More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities and by 2060 further 10% are projected to make the move. With this rapid metropolitan and industrial development, along with city dwellers’ increasingly frantic pace of life, urban nature has more often than not been either diminished or made invisible. The global experience of Coronavirus pandemic though has for once provided a different perspective, giving many the never taken before opportunity to explore their local bioregions. Citizens’ interests are slowly coming back to the nearby green. And as nature connected people are more prone to adopt pro-environmental empathetic behaviours, this comes as a hopeful step towards building a climate change resilient culture.  But how do we sustain and deepen this revived interest post-pandemic now that the pace of city life has picked up again?

 Earthkinology I is a participatory sculpture made out of composite waste materials that engages the public with the lichened beings of the city. Using an array of storytelling and sensory invitations, the experience asks the viewers to pause amidst their day, to take notice of fellow kin all around and explore what this anthropocentric world might look and feel like from their perspective.

 The project combines imaginary, backed up by science fact and traditional indigenous and ecological knowledge, to build up possible narratives from the perspective of other species, exploring new ways to access, bond and empathise with our more-than-human urban neighbours.

 Earthkinology is a grassroots movement masked by public entertainment encouraging new way of engaging and deepening of a collective sense of kinship with and connection to local natural ecosystems for the local public. The project is an effort towards further de-centering of the human exceptionalism so prevalent in our city culture with ambition to contribute to the much necessary shift towards interspecies relationship building and ecocentric ways of perceiving and being.