Partner Planting is a performance that centers around a tool of the artist's own design, inspired by the similarity between Mesoamerican coas and wooden, 17th century Irish spades. Made with bent rebar, wire, and hand carved wood, the tool is meant to be used with a partner, privileging interconnection over efficiency. 

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The tool was activated by the artist and their close friend and dancer, Marja Castellanos, on a chinampa in Mexico City where they were invited to perform by local chinampero, Dr. Edgar Lara Paredes. Chinampas are an Indigenous form of ancestral permaculture which entails layering mud and plants to build agricultural land on top of water. They are unique to Mexico city and were the basis of the city prior to colonization, but the chinampas and their accompanying canals have now been mostly covered in concrete, leading to the city’s wide scale flooding issues. Chinampas are simultaneously symbols of historical ingenuity and community land management, non-extractive engagement with the earth, and the unforeseen complications of state modernizing projects. 

The performance explores themes of interdependence, balance, hope, and collaboration. As the pair wields the tool, they open and close the earth, planting corn seeds, and eventually burying the head of a pick axe.