UPDATE: Sonic Encounters of the Third Kind with Lisa Schonberg and Allie Wist has been canceled due to weather conditions that are not conducive to the growth of mushrooms. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Please reach out to us at education@pioneerworks.org with any questions.

Pioneer Works Music Resident Alum Lisa Schonberg and artist-scholar Allie Wist will be leading a field-based class focused on listening to mushrooms and listening as mushrooms. We primarily encounter mushrooms through vision, but most of mushrooms' labor and energy are hidden from human sensing. How might we hear them? What can we speculate about what mushrooms hear and sense? What do these sounds tell us about fungal relationships with other beings?

Reflecting on the famous scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, this class is designed to explore sensory ways of 'knowing' mushrooms. Mushrooms can be considered a “third kind” in their occupation of liminal spaces between life and death, beyond plant or animal. They occupy a state between alive-ness and decomposition. In this participatory class at Green-Wood Cemetery, environmental sound artist and composer Schonberg, Wist and the New York Mycological Society will lead the group in ways to interact with mushrooms through sounding, smelling, feeling, and listening.

Date: This in-person workshop will meet on Sunday, July 24 from 10am-1pm at Green-Wood Cemetery.

Price: $50.

Audience: Open to all.

Materials: Materials will be provided.

Lisa Schonberg is a composer, percussionist, and environmental sound artist with a background in entomology and ecology. She started playing drums as a child & later studied ecology and entomology, earning her Masters in Environmental Studies at the Evergreen State College with a focus on ant biodiversity in the Neotropics.

Allie E.S. Wist is an artist-scholar and writer, currently working on an Arts PhD with a focus on food and the environment. Her artwork encompasses photography, radio broadcasts, artifacts, writing, dinners, and experiential installations that render futuristic speculation accessible through sensory narratives.

The New York Mycological Society is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization dedicated to raising the public awareness, appreciation and knowledge of fungi. We believe that passionate, knowledgeable amateurs are important contributors to science and fungal conservation.

For questions, please contact education@pioneerworks.org

Classes at Pioneer Works are made possible by Sandeman Port.

This program is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.