The KinShip art project is led by artist collaboration LennonTaylor (Marilyn Lennon and Sean Taylor) in partnership with Cork City Council. Local partners have formed a working group that includes Cork Healthy Cities, Cork Nature Network, Green Spaces for Health, MTU Clean Technology Centre, UCC Environmental Research Institute.
KinShip is a long term public artwork, developing a variety of socially engaged cultural initiatives at Tramore Valley Park, starting in 2022. Tramore Valley Park has been the site of great environmental change. From 1964 to 2009, this site was used as a landfill for Cork city. The area first opened up as a park in 2015 before fully opening to the public in 2019. The public park is home to
KinShip art offers artists and interested communities an opportunity to gather together and to respond creatively and critically to the ecological and climate action challenges we face today.
At the opening address of the recent KinShip Symposium Staying With the Trouble at the Munster Technological University, LennonTaylor introduced the KinShip project by asking 'what is the role of art in climate change...
'The public park is managed by Cork City Council, and it has been their mission to oversee the closure of the landfill, its remediation and the engineering of a new ‘natural’ habitat there. Ecology writer Emma Marris challenges traditional notions of what is considered "natural" and questions the idea that pristine wilderness areas are the only places worthy of conservation efforts. She argues that many ecosystems are already altered by human activities, advocating for biodiversity conservation in every possible place from toxic brownfield sites to small corners of concrete filled cities. We need every small scrap of land to build viable ecosystems and preserve them for future generations. What is the role of art in climate change? We know that there is no single answer to the question of what art should do under the looming shadow of the climate crises. What is clear is that the old stories of modernity that sustained us in the world are becoming obsolete. For Tramore Valley Park we need new stories, beyond the human centric, we need multispecies stories that will assist us in truly knowing and being in the world. Venessa Machado de Olivera in her book, ‘Hospicing Modernity’ makes a distinction between ‘problems’ on the one hand -things that can actually or potentially be fixed and on the other hand, 'predicaments’ , which she says are things that must constantly be dealt with on an ongoing basis, but they won't be solved, and they won't go away. Artist inquiry isn't about finding easy explanations or solutions, it's about an ongoing endeavour to work with, to stay with, the trouble of climate change. Making KinShip understands that we are in a space of predicaments that need to be confronted, not problem solving. De Olivera wraps this approach in a beautiful metaphor, she tells a story…. in a flood situation, when the water is up to our ankles or knees, it is still is possible to walk or wade, however when the water reaches our hips then it becomes possible for us to swim, in other words we may only learn to swim or act differently once we have no other choice. This points to an experiential knowledge that artists can employ. There is a big difference between knowledge of climate change and knowing about climate change. This afternoon our presenters, LoveOur Ouse, will introduce the creative and activist work that their community has undertaken with River Ouse. As a community they have learned how to knowabout climate change from within their experience of being with River. Knowledge can often be what we hold out thereat arms-length, this may be the result of the enormous wealth of scientific knowledge and the trust that we place in it. ‘Knowing climate change is what happens when that distance between knowledge and encounter collapses, when we are faced with it, through lived experience. We must call on all disciplines, forms of knowledge and bearers of knowledge to work together. How do we, “stay with the trouble” when staying with the trouble requires “making odd-kin”, that is, we require each other to engage in unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles. We become “with each other or not at all”, as Haraway would put it. '
More from the KinShip Symposium here
The overall aim of the art project is to foster a deeper sense of connection between the people of Cork and the park as a habitat and ecosystem. Situated on a remediated city landfill, the project honours the need to confront the reality of damaged places, such as Tramore Valley Park, recognising that many environments are irreversibly transformed due to human activities. As part of this work we grapple with the entangled histories and ongoing consequences of environmental damage, coming together to take action within this context. KinShip is a space to consider our relationship to public land, the interrelationship we have with all species of the natural world, to address the legacy of ‘throw away’ culture, to engage with new modes of managing waste and to develop an ethics of response and 'response-ability'. To achieve this, there is an ongoing creative programme of citizen-led skills and knowledge based exchanges, artist's placements, the construction of a KinShip EcoLab based on sustainable construction methods, and a focused series of creative interventions in the park.
https://www.lennontaylor.ie/kinship
