Myco-Ramblings
Ben Kinsley & Christopher Kennedy

a wander through Central Park in search of fungi, stories, and sound.
sunday, july 10, 2016 | 1-4pm

*RSVP required

 

 

Meeting Place:

Block House No. 1

Subway: Central Park North (110 St.) [2,3]

 

The largest and oldest living organism on the planet is a mushroom. Although its fruiting body is no bigger than the palm of your hand, the entire organism extends for miles in either direction, comprised of a root-like system called mycelium. Mycologist Paul Stamets describes this as the neurological network of Nature, Earth’s natural Internet, or “the wood-wide web”; allowing both information and resources to pass quickly through the entire network. Mushroom hunting is also a practice shared by almost all major cultures, providing a vital source of food, medicine, and spiritual ritual.

 

Using mushrooms as a material and metaphor, Myco-Ramblings explores the intersection of mycology, folk knowledge, and storytelling. We invite participants to join us on a ramble through Central Park to forage for mushrooms, to cultivate collective knowledge related to fungi, and to create a chance-based field recording. We will walk, we will notice, and delight in the delicacies of the mushroom world.

 

While field identification will be a part of the experience, it is not the primary goal. We are interested in what stories, practices, and insights emerge from the shared experience of looking at and for mushrooms together. The sounds and stories collected will be included in a future audio work; a meditation on wandering and a celebration of the uncertain and mysterious nature of fungi. All skill levels and ages are welcome.

 

 

Biography:

 

Christopher Kennedy and Ben Kinsley are artists/educators/organizers who live in NYC. This collaboration spawned from their shared love of John Cage, mushroom foraging, and wandering. They are members of the New York Mycological Society.

 

Christopher Lee Kennedy’s past projects include an inter-generational free school in North Brooklyn called School of the Future; an ongoing dance project using fungi as a material and metaphor for connectivity (StrataSpore); the Queer Explorers Club, a publishing platform for queer youth, designers and artists, and Chance Ecologies, a platform for exploring contemporary ecosystems and wild growth in post-industrial sites.

 

Ben Kinsley’s projects have ranged from choreographing a neighborhood intervention into Google Street View, directing surprise theatrical performances inside the homes of strangers, organizing a paranormal concert series, staging a royal protest, investigating feline utopia, collecting put-down jokes from around the world, and planting a buried treasure in the streets of Mexico City (yet to be found).

 

 

 

 

Please RSVP by July 07,2016 to info@acinstitute.org