The Alchemist’s Shack is a large-scale site work, part of the OM: Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum project, ongoing at Mildred’s Lane since 1998. The project grows with every iteration, grafting new Fellows in collaboration with Robert Williams (UK) in the exploration of the many tropes and emergent themes arising from Alchemy I-III. We will continue towards the final interior installation of this wonder-room in its liminal setting. 

In this one-week session, indiscreet associates of The Order of the Third Bird will continue their investigations into experimental protocols of Practical Aesthesis and methods of Sustained Attention. The Attention Lab is part guerrilla seminar and part meditative and kinetic practicum. A discipline of the senses is pursued. Beginning with available traditions and protocols of the Order, the group's aim will be to develop and test new experimental practices of attention.

The TOWN sessions include a series of workshops and interventions on Main Street USA with contributing artists; navigating “the complex relationship between the city and the countryside by investigating the place the rural world occupies in the projections, fantasies, economy, and antagonism of the cosmopolitan set.” We will apply the tools of contemporary social practice toward shifting beyond the critiques, illusions and prejudices that have supported city and country as disconnected realms of shared experience. Workshop details TBA.

This has been a radically innovative project where we have collaborated with artists, engineers, hydrologists and architects to conceptualize a plan for a complete aquatic environment by integrating systems of landscape design, aqua-cultural dwelling and notions of earthworks, sensitively considering humans and non-humans.

Delve into Mildred’s landscape history as we intertwine previous PondhouseSpringhousePond sessions now so relevant with a freshly dug earthwork. Contributing Guest Practitioners and fellows will discourse, workshop, and incubate ideas around landscaping new projects that will unfurl over the session and years to come. 

With Paul Bartow, Gary Graham, Jeffrey Jenkins, Cameron Klavsen, J. Morgan Puett, Rebecca Purcell and David Wood

Collaborate on a large-scale, transhistorical project, featuring a study of Transcendentalism while conflating roles of labor and workstyles at Mildred’s Lane.

Fellows will contribute to conceptualizing, crafting, costuming, building, filming as we create the continuing series of Labor Portraits of Mildred’s Lane that will be on show in 2017. 

Wildcrafting is a term that conscientiously defines food as naturally medicinal, always with concerns for a sustainable future. Fellows will be engaged in a detailed study of the landscape at Mildred’s Lane while practicing forage routines with focus on stylistically transforming new food and waste systems; and, critically processing botanicals throughout the seasons.