Made Ground

MADE GROUND documents a 3-year Art Research project that emerged from the coast of Florida between a wildlife Refuge and Kennedy Space Center. The project centers on an unnamed spoil island, created around 1950 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during dredging of the Intracoastal Waterway. These islands—ephemeral, shifting, and topographically reversed—exist in liminal zones between wet and dry, public and private, terrestrial and aquatic, natural and engineered. In 2018, Shona Kitchen and Aly Ogasian inhabited one such island, constructing a temporary shelter modeled on NASA’s Mars analogues—simulated extraterrestrial habitats. This act became the heart of MADE GROUND, a critique of space colonization rhetoric, particularly efforts to terraform Mars, by juxtaposing them with the biodiverse and often overlooked ecologies of Earth’s marginal zones. Guided by a “leave no trace” ethos and employing mobile, temporary architecture, MADE GROUND proposes alternative models for inhabiting ecologically sensitive zones—modes of presence grounded in impermanence and responsiveness.