Kosmologym: Dirtball

Kosmologym is an art and game design collective. Our games challenge players to encounter others (human/animal, plant, mineral, institution) and place human bodies in physical relationships to global systems.

 

This summer Kosmologym, in collaboration with Swale House and the Urban Soil Institute, will install a Dirtball court on Governors Island. Dirtball is a participatory art project that brings together sculpture, sport, and the environment. Using an innovative concrete that re-mineralizes depleted soil as it degrades, Dirtball is a re-imagined basketball court where human players, alongside plants, animals, minerals and microorganisms, can create their own personal game.  Yup, that’s right: no set rules. The sole requirement is that the “game” must unfold on the court, fostering the degradation of the concrete, and mineralizing the soil. The winner is literally the soil! 

 

The first Dirtball court was built at Franconia Sculpture Park in 2019. The Governors Island Dirtball court will be installed in the LOOP. The court will bring together human and non-human play, growth and remediation. Dirtball connects individual human actions to ecological issues faced by the surrounding landscape through an invitation to a game that is always going on beneath our feet. 

 

Kosmologym 

Swale House: Swale House & Lab supports the work of artists, writers, and ecologists who engage with urban land policy, agriculture, food, and water as a commons. 

Urban Soil Institute - Art Extension:

Governors Island: Governors Island is a 172-acre island in the heart of New York Harbor nestled between Lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn waterfront

The LOOP: more info coming soon!