NOoSPHERE Arts Is Reimagining Public Space Through Performance and Nature
“Someone I Used to Know”, choreographed by Petra Zanki
In the bloom of native flowers on a rooftop once part of an ExxonMobil factory, something astonishing is happening. Art is taking root—not just as performance or installation, but as ecology, ritual, and resistance. NOoSPHERE Arts, the multidisciplinary arts center in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, has steadily emerged as a quiet powerhouse of cultural and environmental transformation.
Set atop the staggered rooftops of Kingsland Wildflowers, NOoSPHERE is part living sculpture, part performance venue, and part sanctuary. Their rooftop gardens—designed to support migratory birds, native plants, and pollinators—are also the site of their signature WE ARE NATURE series, a seasonal program where art, activism, and scientific inquiry are entangled in site-responsive, deeply immersive experiences.
This year’s series, WE ARE NATURE explores quantum physics through art. For NOoSPHERE, the quantum is personal: uncertainty, entanglement, and delocalization aren’t just theoretical—they’re emotional and ecological states. The series invites artists to interpret these ideas through music, performance, and sculpture.
One such moment of convergence came in a recent rooftop performance by choreographer Petra Zanki, whose movement language explores tension and intimacy in the body as a mirror of social and spatial environments. Performed in the open air amid wild grasses and city skylines, Zanki’s work takes on new dimension—her dancers becoming part of the landscape, their gestures echoing the unpredictable rhythms of wind and bloom.
“This particular work is an excerpt from my latest piece, which I created and premiered in December 2024, titled "Till It Tears Us Apart,” . I was exploring a type of love called Eros. I reworked the duet I made, along with some new material for "Someone I Used to Know”. Here I was inspired by my own life and the lives of my friends living in Brooklyn, whose lives constantly revolve around making ends meet, meeting new people, and the impossibility of maintaining substantial relationships. Everything is in flux: jobs, relationships, friends...We bounce off each other as if we were atoms under an atomic force microscope on a contained petri dish. Imagine this framed space called NYC, where we share the same partners through various dating apps, the same furniture on Facebook Marketplace, the same apartments via room-finding apps, recycling each other's clothes and lives. We even share the same pets through fostering. All of it within these city confines, bouncing and rebouncing. Instead of feeling connected, we need more and more of these provisory connections and changes to fill the void. I wanted to explore that connection between people and those fleeting energy exchanges. These little NYC explosions. So, I created choreography with dancers exploring those accidental and brief encounters that spark between people and change us, just like the energy sparks between two atoms in the same field, causing them to re-bounce with others. This, in the end, makes us our own.” Petra tells us.
She shares that she is very grateful to be the NOosphere’s first ever choreographer-in-residence, where Petra has the opportunity to work and present new work in such an incredible space. “I had two days to walk around the roofs and actually think about how best to use them to fit the theme. When I first climbed to the rooftop, I was amazed to realize that this duet will happen against a Manhattan skylight overlooking Brooklyn. The piece was having the city as a backdrop: a city of dreams is where we all want to realize our dreams and struggle to stay afloat. This duet is about two random people meeting for a brief moment in New York City. Their specific encounter was probably happening in real life in that very moment in many places around the city while the dancers were performing.
Additionally, Petra is currently working on a new piece for eight dancers called "Murmurations," which — “explores the type of love known as Agape. It's the piece that comes as a reaction to our current political state in the country, where artists are constantly being silenced from speaking out, and funds are being cut so they can say even less. So, I am creating work that encourages artists to communicate in a way like birds would speak. You can't encage a wildlife. So we'll sing that freedom. This work is in its early stages. I'll be presenting it during NOosphere's Kingsland Wildflower Festival on July 26 as the very first draft of work in progress. It's an entirely new work, very different from "Till It Tear Us Apart," and something I have never explored, so I am very excited. I plan to premier it as evening length in 2026. I've just received a Brooklyn Arts Council grant for it, and because of it I'll be able to pay dancers for the rehearsals, which is super important.
The crowd follows the dancers across rooftops and botanical gardens for the interactive piece.
But the true force of NOoSPHERE is not in any one performance—it’s in the sustained atmosphere of transformation it fosters. It is, as Executive Director and painter Sol Kjøk shares, “a rare nature sanctuary in surroundings increasingly hostile to all living beings.” Sol’s own journey from international artist to founder of this hybrid institution began with a dream of building a creative community—a dream rooted in both her studio practice and her commitment to collective cultural work.
“Now run by a team of international creatives whose backgrounds blend the arts and sciences, NOoSPHERE Arts offers a wide-ranging, multidisciplinary arts program centered around systemic thinking with the goal of raising eco-literacy among people of all backgrounds. Explicitly committed to elevating the voices of historically underrepresented groups, we are building a diverse, nurturing community that grants everyone opportunities to commune with nature in an otherwise drab industrial area. Thanks to our extraordinary setting—a surreally beautiful wildlife sanctuary sprouting on top of a former ExxonMobil factory in NYC’s most polluted neighborhood—we are uniquely positioned to transmit and amplify the green message through the visceral alchemy that only art can bring about: an emotional spark is more effective than a thousand lectures. For those seeking practical engagement, our on-site partners —Newtown Creek Alliance and landscape designer Alive Structures—offer hands-on opportunities to help restore the imperiled natural habitat around Superfund-site Newtown Creek and beyond.
The Kingsland Wildflowers community project is an ecosystem with emergent properties: its total impact is greater than the sum of each partner’s contributions within our respective fields of expertise. We feel that our work here plays an important role in the shared global efforts to right our ship. Our goal is for our audience to walk away with the central message that we already have solutions we know will work. Rather than perpetuating the prevalent sense of doom—which only causes people to give up—NOoSPHERE Arts' multidisciplinary arts programming, combined with hands-on remedial initiatives for community participation, instills belief in personal agency and hope through collective action. With contributions from world-renowned eco-scientists and Indigenous wisdom, our annual WE ARE NATURE rooftop series serves as a platform to connect experienced elders with answers to the young activists with the energy and will to take and demand action.” - Sol states.
Performers: Trace Yeames (left), Toni Owens (right).
NOoSPHERE’s programming is guided by a belief in personal agency and the power of collective action. Their site is not just visually striking—it’s symbolically charged. As an art space built atop a former Superfund site, it becomes a stage for repair, a space where conversations about sustainability are grounded in place and practice.
“I am a painter born in a foreign country who came to NYC with a dream to live in a supportive community of creative peers working across multiple arts disciplines. I originally founded the nonprofit NOoSPHERE Arts in 2010 as a platform for fellow international artists looking to present their work in NYC. In 2014, I got access to my current painting studio, aka Last Frontier NYC on the M1 floor below the Kingsland Wildflower rooftop gardens. That became the catalyst for our organization to evolve into what it is today.
Greenpoint is home to many artists, but our rapidly gentrifying neighborhood offers few arenas where the creative tribe can share their works with the community: NOoSPHERE Arts is the only multidisciplinary arts center in our part of town. To boot, our unique stages built in and around a former factory complex are an experience on their own: through our productions, visitors get access to a secluded portion of waterfront as well as rooftop wildflower meadows. This green corridor stretching across four staggered rooftop levels were designed as a natural habitat for native fauna and migratory birds. Set against the 360-degree view of the gritty, industrial environs, the stunning beauty of the multicolored blooms shines even brighter: a rare nature sanctuary in surroundings increasingly hostile to all living beings. This one-of-a-kind setting makes for extraordinary performance arenas for art pieces addressing humankind’s place on Earth, and that was my inspiration for the WE ARE NATURE concept: a reminder of life's ability to endure and flourish against all odds. This annual rooftop series is now NOoSPHERE Arts’ flagship programming.” Sol tells us in closing.
Indeed, this ethos is threaded through the very curation of NOoSPHERE's events. Curator Daniela Holban, whose background spans both major institutions and grassroots efforts, sees sustainability not only in ecological terms but in the very architecture of cultural work. “My professional philosophy has become rooted in cultivating and reinforcing these systems of support—especially for grassroots spaces and independent creators,” she says.
“Working across both major institutions and grassroots platforms has deeply shaped my understanding of what sustains cultural work over time. It’s made me realize how essential a strong support system is—not just for curators or producers, but for artists as well. In this field, we’re constantly juggling logistics, vision, relationships, and resource limitations. Without a solid foundation of support, it becomes incredibly difficult to bring ideas to life in a meaningful way. This realization led me to think about sustainability—not only in environmental terms, but in the sustainability of cultural ecosystems themselves. How do we build and maintain systems that allow creativity to flourish? Major institutions often have the infrastructure to support long-term work, but it’s the smaller, community-driven spaces that are most vulnerable—and often the most vital. They’re where experimentation, risk-taking, and genuine community engagement often happen.
At NOoSPHERE Arts, this spirit of cross-disciplinary collaboration and community-rooted experimentation is very much alive. We’re currently entering the 2025 season of our WE ARE NATURE rooftop series—an initiative that brings together artists, scientists, and activists to explore the intersections of art, ecology, and collective imagination. From site-specific installations and participatory rituals to music, movement, and performance, this series invites deeper presence, dialogue, and connection. It’s not just about what’s being presented—it’s about how we gather, and the ecosystems we cultivate through creative exchange.
This year’s theme, WE ARE NATURE: The Microcosmic Dance, is part of the global celebrations of the UN’s International Year of Science and Technology, marking the centenary of quantum physics. Through art, music, and performance, the season interprets scientific and philosophical ideas—like uncertainty, entanglement, and delocalization—not only as quantum concepts, but also as deeply human experiences. We’re exploring the intersection of quantum and human nature in ways that allow for reflection, curiosity, and a sense of awe at the invisible systems that shape our world. We will host events on our rooftops monthly through October.
Next on our calendar is the Summer Solstice Celebration on June 21st—a highlight of the season. This special evening will feature the debut of our 2025 Residency Award installation, Entanglement by Jeannie Rhyu—a sculptural work composed of eight ceramic eggs reimagined as quantum particles, each painted with imagery inspired by bird species commonly seen on our rooftops and along Newtown Creek. The night will also include SOMOS, a new concert experience by MaYita, whose music channels ancestral rhythms and sacred chants into a living ceremony. A dance performance by Mizuho Kappa will further weave movement into the ritual, connecting sound, body, and space.”
What’s perhaps most compelling about NOoSPHERE is its refusal to treat culture as a luxury or nature as background. Instead, it curates a living laboratory where both are sacred—where a wildflower meadow becomes an amphitheater, and where sound, ritual, and sculpture open portals to new ways of seeing and being.
In a city often too rushed to reflect, NOoSPHERE Arts offers pause. It is a breathing, blooming, experimental space where performance and environment are inseparable—and where the future is not only imagined, but cultivated one seed, one movement, one gathering at a time.
An after-performance mixer, featuring latin dance and a live band.
