About
How it works
Welcome to the Multispecies Care Survey.
Participate by completing any number of the protocols* presented on this website and contributing to a collective dataset of the multispecies communities we inhabit.
*Each protocol is a series of prompts for noticing and engaging with multispecies communities through your window, while social distancing during the Covid19 pandemic.
At the end of each protocol you will find an opportunity to learn more about recent U.S. EPA policy rollbacks and how to take further action to advocate for environmental policy that protects and values all life.
Over the next few months we will continue to upload new protocols inviting you to engage more deeply, and we invite you to come check back in!
About
The Environmental Performance Agency’s Multispecies Care Survey is a public engagement and data gathering initiative meant to provoke and articulate forms of environmental agency that de-center human supremacy and facilitate the co-generation of embodied, localized plant-human care practices. This continues the EPA’s work in response to the dismantling of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the 2016-2020 presidential administration.
With this project, the collective asks for public input: In a time of pandemic crisis, how do we re-value what care means for all living beings? An online survey and series of protocols, as well as facilitated Multispecies Community Care Circles, will integrate the need for social distancing with the encouragement of new discoveries, connections and understanding of diverse nonhuman life along the margins. With the data gathered through this survey, EPA will ultimately work towards drafting a new piece of policy, The Multispecies Act. This Act aims to offer a set of embodied, actionable principles for centering spontaneous urban plant life as one means (among many) of contending with the failure of our environmental regulatory apparatus to deliver policy that protects and values life both human and non-human.
The Environmental Performance Agency (EPA) is an artist collective founded in 2017 and named in response to the ongoing rollback of Federal environmental policy at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Appropriating the acronym EPA, the collective’s primary goal is to shift thinking around the terms environment, performance, and agency – using artistic, social, and embodied practices to advocate for the agency of all living performers co-creating our environment, specifically through the lens of spontaneous urban plants, native or migrant. Current EPA Agents include Catherine Grau, andrea haenggi, Ellie Irons, Christopher Kennedy, and spontaneous urban plants. Learn more…
Image Rights
In order to participate, we ask you to upload photos, audio files, and a number of creative responses. Your uploads will be processed by us (humans) before appearing on the website. It may take a bit of time before your contribution appears on the website.
Support
Support provided in part by The Old Stone House, New York State Council on the Arts, Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, and NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. Special thanks to Dan Phiffer for web design and development, and to Wave Hill for supporting the development of this effort.
