Virtual Multispecies Care Circle

Saturday, May 9, 4-5pm

To join the Virtual Multispecies Care Circle please RSVP by email to: environmentalperformanceagency@gmail.com.

As we shield our breath from the virus, what does it mean to seek sharing breath with other species? How does the temporary pause of the pandemic provide an opportunity for us to sense the web of relations of breathing and air quality?

Join the EPA’s  first Multispecies Care Circle to dive into these questions. This virtual get together deepens engagement with the EPA’s Multispecies Care Survey, a public data gathering initiative meant to provoke and articulate forms of environmental agency that de-center human supremacy and facilitate the co-generation of embodied, localized plant-human care practices. As the formats of coexistence are shifted by social distancing, we ask “In a time of pandemic crisis, how do we re-value what care means for all living beings?”

Multispecies Care Circle – Keep Lungs Active is the first of a series of care circles hosted as part of the Multispecies Care Survey. Participants are invited to engage with “Protocol 03: Keep Lungs Active,” a prompt to experience air quality and exchange with other life forms. Hosted in collaboration with Interference Archive and invited guest Nora Almeida, this care circle will explore EPA’s new participatory project through the lens of archiving multispecies environmental attunement and the correlation to environmental rollbacks instituted during the pandemic.  

We invite participants to try out the Keep Lungs Active Protocol prior to the Care Circle and bring along any notes or reflections. 

EPA’s Multispecies Care Survey was launched April 20th, 2020, as part of Regeneration in Place, a program by Old Stone House. 

The Environmental Performance Agency (EPA) is an artist collective founded in 2017 and named in response to the ongoing rollback of Federal environmental policy at 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 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 spontaneous urban plants.

Nora Almeida is a writer, librarian, and environmental / labor activist. She’s has volunteered at Interference Archive since 2015 and works at the New York City College of Technology (CUNY).