Kinship Project and Staying With the Trouble Symposium

Cork, Ireland

KinShip is a long-term public artwork, developing a variety of public activities at Tramore Valley Park in Cork, 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 KinShip art project offers artists and interested communities an opportunity to gather, and to respond creatively and critically to the ecological and climate action challenges. 

‘Kinship’ as an approach to addressing climate action is a concept borrowed from feminist scholar and theorist Donna Haraway. It recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and acknowledges the complex relationships and networks that exist within ecosystems. Kinship in art practice emphasises the perspective that humans are not dominant over, or separate from other living entities, but that we co-exist interdependently within a complex ecology. 

Haraway also emphasises the need to confront the reality of damaged places (such as Tramore Valley Park), acknowledging that many environments have already been irreversibly transformed due to human activities. Rather than turning away from these places or seeing them as lost causes, she argues for an ethics of response and response-ability. She urges us to grapple with the entangled histories and ongoing consequences of environmental damage and to act within these contexts. KinShip organised a curated exhibition of creative works, Tentacular Thinking, carried out over 18 months in Tramore Valley Park, Cork. 

‘Tentacular Thinking’ was inspired by the term coined by Haraway, and refers to a way of thinking that embraces the interconnectedness and complexity of the world. Tentacular thinking encourages all of us to move beyond rigid boundaries and pre-existing hierarchical structures, instead embracing networks of connections and interdependencies. 

Staying With The Trouble Symposium 

An accompanying symposium showcased underlined the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and the input of diverse forms of knowledge in addressing rights of nature and climate action. By embrac- ing multiple perspectives and ways of knowing, the symposium remained engaged with the complexities of the issues at hand when confronting environmental degradation. The opportunity to bring the Exhibition and Symposium together was made possible by the Munster Technological University Arts Office, under the Create La Ceile fund. 

The KinShip Project led by artists LennonTaylor is created in partnership with Cork City Council and a large community of collaborators and contributors, it is supported by the Creative Ireland, Creative Climate Action Fund. 

Website: https://www.lennontaylor.ie/whats-on/midden-chronicles-kinship-tentacular-thinking-exhibition-and-one-day-symposium-staying-with-the-trouble 

Keywords: Public art, ecofeminist thought, ‘staying with the trouble’, Haraway, kinship, Tentacular Thinking, Rights of Nature, Climate Action, landfill 

Links to Wellbeing Economy: Kinship, interdisciplinarity, climate action, rights of nature, public art, intrinsic value of all living things, and multiple ways of knowing.