The speculative-fiction work, Kishkindha NY, now on show at Palazzo Bembo, reimagines New York as a multi-species ‘forest-city’. It is not a ‘design proposal’ but an ‘epic. It is intended to provoke a radical reimagining, a conversation on how we live on our planet as a response to the climate emergency. Its inspirations are indigenous, global and post-human. The agent of change is a sci-fi inspired ‘beastie’ that is part mechanical and part fungus/octopus.

Today we walk and drive. In Kishkindha NY, they say, we will all dance. Today’s performance enacts this transformation.

ACT ONE: UMBRA. We begin by observing the death of the contemporary city, the end of the ancient imaginary as the locus of civilization.

ACT TWO: DNA molecules disintegrate and recombine to form a new interspecies. We see octopus, mushrooms and tree roots. The ‘beastie’ is created.

ACT THREE: Above ground, the ‘beastie’ transforms the city. Spores are released. It destroys and rebuilds. The old city metabolizes into the forest city. Human consciousness, locked into momentarily, rewires.

ACT FOUR: BALANDO. We can no longer walk. We can only dance. Moving in curves, tangents, and parabolas, we leave our homes and gather in the forest-street for joyous reaffirmation of life. The epic has begun.