I was invited to present as part of the Art and the Environment Talk Series. A collaboration between the Ross Art Museum and the Department of Environment & Sustainability. This series includes artists, activists, and scholars and their efforts to confront and change the world around them for the better. All talks are free and open to the public.

The museum also has some fantastic related exhibitions as well: Our Changing Landscape: Life in the Anthropocene and Michelle Stitzlein: Demarcations and Delineations.

The full list of speakers in this year’s Art and the Environment Talk Series:

2/10 (Tues) 6:30pm  John Sabraw – Toxic Colors John Sabraw is an artist, activist, and professor at Ohio University. His work marries environmental cleanups, chemistry, and art into a cohesive whole. He uses the iron oxide in mine runoff to make paint pigments. He has recently collaborated with Gamblin oil paints, to make the “Reclaimed Earth Colors” paint set. 

2/24 (Tues) 6:30pm  Laura Ann Bergman – Regenerative Farming and Social Justice Laura Ann Bergman has been the farm liaison for Seminary Hill Farm since 2022. Laura Ann has spent her whole life growing food in Ohio. Seminary Hill Farm is part of Methodist Theological School in Ohio which works in pursuit of a just, sustainable and generative world.

3/3 (Tues) 6:30pm Jarod Anderson – Strange Naturalist Jarod Anderson is a nature writer, podcaster, and poet who has just published his fifth book Strange Animals which is also his fiction debut. His work revolves around a deep appreciation for the natural world, mental health and the healing power of nature. 

3/17 (Tues) 6:30pm Emma Kline – Living Art and Cross-disciplinary Work Emma Kline is the Lab Specialist for the Living Art and Ecology Lab at OSU. LAEL’s purpose is to create a space that fosters cross-disciplinary collaborations and invites students to engage with their local environment through artistic practices. 

BONUS! 3/18 (Wed) 4:15pm Lesley Wheeler – Mycocosmic Poetry Reading Lesley Wheeler is a poet, literary scholar and professor at Washington and Lee University. Her latest book of poetry, Mycocosmic, deals with navigating personal and planetary loss and regrowth following the example of mushrooms that flourish after forest fires.

3/24 (Tues) 6:30pm Amy Youngs – Art, Technology, and the Natural World Amy Youngs’ work is a blend of eco art, interactive sculptures, digital media, and technology into installation and interactive pieces. Young works as an artist and professor at OSU teaching both art and science and the confluence of the two. 

4/14 (Tues) 6:30pm Eve Warnock – Collaborative Art and Invasive Species – Eve Warnock is the founding artist of OBLSK, a creative group of artists, inventors and designers that create interactive installations. Her latest work has been a collaboration with the Columbus Parks and Recreation to use removed invasive plants in environmental sculptures for Columbus Arborfest.

4/21 (Tues) 6:30pm Carolina C. Barbosa – Open Data and Open Science Dr. Carolina C. Barbosa is a faculty member in OWU’s Department of Environment & Sustainability and has been advocating for open science practices through her work with the grassroot networks DSOS (Data Science and Open Science in Aquatic Research) and GLEON (Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network)

An event for people to drink tea and consider what we can learn from the billions of soil organisms who co-create the healthy conditions for plants to grow in – and in turn, nourish us. Tea is a plant, after all. After drinking, we fed our used teabags and paper cups back into the wormbin ecosystem. While it might seem strange to have tea with worms, springtails, mites, and billions of microscopic organisms, we are always having tea with them.

We discussed what we can learn from worm bin ecosystems. For instance, they show us the undigestable microplastics hidden in teabags – and they show us how our food and paper waste can be turned into valuable nutrients for gardens and indoor plants. Worm composting does not create unpleasant odors and does not produce methane, a greenhouse gas which is generated by food waste that rots in landfills.

For this event, we drank loose-leaf tea scooped into strainers or into small paper pouches. I’ve learned from the worms that some commercial tea bags are made of plastic, even those that really look like paper. Worms can’t eat it, soil doesn’t need it, and studies show that plants take microplastics up into their bodies. This is a problem for them and for animals like us, who eat plants.

Thousands of composting worms and arthropods and billions of microbes live inside this worm-shaped wagon. They are making rich compost from waste generated from my home, such as cardboard, wilted lettuce, banana peels, apple cores, dead plants, tea bags and used coffee grounds. This composting ecosystem includes a colony of red-wiggler worms (Eisenia Fetida), who have lived with me for thirty years. We have shared many meals. The fertilizer they make is fed to my houseplants, herbs, tomato plants, and lettuces. To publicly celebrate soil critters, I have mobilized my worm bin onto a wagon. Worms do their business in the dark; they do not announce to us that they offer solutions to climate change and they do not speak about their important role in circulating nutrients and healthy microbes in soils. I’m sharing this on their behalf because I hope other households will develop regenerative relationships with composting worms. Sharing nutrients with household worm ecosystem is a slow, steady way to reconnect one’s sense of self within the larger web of life.

The recycling of old into new is also how I approached making Mobile Soil Maker, this “Worm Wagon” ecosystem sculpture. I made it from the remnants of an old artwork, rather than using all new materials. You can see the original installation from 2004, Intraterrestrial Soundings.

Credits:

Fungal Entanglement artists: Anna Arbogast, Madison Blue, Alex Buchan, Xiuer Gu, Elias Marquez, Jiara Sha, Doo-sung Yoo, and Amy Youngs.

In a Hotter House exhibition curated by Doo-sung Yoo and Amy Youngs

Artists: Skylar Albright, Anna Arbogast, Marcia Armstrong, Madison Blue, Alex Buchan, Madalyn Bunjevac, Al Dilorenzo, John Cairns, Ben Chang, Megan Fabro, Andie Goodes, Taylor Green, Xiuer Gu, Brennan Jones, Olga Kisseleva and Lilia Chak, Eric Homan, Bethany Marple, Elias Marquez, Andrew Mehall, Caroline Mosholder, Zoe November, Ivan David Ng, Takahiro Okubo, Dev Patel, Noor Quadri, Bakhahang Rai, Mural Remix, Jonathan Riles, Ken Rinaldo, CG Ryan, Bella Saraceni, Lily Schumacher, Sabrina Sedlacko, Jiara Sha, Avery Stratman, Kaika Wakabayashi, Thomas Winningham, Andrew Wood, Uriah Wright, Doosung Yoo, Amy Youngs, Barry Yuan, and Danny Zhang.

Video: Jordan Sommerlad

Photography: Dev Patel and Amy Youngs

Music: “Aurora”, by Anemoia. creative commons license cc by-nc-sa

Project support: The Ohio State University’s Humanities Institute, the Living Art and Ecology Lab of the Department of Art, the Biological Sciences Greenhouse, and the Department of Molecular Genetics.

Special thanks to the Costume Shop in the Department of Theatre, Film, Media Arts at the Ohio State University for sharing their fabric scraps with us!

We also took the Fungal Entanglement performance to New York City in 2024 for the Art in Odd Places festival.

Insect as Idea Panel Discussion

Join us for a panel discussion hosted on Zoom in partnership with the Zoological Collections, Department of Biology, Western University, on Thursday May 12 at 5:30 p.m. EST.

In conversation with exhibition curators Dr. Helen Gregory and Dr. Nina Zitani, participating artists Catherine Chalmers, Andrea Cooper, Aganetha Dyck, Jude Griebel, and Amy Youngs will discuss how their practices have been influenced by environmental issues and multispecies ecologies.

Register here

The exhibition Insect as Idea runs from April 28 to June 18 at McIntosh Gallery, Western University. For more information, visit https://mcintoshgallery.ca/.

“Augmented and virtual reality have become commonplace. The Augmented Senses: Feminist Queer Augmented/Virtual Reality virtual symposium highlights experimental and creative approaches to enhanced immersive experiences. Focusing on gender, trans, and feminist themes around the body, desire, biological art, and our microbial environment, three contemporary artists will present their work: micha cárdenas, Eva Davidova, and Amy M. Youngs.”

– More on the Feminist Queer Augmented and Virtual Realities symposium site.

This was programming put on by the CURTIS R. PRIEM EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA AND PERFORMING ARTS CENTER at Rensselaer

The public can visit the gallery at 1740 Broadway St. Tuesday through Friday from 11AM to 5PM, and Saturdays from 1PM to 5PM. August 6 – September 14, 2021. Or listen to our interview together.

In Tiahue Tocha (let’s go home) Colectivo Rasquache continues its project of engaging with transborder reality through material and social invention, this time with particular attention to brickmaking as a homage and timeline of Coapan. As construction methods in Mexico have evolved, brick-making, which, along with farming, was the primary occupation of many from Coapan who have since migrated to the US, gave way to cement block. Cement blocks are not made from local materials unlike red bricks or adobe bricks. For our installation at Visible Records, the red clay of Virginia provides fresh material for old ways of making as we ask:

• What new things are built when we are apart?  
• What opportunities arise out of absence or restriction? 
• What possibilities might make themselves known that otherwise would never have been?
• How do we share them?
• What happens when nostalgia gives way to futurity?

The workshop I did with Ken Rinaldo was called “Unmaking with Worms”. Participants built mini sculptures and placed them into a baby bassinet where composting worms live. Our building materials were food and paper waste; egg cartons and discarded vegetables sourced from the compost pile of a nearby community garden. During the workshop, we explored how worm ecosystems “unmake” waste matter and “remake” it into fertile compost.

During the run of the exhibition, a time-lapse camera is capturing the transformation of the sculptures. Looking forward to seeing the worms work!

Join us for a conversation with Amy M. Youngs and Russ Corbett-Detig to discuss their approaches to interpreting data, moderated by Isabel Bjork, Executive Director of the Genomics Institute. 

This happened on Wed, Apr 14, 2021, but since it was an online event, a recording is available.

Amy M. Youngs creates ecological and digital artworks that explore interdependencies between technology, plants and animals. Her practice involves entanglements with the non-human, constructing ecosystems, and seeing through the eyes of machines. She exhibits nationally and internationally at venues such as the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, and the public parks in New York City. She is an Associate Professor at the Ohio State University where she coordinates the Art & Technology area in the Department of Art, leads interdisciplinary grant projects, and teaches courses in digital art, eco art, and art – science.

Russ Corbett-Detig is an assistant professor in the Biomolecular Engineering Department and an affiliate of the Genomics Institute at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His team conducts research on a wide range of questions in computational and evolutionary genomics. Russ received his PhD from Harvard University where he worked with Dan Hartl and he did his postdoctoral studies in Rasmus Nielsen’s group at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Sesnon Speak Up Series aims to provide a safe space for students and the UC Santa Cruz community to engage with critical ideas generated from our programmed exhibitions. This event is scheduled in conjunction with the virtual exhibition, What Makes Us Human: An Art + Genomics Convergence.

The Society of Fellows Digital Dialogues series brings together artists, scholars and activists working in a range of disciplines aligning with our current theme of Human Rights: Pasts and Futures. Areas of expertise include studies in art, performance and activism; critical human rights; disability; incarceration; Indigeneity; environmental justice; intersectional rhetorics; migrant and refugee rights; race and citizenship; and sexuality, among others.

Dialogue four considers the challenges that the Anthropocene epoch poses to human and non-human life and the potential of cultural practices and newly imagined ethical concepts for addressing these challenges. Panelists discuss how aesthetic and cultural practices generate attachments to the places we inhabit, and how posthuman renderings, such as augmented reality applications, encourage embodied experiences that connect humans empathetically with the biodiversity of seen and unseen worlds. Additionally, the panel will address questions of cultural inheritance, environmental justice, and the dangers of living under carceral rule. 

Presenters

• Tommy Davis (Associate Professor, Department of English, Ohio State)
• Tristam McPherson (Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Ohio State)
• Elissa Washuta (Assistant Professor, Department of English, Ohio State)
• Amy Youngs (Associate Professor, Department of Art, Ohio State)

Moderator

• Michael Mercil (Professor, Department of Art, Ohio State)

This is in Madrid, Spain, but actually happening online, since we can’t all go to Madrid now. One of the pandemic positives is that the organizers have made it FREE – no conference fees. Just sign up here.

I’m thrilled to be included among such a great line up of speakers of artists and scientists; many I know and others I’m looking forward to knowing. JENNIFER PARKER, JORGE FERNÁNDEZ, GAIA BINDI, SAM DUPONT, NADJEJDA ESPINEL-VELASCO, GENE FELICE II, DAVID HARRIS, JUNIPER HARROWER, TRINIDAD IRISARRI, and CLAUDIO JOSÉ MAGALHAES. Check out the conference program. Thank you to JOSE CARLOS ESPINEL VELASCO for inviting me and for co-organizing this inaugural event.

I’ll be presenting a talk called: Softening Boundaries – Practicing Humility. It is on Tuesday, December 15 at 12:15pm EST. 18:15 Madrid time. Wish me luck!

Acquired immunity displays artworks arising from our residencies and invited artists. We bring together artworks that were created as a response to challenges from the local environment: natural, social, and other artists. A response that we compare to the way the immune system responds to new challenges.

Marta de Menezes, curator

More about the show, events, and the Mozilla Hubs link are over on the Ars Electronica page.