My research examines new trajectories for theorising the shifting politics of relationality between humans, non-humans and environment(s) by tracking the dynamics of new operational fields and mechanisms of interaction opened up by critical art and spatial practice. In particular I investigate self-organised project platforms at the interstices of art and architecture that are constituted through processes of trans-disciplinary work and collaborative initiatives situated within a set of diverse urban contexts. In doing so consideration is given to the ways in which we might navigate current proliferations of aesthetic praxis outside of the field of art. I focus on how certain modes of cultural production initiate complex interactions between parallel ecologies, especially those ecologies that intersect with one another in the heterogeneous environment(s) of the socio-natural urban matrix. Drawing on a range of ideas that attempt to rethink the divisions between the spheres of nature and culture, in particular those that re-assemble the constitution of the city through an ecological imaginary, emphasis is placed on tensions exposed within cosmopolitan bodies through the strategic interventions and micro-modulations of aesthetic praxis.

Primary research examines practices that have not been widely disseminated, focusing on projects that emerge ‘on the ground’ as participatory urban actions, formations of alternative economies and experimental forms of social cohesion. These include works by Ambulante Construções group (Walking Constructions Group), Atelier d’architecture autogeree (aaa) (Studio for Self-managed Architecture), The Diggers (Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma), Fallen Fruit Collective, FlyingCity (Urbanism Research Group) and xyzLondon (ecosXchange Project). Questions centre on the locus and nature of agency in such practices and their points of contact across parallel ecologies. Three interconnected themes – Flows, Territories and Assemblies – facilitate a critical examination of the types of interactions that occur between the cultural, social and natural processes at work in urban spaces. Tracking conceptions of, and systems of control over, the ‘commons’ we might ask what role cultural production has to play in catalysing new forms of socio-natural coexistence? My research therefore aims to respond to the exigency for new thought at the meeting point of aesthetics, spatial theory and political ecology.