Rats, Pigeons, Cockroaches

​This 4-session class explores how we might turn our disgust into fascination by attending to the lives of beloved-yet-reviled urban creatures: rats, pigeons, and cockroaches.

​(--> Do not register via Luma, APPLY HERE via School of Making Thinking.)

​Class Description:

​What is New York City without its beloved – and reviled – creatures? In this course, we attend to the lives of rats, pigeons, and cockroaches, inviting participants to reconsider their relationship with NYC’s wildlife through embodied attention practices of disgust, emulation, and fascination.

Disgust is a trained emotion, which we learn early from teachers of social culture & morality: mothers, schooling, religion. Evolutionarily, disgust serves the function of distancing us from disease-vectors such as feces, rot, and vomit. But what happens when disgust responses outgrow their evolutionary function? Social disgust becomes an abstracted, embodied moral judgment towards the “other”: that which is rejected, outcast, disgusting, repulsive.

If we want to move towards kinship with the more-than-human — even vermin — how might we examine ways in which disgust walls us from curiosity, connection, and understanding? How ought we navigate moments when we hear rats scuttling within our walls? When pigeons eat our leftovers? When cockroaches emerge from our sink drain overnight?

Participants will attune to the secret lives of NYC creatures through full-body experiences, field observations, and discussions of readings. Each session focuses on the cultural history and ecological role of different vermin: rats, pigeons, cockroaches, culminating in co-created rituals for our urban neighbors.