Before Andrea Haenggi’s last year of the project Urban Weeds Garden approached, the plant Mugwort with its rhizome system told her to create a collective to allow for entanglements that goes beyond her and the world of plants. She initiated an informal gathering of diverse artists that had one thing in comment what is a world beyond humans? and what could we learn from spontaneous urban plants to address our social and ecological crisis? and out of this gathering the EPA artist collective was born.
The Environmental Performance Agency (EPA) is an artist collective founded in 2017 and named in response to the proposed defunding of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Appropriating the acronym EPA, the collective’s primary goal is to shift thinking around the terms environment, performance, and agency – using artistic, social, and embodied / kinesthetic practices to advocate for the agency of all living performers co-creating our environment, specifically through the lens of spontaneous urban plants, native or migrant. Current EPA Agents include Catherine Grau, andrea haenggi, Ellie Irons, Christopher Kennedy, and the spontaneous urban plants of 1067 Pacific Street, Brooklyn.
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