1 November: ALTER ECO Hybrid Talk: Evgenia Emets in Conversation with Jamie Phillips and John Davis
Hybrid Talk: Friday, November 1, 2024 // 14:00 p.m. – 16:00 p.m. EST / 18:00 – 20:00 GMT
Click to Register / Or Join Us at the Arsenal Gallery for a Live-Streaming of the Talk!
The Arsenal Gallery, Central Park
830 Fifth Ave. at 64th Street, Third Floor
Monday–Friday, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Closed holidays // Free admission
NYC Parks is pleased to present this virtual talk led by artist Evgenia Emets. Emets is featured in the group exhibition ALTER ECO, currently on view at the Arsenal Gallery, and will discuss the intersection of art, environment, and care with fellow stewards engaging in reforestation and conservation practices. A video featuring Jean Brennan, artist and founder of the Split Rock Arts residency, will also be screened during this talk!
Evgenia Emets is an artist, poet, and founder of Eternal Forest. Emets works with forest ecology and community creating visual art, films, artist’s books, forest art trails and large-scale ecological artworks in the form of forest sanctuaries. Currently, Evgenia is leading Eternal Forest creating a network of 1,000 forest sanctuaries to be protected for 1,000 years through art and community – growing into a global organization in collaboration with artists, scientists, cultural agents, tree-planting organizations, and land partners.
Jamie Phillips is a successful photographer and Executive Director of the Eddy Foundation, which focuses on wildlands preservation, organic agriculture, and biodiversity preservation. For over 20 years Jamie has been passionately leading investment into conservation to create and protect the Wildway corridors in the Champlain area in New York State, in Southern California and other places in the world.
John Davis serves as rewilding advocate for the Adirondack Council and as executive director of The Rewilding Institute. He volunteers as a land steward for the Eddy Foundation in Split Rock Wildway – a wildlife corridor linking the Champlain Valley with the Adirondack High Peaks, in northern New York. He is also a volunteer gravedigger at Spirit Sanctuary conservation burial ground (where he has dug his own grave, literally and figuratively).
https://rewilding.org/author/john-davis
6 November: Conversation with the Artists of ALTER ECO – in person only
Artists Conversation
Wednesday, November 6, 2024 // 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. EST
The Arsenal Gallery, Central Park
830 Fifth Ave. at 64th Street, Third Floor
Monday–Friday, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Closed holidays // Free admission
Featured Artists: Edrex Fontanilla, Emma Gasterland Gustafsson, Evgenia Emets, Julia Oldham, and Sarah Nelson Wright
Join NYC Parks in conversation with the artists of ALTER ECO, a group exhibition featuring artists who evoke alternate environmental realities and perspectives to encourage stewardship. Don’t miss your last chance to experience this exhibition and learn more about the artists behind the work!
Artists featured in this exhibition tackle one of the great issues facing climate activists: inspiring care beyond one’s lifetime. Works in this exhibition help facilitate an alternate experience of our environment, allowing for deeper connections across space and time.
The interactive work Tomorrow’s Sea, (2024) by Edrex Fontanilla and Sarah Nelson Wright, creates a virtual reality “empathy machine” to foster connections between viewers and locations that are endangered by sea level rise. The scent-based work, A Garden with No Flowers, (2023) by Emma Gasterland Gustafsson, offers a glimpse into a far-off future devoid of all organic matter, where scientists attempt to resurrect the sense—and scents—of relaxation that ancient populations experienced when convening in community gardens.
Evgenia Emets‘ Eternal Forest project establishes forest sanctuaries as artwork to be protected. Emets’ text-based works help us grasp the time scale of an old-growth forest, sending us backwards and forward 1000 years. In the Undiscovered City, (2019) series, Julia Oldham presents collaged futures for New York City sites inspired by interviews she conducted with local environmental stewards. Oldham’s narrative video, Dendrostalkers, (2022) imagines a world in which trees have evolved to transcend the three-dimensional world to escape destruction by humans.
This event is FREE and open to the public. For more information, visit nyc.gov/parks/art
Alter Eco, Arsenal, September 13– November 7, New York City, USA
EXHIBITION ALTER ECO at the Arsenal Gallery
NYC Parks presents the group exhibition ALTER ECO, featuring artists envisioning alternate realities to inspire environmental care.
Using research, technology, and invention, these artists tackle one of the greatest issues facing climate activists: making people care beyond their lifetime. Works in this exhibition help facilitate an alternate experience of our environment, allowing for deeper connection across space and time.
The interactive work Tomorrow’s Sea, (2024)by Edrex Fontanilla and Sarah Nelson Wright, creates a virtual reality ’empathy machine’ to foster connections between viewers and locations that are endangered by sea level rise. The scent-based work, a Garden with No Flowers, (2023) by Emma Gasterland Gustafsson, offers a glimpse into a far-off future devoid of all organic matter, where scientists attempt to resurrect the sense (and scents) of relaxation that ancient populations experienced when convening in community gardens.
Evgenia Emets’ Eternal Forest project establishes forest sanctuaries as artworks for their protection. Emets’ text-based works help us grasp the time scale of an old growth forest sending us backward and forward 1000 years. In the Undiscovered City, (2019) series, Julia Oldham presents collaged futures for NYC sites inspired by interviews she conducted with NYC environmental stewards. At the same time, Oldham’s narrative video, Dendrostalkers, (2022), imagines a world in which trees have evolved to transcend the three-dimensional world to escape destruction by humans.
This exhibition is FREE and open to the public. For more information, visit nyc.gov/parks/art.
The Arsenal Gallery, Central Park, Fifth Ave. & 64th St., 3rd Floor, Manhattan, NYC
Arsenal in Central Park, 830 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan
Recent Events:
Eternal Forest at the art residency at Split Rock Arts, 5-29 July, Adirondacks Forest, USA
Evgenia Emets and Eterna Forest Global has joined an art residency at Split Rock Arts near Essex, NY, – in the magnificent forests of Adirondacks Park, focusing on learning about the conservation efforts in the area. In collaboration with artist Jean Brennan.
We will host forest experiences, create artistic interpretations of a trail within the Wildway Corridor, and connect to the local community of human and more-than-human. Eternal Forest is on a learning mission to create contemporary conversations in support of old-growth forests for future generations.
This work is realized with the support and participation of the host organization, Split Rock Arts, in collaboration with the Eddy Foundation and the Whallonsburg Grange, and inspired by the work of the Old-Growth Forest Network. Thank you to Champlain Area Trails and Spirit Sanctuary for your support and for giving us access to create an artistic-poetic interpretation of forever wild places!
This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts.
Art experience and walk
International Day of Fascination with Plants
18 May Porto
On May 18th, the International Museum Day is celebrated and, as usual, ping! and Galeria Municipal do Porto also celebrate the International Fascination of Plants Day. This year, the artist Evgenja Emets will guide a Walk through the Gardens as a result of a short residency that she developed in the Gardens of Palácio de Cristal.
Based on the Eternal Forest project, focused on careful research into the connection between communities and the forest and the urgency of reflecting on these relationships, which are often based on extractive logic, the artist will show us the species of trees that exist here and propose a collective experience of writing from what the plants tell us, while establishing relationships and stories behind each one of them.
This walk will be held in Portuguese language. Participation in this walk is free and limited to capacity. To register, you can do so via this email [email protected] Participation in this program is free.
Eternal Forest at the Gathering of Tribes, 11-15 September, Portugal
You are warmly invited to create an Eternal Forest Camp with us at the Gathering of Tribes, a 5-day curated event bringing together regenerative initiatives from around the world to ally for impact, in the lush highlands of north Portugal.
Eternal Forest is creating 1,000 forest sanctuaries through art and community to be protected beyond 1,000 years.
Eternal Forest camp invites us to go deep into what it means to live with Eternal Forest – how to create a life connected with nature, art and community. To answer the question: How do we manifest the first Eternal Forest sanctuaries?
Our generation’s planting and protection of forests is the start, however, how do we build a culture of vast intergenerational, lasting succession, a tree culture that transcends human lifetimes, a legacy for all future generations?
Eternal Forest programme, 2024
Estufa Fria and Monsanto Forest Park
Eternal Forest’s programme for the Spring/Summer of 2023 titled Forest Time – a multidisciplinary art project, taking place in Estufa Fria and Monsanto Forest Park, supported by Câmara Municipal Lisboa, in collaboration with scientific partners – cE3c (Centro de Ecologia, Evolução e Alterações Ambientais da Universidade de Lisboa) and CRIA (Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia).
Forest Time programme launched in May and June 2023 and included two art exhibitions, immersive art experiences, art trails in the forest and reflection sessions, a book publication with contributions from scientists and thinkers from various backgrounds on the subject of biodiverse natural forest creation and protection, with the aim of raising awareness about the protection of nature, reaching participants ranging from the general public to a multidisciplinary circle of specialists and the art public.
The first series of events of Forest Time already took place in November 2022 in Monsanto Forest park and impressions can be seen HERE