EATING PLACE Workshop

Iain Kerr presents EATING PLACE, an Urban Foraging Workshop

5 -7 pm | Thursday, March 12th

7-9 pm | LASER

UCLA Art|Sci Gallery

5th Floor, California nanoSystems Institute

A workshop led by visiting artist Iain Kerr, of SPURSE Design Consultancy, EATING PLACE is an initiative to foster large scale social and ecological transformation by developing alternative practices of place, the commons, multi-species actions, and urbanism. EATING PLACE begins by understanding place as a mode of being-of-a-world and not simply a geographic location. This being-of-a-world necessarily extends beyond us to include the very active participation of plants, animals, histories, technologies, ideas, other worlds and practices in a collective act of cosmological place co-making.

Iain Kerr is a socio-ecological systems designer, and founding member of the transdisciplinary research and design collaborative SPURSE.  Their work has been at the forefront of experimental ecological research and design for over the last decade. While developing ground breaking practices, projects and events at the intersections of art, design, ecology and urbanism they have collaborated with communities from the high arctic to the inner cities in Bolivia (via projects ranging from restaurants, to wetlands to micro-biology laboratories) to effect real change. In addition to working with SPURSE and co-directing SPURSE’s Emergent Futures Lab, Iain holds faculty appointments at the University of Maine (Associate Professor of Critical Engagements), and Montclair State University (Director of Creative Practices, Feliciano Center). He teaches, lectures and gives workshops widely (including Harvard University, Columbia University, Parsons, University of Maine, CCA, and RISDI). His work, and that of SPURSE, has been exhibited internationally (Whitney Museum of Art, The Guggenheim. Grand Arts, CAFK+A, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Mass MoCA) and published in a number of books and journals including: The Interventionists, The Object of Labor, Experimental Geography, The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Surface, ID, NY Times, Elle, Teme Celeste, Art Papers, Monitor, Interior Design, and Art Journal.

SPURSE is a creative design consultancy that focuses on social, ecological and ethical transformation. It works to empower communities, institutions, infrastructures, and ecologies with tools and adaptive solutions for system-wide change. Drawing upon the diverse backgrounds of its members that spans the fields of science, art, and design, they utilize unique immersive methods to co-produce new ecologies, urban environments, public art, experimental visioning, strategic development, alternative educational models, and expanded configurations of the commons.

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Event is free and open to the public. Special thanks to the David Bermant Foundation.