The Gowanus Canal of Brooklyn, NY is considered a forsaken environment from a human perspective: the Superfund remediation plan is to dredge and cap with concrete. From 2013 until present our studies have shown the canal environment to be a thriving microbial ecosystem, with lifeforms evolved to inhabit industrial ruins with embodied metabolic information relevant to future cleanups. At a time where human disturbance is a geological force, our results further suggest we should redefine our relationships with lifeforms we live amongst, with a responsibility for stewardship and reciprocity. These microscopic neighbors not only serve as a genetic catalog of bioremediation functions, but open our imagination to new modes of what theorist Anna Tsing calls “collaborative survival” – of ways to live together on a planet modified by our civilization’s byproducts.

Join in person in the Yestermorrow main studio or remotely via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84227672054
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Ian is the director of Fruit Studio, a design practice exploring the intentional ecology in constructed environments in far-fetched and longterm fashion. Ian earned his master of landscape architecture from RISD in 2011, and has worked in design, fabrication and horticulture in NYC, PA, NC and Australia.