Where Science Meets Art

Join BWRC’s inaugural Breakfast Talk for Fall 2024 this November at BioBAT Art Space, Brooklyn Army Terminal.

This event marks our second "in-community" gathering, following last spring's successful talk at the Powerhouse Arts Center. Enjoy a complimentary breakfast while artists and researchers Elizabeth Hénaff and Nathan Kensinger share their work, “Water Stories,” and offer a personal guided tour of their installations focused on Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal.

Explore how their projects blend environmental science, community history, and artistic vision to tell the complex story of this evolving urban landscape. You will also have the opportunity to learn about BioBAT Art Space’s community work and how collaborative efforts are helping shape Brooklyn’s cultural and environmental future.

Nathan Kensinger is a Brooklyn-based photographer, filmmaker, journalist, and artist whose work explores hidden urban landscapes, post-industrial ecologies, forgotten waterways, and coastal communities endangered by sea level rise and climate change. Over the past 15 years, he has created a series of photo essays, documentary films, public art projects, and video installations about New York City’s changing waterfront. Kensinger’s work has been featured in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the PBS NewsHour, and National Public Radio, and exhibited by the Museum of the City of New York, the Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, and Staten Island Museum. His films have screened internationally at the National Museum of Cinema in Italy, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and the Danish Film Institute. Kensinger is currently directing a feature-length documentary about sea level rise and the future of New York and is a Senior Fellow at the Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center, and a 2024-2025 Photo Urbanism Fellow at the Design Trust for Public Space.

Dr. Elizabeth Hénaff is a computational biologist with an art practice. Using New York City as a living laboratory, her research group at NYU Tandon School of Engineering investigates microbial metrics in urban environments, focusing on anthropogenic change. Research directions include green wall infrastructure, remediation of Superfund sites, and the impact of street-level flooding on urban microbial diversity. This inquiry has produced a body of work that ranges from scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals to projects with landscape architects, to artworks shown nationally and internationally. Recent artworks include commissions for the Storefront for Art and Architecture in NYC, the Detroit Science Gallery, the Okayama Art Summit in Japan, and various NYC galleries. Dr. Hénaff holds an assistant professor position in the Department of Technology, Culture, and Society, with affiliate positions in the Civil and Urban Engineering, as well as Chemical and Biological Engineering, departments. She teaches courses in Biodesign.

You can travel to our event by subway to the 59th street station on 4th avenue, by car to the 65th street exit of the Belt Parkway or by the NYC Ferry, which stops at the Sunset Park pier, just steps away from BioBAT.
If you are interested in riding on the ferry to the event along with Paul King, the Executive Director of the BWRC, he will meet you at the Atlantic Avenue stop at 9:30 am in time to board the 10:01 ferry, which arrives at the Sunset Park Pier at 10:35. Please let us know when reserving your ticket if you plan on riding along with Paul.

Unfortunately, the nature of this onsite event, which includes an active walking tour of the BioBAT art exhibit, does not lend itself to viewing via zoom. We hope to see you in person.

Host or Publisher Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center