HICKORY | 1637

in collaboration with Svähä and Somè Williams

What messages are hiding in the hickories?

The hickory tree is central to the story of America. The strong wood and fatty nutfruit of the hickory provided early European settlers with the firewood, reliable timber, and nutrient-dense food they needed to survive the formidable terrain.

We know it as Governors Island. But to the Lenape, it was called Paggank—nut island. The trees of Governors Island gave shelter and food to members of the Dutch West India Company when they arrived. Governors Island became the staging ground for the eventual Dutch conquest and colonization of New Amsterdam.

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Drawing inspiration from the complex chemical communication of forest ecosystems, HICKORY imagines the ways trees pass secrets of survival to their offspring. Using foraged hickory and pine, HICKORY revisits the 1637 purchase of Noten Eylandt (later Governors Island) to explore an embodied poetics of regeneration and resilience in the performance of play between a mother and her daughters.