I’ve always gravitated towards nature and ecology and plants most of all. Whether its ambling along the edge of wilderness in Colorado or just a romp through a botanical garden, I greatly enjoy the company of fresh, greenness.  Unfortunately, we don’t get much of that here in Brooklyn which is ok because there’s still plenty of interesting wildlife, detritus and epiphytes of other sorts. In many ways, this urban setting has become our new “natural” as we recognize that Nature is a human made construction.  Our physical landscape has inevitably begun to mimic our digital ecosystem somewhere along a superimposed horizon where they collide into a Blade Runner-esque scape. Timothy Morton’s, Ecology Without Nature, outlines this paradox where he proposes:

a ecological criticism must be divested of the bifurcation of nature and civilization, or the idea that nature exists as something that sustains civilization, but exists outside of society’s walls.

To have a properly ecological view, we must relinquish the idea of nature once and for all or in the words of Graham Harman, Nature is not natural and can never be naturalized. This notion is a fascinating new lens in which to view our environment. As the Earth’s ecosystems interweave with the modern built environment, into what geologists have begun calling the Anthropocene, we seem left with a new, post-natural topography lush and competing for space and resources in an invisible landscape of wifi networks, EM waves, artificial microclimates and junkspace pocket gardens.  Technology becomes the primary means of interfacing and interacting with our environments and co-inhabitants.

Living in an industrial zone, I was curious to fashion my own ambient poetics and dusted off my old reciepe for moss milkshake to “grow” some living graffiti aka moss graffiti. The results were favorable and since true mosses lack a vascular system or roots (they have rhizoids which do not abosrb water or nutrients but instead serve to anchor to a substrate), moss can be safely blended without harm to them. In fact, a moss milk shake (while it may sound tasty) is a special blend of moss, water, some beer for mild acidity and water retention gel to create a living paste that grows on walls or other hard surfaces. Taking inspiration from artists like Anna Garforth, [Space] Invader and even Knitta Please, I laser cut some stencils and off I went to reactivate urban space. Its up to others to decide if the results are a hybrid of urban gardening, arts activism or as the cops that stopped me struggled to accuse me of… vandalism.