Prototype for Preserving the Phylum Porifera - a hands-on project in honor of the sea sponge, the oldest extant animal on the planet. Hope Ginsburg and the student researchers of the Sponge HQ travel to MoMA to deliver items for the Mildred's Lane archive. The group presents a video specially produced for the occasion and shares other material artifacts from the pedagogical Sponge and Colablablab projects at Virginia Commonwealth University. 
The event takes place amid hand-felted beehive-box seats with honey to taste from the Sponge HQ in Richmond, VA. The public is invited to participate in this collective project by Colleen Billing, Colleen Brennan, Patrick Carter, Lindsay Clements, Riley Duncan, Gavin Foster, Hope Ginsburg, JoJo Houff, Julie Hundley, Joshua Quarles and Clare van Loenen.
A Swarming for Mildreds Lane and the Mildred Complex(ity) in MoMA Studio: Common Senses, Sunday, November 11th, 12pm-4pm. Mezzanine, The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building.

Funding generously provided by VCUarts. 

Sponge HQ, home to the Sponge project and the experimental Colablablab curriculum, is an interdisciplinary lab, workshop and project space located in the Anderson Gallery at VCUarts. Sponge HQ hosts a functioning indoor observation beehive, a stocked 90-gallon aquarium, an art, design and ecology library and wool felt making studio. The space is monitored by student researchers and open to the public Tuesday through Friday from 12pm-2pm and for special events.

Sponge is an ongoing artwork that generates experimental approaches to learning and teaching. Now “attached” to a public university the way a sea sponge affixes to a marine reef, Sponge provides open waters for the conspicuous mixing of disciplines.

Colablablab is the first semester-long iteration of a Sponge workshop: A piloted 8 credit course structure at Virginia Commonwealth University in which a group of School of the Arts students and Department of Biology students enroll together, with their Colablablab professor Hope Ginsburg in a Biology 101 lecture and Biology 101 lab section. An experiment in curricular ecology in which the class takes a class.