GREENBOX@WBX/ISLA PART 2 - THE EXTENSION of Narratives on Art and Ecology

July 2 - August 17, 2025

Curated by Juan Puntes and Blanca de La Torre

Expanded Narratives on Art and Ecology
Part II – July 1 – August 10
Opening Reception: Wednesday July 3, 6–9 PM
Co-curated by Juan Puntes with Blanca de la Torre
In collaboration with ISLA@GreenBox

Following the critical dialogues and civic imaginings of Part I, Expanded Narratives on Art and Ecology enters its second chapter with renewed intensity and hands-on engagement. Part II deepens its exploration of artistic practices at the intersection of ecology, justice, and imagination through a reactivation of key workshops and participatory platforms, particularly relevant to the Lower East Side communities.

WhiteBox, in continued collaboration with ISLA@GreenBox, reasserts its commitment to post-anthropocentric inquiry—now moving from symbolic articulations to embodied action and tactical experimentation. As part of this evolution, two anchor workshops from Part I return, reimagined to meet the urgencies of the present:

Carrion + Kursula’s pH NYC Workshop, initially developed as a speculative mapping of environmental acidity in New York, is reconfigured in Part II to directly engage the underserved, working-class communities of the Lower East Side. Set against the backdrop of the East River’s increasingly contaminated waters, the workshop draws attention to the invisible dangers of water pollution and its connection to extractive urbanism and climate gentrification. Using sensory materials and microbial metaphors, participants—many from the local LES neighborhood—collectively trace these toxic legacies while imagining strategies for ecological repair and community-based resilience. The workshop fosters environmental literacy and healing through participatory learning and reflection rooted in place.
For Part II: The Extension, the workshop is reactivated and adapted by the WhiteBox staff and interns, continuing its mission of civic engagement through eco-artistic practice.

Jenny Marketou’s Futuring Waters / The Hatchery, revisited as a durational workshop and installation, evolves into a mobile, participatory platform for aquatic memory and feminist reimaginings of urban water systems—focusing on the coastal waters of New York City and the East River bordering the Lower East Side, a vital urban artery. In dialogue with the Billion Oyster Project, Marketou’s workshop participants construct bio-habitats using oyster shells, water, and lime—materials that echo nature’s own regenerative tools—which are then laid along the LES riverbank. Her floating structure becomes a poetic and practical forum for listening to the voices of water—its crises, its futures, and its power to shape policies rooted in care, interdependence, and ecological justice.

Noah Fischer’s News Kiosk: New York 2044 makes its debut in Part II: The Extension as a site-specific public installation that imagines the future of information, ecology, and urban survival through the lens of speculative journalism. Installed on the WhiteBox sidewalk as a retro-futurist newspaper stand, the Kiosk issues fictional headlines and ephemera from a climate-challenged future, provoking public dialogue around ecological collapse, misinformation, and resistance. This participatory work doubles as a performative newsstand and community forum—activating the street as a space for civic reckoning and collective futuring. New York 2044 confronts media amnesia while reasserting storytelling and artistic activism as urgent tools for ecological and political agency in the Lower East Side and beyond.

Together, these activations expand the original curatorial premise into an open laboratory for collective reflection and radical pedagogy. Part II furthers the project’s commitment to ecofeminisms, hydrofeminisms, food sovereignty, and rewilding, but reframes them through the lens of active community repair and speculative agency.

The project’s underlying ambition—redefining Manhattan as part of the ISLA archipelago—remains central. From the island of Robledo de Chavela to the island of Manhattan, this curatorial collaboration between Blanca de la Torre and Juan Puntes draws conceptual bridges that transcend borders, linking local actions with global urgencies.

As the Lower East Side continues to face environmental precarity and systemic neglect, Expanded Narratives on Art and Ecology affirms the vital role of art as a form of ecological intelligence, social imagination, and cultural resilience. Through workshops, installations, and civic engagement, Part II advances a collective imaginary rooted in the ecopolitical ideal of Buen Vivir—an ethic of coexistence founded on interdependence, ecological care, and justice, envisioned for the direct benefit of the Lower East Side community.