Welcome to The Last Stand podcast, a mini-series on the social life of forests, reparative land management, and just climate futures on the occasion of Creative Time’s newest public art commission, Kamala Sankaram’s experimental opera of the same name. 

Expanding over five parts and ten hours, Sankaram’s The Last Stand invites us into 300 years of sonic history told entirely through field recordings. As the years unfold, the human impact on the forest becomes visceral: species disappear, storms intensify, and the drone of highways and planes becomes constant. At the heart of The Last Stand is the fundamental truth that our planetary survival depends on collaboration with our natural neighbors. 

The Last Stand runs from Thursdays to Sundays starting at 8am through 6pm from September 18 – October 10, 2021 in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Creative Time projects are free and open to the public. No tickets or advance registration is required. 

Visit creativetime.org for more information. 

The Last Stand podcast series is produced by Patrick Smith. The music for the podcast is excerpted from The Last Stand by Kamala Sankaram. 

EPISODE ONE - Sounds of the Forest

This episode features a conversation between Kamala Sankaram, artist and composer of The Last Stand and the world’s leading forest ecologist Dr. Suzanne Simard. In part two, evolutionary ecologist and ecoacoustics expert Dr. Monica Gagliano and musicologist Frank J. Oteri discuss the sonic relationship between plants and musicians.

GUESTS: 

Kamala Sankaram is a composer and performer whose work moves freely between the worlds of experimental music and contemporary opera. Sankaram is the recipient of many awards, grants, and residencies, some of which include Jonathan Larson Award, NEA ArtWorks, MAP Fund, Opera America, HERE Artist Residency Program, the MacDowell Colony, and the Watermill Center. Other projects include The Parksville Murders, the world’s first virtual reality opera and recent commissions include works for the Glimmerglass Festival, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, the PROTOTYPE Festival, and Shakespeare Theatre Company.

Suzanne Simard is a Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia and the author of the book, Finding the Mother Tree. She is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence. Suzanne is known for her work on how trees interact and communicate using below-ground fungal networks, which has led to the recognition that forests have hub trees, or Mother Trees, which are large, highly connected trees that play an important role in the flow of information and resources in a forest.

Monica Gagliano's research aims at expanding our perception of animals, plants and more generally Nature. In the process of learning how to do this, Gagliano has pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics and extended the concept of cognition to plants, re-igniting the discourse on plant subjectivity, sentience and ethical standing. Gagliano is a Research Associate Professor in Evolutionary Ecology at the Biological Intelligence (BI) Lab, Southern Cross University, a Research Associate Professor (Adjunct) at the University of Western Australia & a Research Affiliate at the Sydney Environment Institute, University of Sydney. 

Frank J. Oteri is the composer advocate at New Music USA and the editor of NewMusicBox, which has been online since May 1999. An outspoken crusader for new music and the breaking down of barriers between genres, Frank has written for numerous publications and has also been a frequent radio guest and pre-concert speaker. Frank is also the vice president of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and a board member of the International Association of Music Information Centers (IAMIC). Frank holds a B.A. and a M.A. (in Ethnomusicology) from Columbia University where he served as Classical Music Director and World Music Director for WKCR-FM.

Episode One — Sounds of the Forest

Welcome to The Last Stand podcast, a mini-series on the social life of forests, reparative land management, and just climate futures on the occasion of Creative Time’s newest public art commission, Kamala Sankaram’s experimental opera of the same name. 
 
Expanding over five parts and ten hours, Sankaram’s The Last Stand invites us into 300 years of sonic history told entirely through field recordings. As the years unfold, the human impact on the forest becomes visceral: species disappear, storms intensify, and the drone of highways and planes becomes constant. At the heart of The Last Stand is the fundamental truth that our planetary survival depends on collaboration with our natural neighbors. 
 
The Last Stand runs from Thursdays to Sundays starting at 8am through 6pm from September 18 – October 10, 2021 in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Creative Time projects are free and open to the public. No tickets or advance registration is required. 
 
Visit creativetime.org for more information. 
 
The Last Stand podcast series is produced by Patrick Smith. The music for the podcast is excerpted from The Last Stand by Kamala Sankaram. 
 
EPISODE TWO- The Future of Forestry
 
This episode considers the future of forests and what equity and repair in land management could and should look like. We start with a roundtable on the future of urban forestry in New York City with advocates from the Forest For All coalition, featuring Alexander Bender(Tri-Lox), Lindsay Campbell (USDA Forest Service, NYC Urban Field Station), Joseph Charap (Green-Wood Cemetery), Tami Lin (The Nature Conservancy), and Nelson Villarrubia (Trees New York).  In part two, ecologists and educators Dr. Angelica Patterson and Dr. Suzanne Pierre discuss the intersection of climate change and human inequality. 

GUESTS:
 
Tri-Lox is a design and build firm based in Brooklyn that centers sustainability throughout all processes of production, from sourcing material in ways that support reuse and regenerative forestry to building a resilient local wood supply chain that expands beyond the standard market. They view design as a collaborative process with their clients as well as the surrounding environment. 
 
Forest For All NYC is a broad and diverse coalition aimed to demonstrate the vast support for New York’s Urban Forests, with over thirty partners that range across the education, urban planning, arts, and conservation sectors. Their “Forest For All” NYC agenda is a strategic roadmap to protect, maintain, expand and promote the urban forest and build a safer and more equitable NYC.
 
The Natural Areas Conservancy is a champion of NYC’s 20,000 acres of forests and wetlands for the benefit and enjoyment of all. Our team of scientists and experts promote nature’s diversity and resilience across the five boroughs, working in close partnership with the City of New York. Their work seeks to Ensure Healthy Forests through tree plantings and long-term management, Improve Coastal Resilience by rebuilding dunes and marshes, and creating tools to prioritize wetland restoration, Adapt Natural Areas to Climate Change by conducting innovative research and developing cutting-edge resources for practitioners, Training the Next Generation of Conservation Leaders through our annual CUNY internship program, Get New Yorkers Outside through volunteer events, tours, lectures, and trail improvements.
 
Suzanne Pierre, PhD., is a microbial ecologist and biogeochemist, founder and lead investigator in the Critical Ecology Lab, and a writer asking how human ideologies shape the natural world.
 
Angelica Patterson, PhD., works with Black Rock Forest as the Master Science Educator, liaising with Black Rock Forest’s consortium institutions, developing innovative curricula and incorporating an emphasis on diversity programming.

Episode Two — The Future of Forestry

Welcome to The Last Stand podcast, a mini-series on the social life of forests, reparative land management, and just climate futures on the occasion of Creative Time’s newest public art commission, Kamala Sankaram’s experimental opera of the same name.

Expanding over five parts and ten hours, Sankaram’s The Last Stand invites us into 300 years of sonic history told entirely through field recordings. As the years unfold, the human impact on the forest becomes visceral: species disappear, storms intensify, and the drone of highways and planes becomes constant. At the heart of The Last Stand is the fundamental truth that our planetary survival depends on collaboration with our natural neighbors.

The Last Stand runs from Thursdays to Sundays starting at 8am through 6pm from September 18 – October 10, 2021 in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Creative Time projects are free and open to the public. No tickets or advance registration is required.

Visit creativetime.org for more information.

The Last Stand podcast series is produced by Patrick Smith. The music for the podcast is excerpted from The Last Stand by Kamala Sankaram.

EPISODE THREE- Rhizomatic Networks and Mutual Aid

In this episode, professor, lawyer, and organizer Dean Spade talks with mycologist Peter McCoy about applying the characteristics of fungal networks to the political work of resource distribution, resilience building, and solidarity. 

Dean Spade is an Associate Professor at Seattle University School of Law, where he teaches courses on policing, imprisonment, gender, race, and social movements. Dean has spent over two decades working in social movements working to end prisons, borders, poverty, and war and support people trying to survive right now. In 2002, Dean founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color, and which operates on a collective governance model. Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, Spade published the widely acclaimed book and toolkit Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). Alongside his book Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of the Law, Dean's writing has appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Out, In These Times, Social Text, and Signs.

Peter McCoy speaks on behalf of the fungi, the most overlooked and misrepresented organisms in the web of life. As an interdisciplinary, systems-oriented mycology educator with 17 years of experience, Peter is considered one of the most prominent voices in the modern mycology movement. His work is widely regarded as pioneering in the topics of accessible mushroom cultivation and mycoremediation, while his in-depth mycological knowledge has also elevated his voice to one of the foremost in the less-explored fields of fungal evolution, fungal communication, and the history of fungi in human cultures. McCoy’s works include: Radical Mycology, A Treatise on Seeing and Working with Fungi, MycoCycle, an Applied MycoRemediation Firm, Mycologos, a Mycology education organization, Podcast Interview: On Fungi and the Birth of the Modern Psyche.

Episode Three — Rhizomatic Networks and Mutual Aid

River Years is a Black Gotham Expe­ri­ence audio tour written by Kamau Ware, commissioned by Creative Time and Governors Island Arts on the occasion of Moving Chains, Chapter 2 of Charles Gaines’s The American Manifest. River Years explores the colonial patterns that have informed a cen­turies-long rela­tion­ship with what are known today as the East River, the Hud­son River, and New York Har­bor.

River Years: Orientation

River Years is a Black Gotham Expe­ri­ence audio tour written by Kamau Ware, commissioned by Creative Time and Governors Island Arts on the occasion of Moving Chains, Chapter 2 of Charles Gaines’s The American Manifest. River Years explores the colonial patterns that have informed a cen­turies-long rela­tion­ship with what are known today as the East River, the Hud­son River, and New York Har­bor. 

Starting from the ferry terminal at Soissons Landing and ending at the base of Outlook Hill, River Years pulls out key moments in New York history that ask, what is the transatlantic slave trade to a river?

River Years: Chapter I, they say

River Years: Chapter II, ice

River Years: Exit

River Years: Chapter V, river years

River Years is a Black Gotham Expe­ri­ence audio tour written by Kamau Ware, commissioned by Creative Time and Governors Island Arts on the occasion of Moving Chains, chapter two of Charles Gaines’s The American Manifest. River Years explores the colonial patterns that have informed a cen­turies-long rela­tion­ship with what are known today as the East River, the Hud­son River, and New York Har­bor.
 
Starting from the ferry terminal at Soissons Landing and ending at the base of Outlook Hill, River Years pulls out key moments in New York history that ask, what is the transatlantic slave trade to a river?

River Years: Chapter III, bodies

River Years: Chapter IV, light

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