Slumber Underground: an Interspecies Burrow

In 2017 I was invited to join a radically collaborative group of artists and scientists who create artwork together called Omnibus Filing and received a sub-award from the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative. "Slumber Underground: an Interspecies Burrow" is a model of a groundhog burrow I scaled up so people can crawl inside to encourage empathy with nature. I studied existing burrows with Ground Penetrating Radar and Arthroscopic cameras, then wove my version out of rattan and found materials. Next, I took soil samples that Rachel Field, a Ph.D. candidate in Biomechanical Engineering, analyzed in her lab at Columbia University. Finally, I lined the inside of my burrow with felt sculptures of the bacteria. Children created games and tossed the bacteria sculptures around during the opening. The piece is ultimately about stacked habitats and the creatures who live around, under, and inside us.