar experiments that locally make sense yet can develop features that can be shared to other places.  Jermijenko works forward to create in her audience a shared public memory of a possible future, that will come true if we all work together for a reciprocal relationship with nature.