In this episode with talk with Vreni Michelini-Castillo about her transdisciplinary artistic practice, her spirituality, and her teaching. How all of them are connected, and how these practices bring a different light to mexican artists in the territory now known as the United States.  We get to hear from her about the Fluid Mutualism symposium project, and the Color Theory book. 

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This episode was recorded on Apr 13, 2022

In this episode with talk with artist Arleene Correa Valencia about the empowerment of one's identity and its representation in art. Arleene shares with us her life history and how that has influenced her work.

Episode Recorded 04/12/22

Recommendations

Films

I'm no longer here. Directed by Fernando Frías. 2019. Available on Netflix

Books

Girlhood in the Borderlands. Mexican Teens Caught in the Crossroads of Migration. By Lidia Soto

The Distance Between. By Reyna Grande

Artists

Shizu Saldamando 

Patrick Martinez

Felipe Baeza

Miguel Luciano

Esteban Ramon Perez

In this episode, we discuss the dynamics of power in relation to the built environment and academic circles with Cruz Garcia from Wai Think Tank. Cruz talks about his scholarship and their work as pedagogues, the receptivity of academic institutions to their work, and the pushback to"normalizing" this curriculum in schools of architecture. 

You can find more about Wai Think Tank and their work, here.

Episode recorded on Apr 11, 2022.

Recommendations. 

Antes que Isla es Volcan / Before Island is Volcano by Raquel Salas Rivera

Gold Medal Winner of the Juan Felipe Herrera Award for Bilingual Poetry. From the National Book Award-nominated, Lambda Award-winning poet: a powerful, inventive new collection that looks to the future of Puerto Rico with love, rage, beauty, and hope.

Colonial Debts. The Case of Puerto Rico. by Rocio Zambrana

Subjects: Postcolonial and Colonial Studies, Theory and Philosophy > Marxism, Caribbean Studies

Sound editing by @risd1877 student Jade Cannata @thetripwalker.

A new beginning, expanding directions. In this episode, I present new co-host, Jose Brunner @joeybrunner. We talk about last season's best moments and lessons learned. We also discuss the changes we are making to the podcast, the new guests that will be joining our conversations, and the importance of the human factor, the person, in the whole arc of their work.

Our new logo and image was designed by @risd1877 student Feifan Gao, with collaboration of @manueltrani . Sound editing done by @risd1877 student Jade Cannata @thetripwalker. We would like to thank RISD SEI Center their support #risdsei 

Episode recorded Nov, 2020.

 In this episode, I talk to Fernando Luiz Lara, who works on theorizing spaces of the Americas with emphasis on the dissemination of architecture and planning ideas beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries. In his several articles, Prof. Lara has discussed the modern and the contemporary architecture of our continent, its meaning, context, and social-economic insertion. In this episode, we talk about our education as Latin American architects in the cannon, how we decolonized it and got into decolonization perspectives for our work. We talked about the need for a new and different set of values on which to analyze architectural Latin American architecture, and not by comparing them to American or European standards. We commented on how teaching decoloniality is still in the margins of academia. We had an interesting conversation on Fernando's article  American Mirror: the Occupation of the “New World” and the Rise of Architecture as We Know it. And we talked about the future of education, podcasts, youtube channels, electronic media, etc. 

Books mentioned in the conversation.

Modern Architecture in Latin America: Art, Technology and Utopia, with Luis Carranza. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015.

Architecture and Forced Exploitation: The Gulf of Mexico, 1920-1970 / Arquitectura y Explotacion Forzada: El Golfo de Mexico, 1920-1970, with Reina Loredo Cansino.

Apuntes sobre Decolonializacion, Arquitectura y Ciudad en las Americas. with Reina Loredo Cansino. - Link to the presentation of the book video.

American Mirror: the Occupation of the “New World” and the Rise of Architecture as We Know it. 

Recommendations. 

Designs for the Pluriverse. Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. By Arturo Escobar

Ideas to Postpone the End of the World. by Ailton Krenak

The Moor’s account. by Laila Lalami

Sera mañana. by Federico Guzmán Rubio

A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet. by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore.

Race and Modern Architecture. A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present. Edited By Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis II, Mabel O. Wilson

In this second episode with Emmanuel Ortega (Babelito from Latinos Who Lunch) a researcher, curator, podcaster, and recent YouTuber (Unsettling Journeys) dedicated to uncovering the histories behind Mexican, Latin American, and Latinx identities by examining the arts (as well as the visual and material cultures and built environment) created before the invasion of Tenochtitlán, during the colonial period, around the waves of Independence from Europe, and into our contemporary world. We continue talking about the journey of a Mexican scholar into American academia, we discuss the conflicts between de-colonial history and anti-colonial practices in history. We talk about the work of Ramón Grosfuguel and the Epistemicides of the 16th century in order to understand anti-colonial gestures, and revisionist history practices. Finally, we get to architecture or the built environment by discussing the Casta paintings, their depictions of race, gender, and class (tools of hate - Kirsten Pai Buick)

Reccomendations

Silencing the Past by Michael-Rolph Trouillot

Unsettling Journeys - Youtube Channel

Imagining Identity in New Spain by  Magali Carrera

In this episode, I talk with Anooradha Siddiqi a researcher interested in architectural history and theory; spatial politics; histories of migration and settlement; histories of land and partitions; modernism and modernity in Africa and South Asia; feminist practice and theory; black and brown consciousness theory; histories of heritage politics and craft practices; intellectual histories; critical cultural practices and production; collectivity, radical pedagogies, and mutual aid; past and present pedagogical practices in art and architecture.   

We talk about her latest projects Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement analyzes the history, visual rhetoric, and spatial politics of the Dadaab refugee camps in Northeastern Kenya.  as an epistemological vantage point in the African and Islamic world. On the work of Minnette de Silva and a Modern Architecture of the Past that engages the intellectual and heritage work of one of the first women to establish a professional architectural practice and an important cultural figure in the history of Ceylon/Sri Lanka. In this episode mostly discuss about pedagogies in architecture, feminist pedagogies, the controversial topic of the canon and, structuring courses that allow a diversity of knowledge, approaches, and perspectives.

Recommendations

Lose your Mother by Saidiya Hartman 

Postcards from God by Imtiaz Dharker

In this episode, I talk to Emmanuel Ortega (Babelito from Latinos Who Lunch) a researcher, curator, podcaster, and recent YouTuber whose work looks to deconstruct the politics of colorism in colonial and contemporary Latin America by analyzing the visual culture of the colonial period and the politics of class and race classification behind the caste system. Springing from his research interests, Ortega has curated in México and the United States. Babelito is one half of one of the podcast that inspired the creation of this podcast, Latinos Who Lunch, and currently is working on a youtube channel titled Unsettling Journeys, dedicated to uncovering the histories behind Mexican, Latin American, and Latinx identities by examining the arts (as well as the visual and material cultures and built environment) created before the invasion of Tenochtitlán, during the colonial period, around the waves of Independence from Europe, and into our contemporary world; that he discusses further in our conversation. 

We talk about the journey of a Mexican scholar into American academia, and the role that the "newly discovered" need for diversity in the Ivory Tower has affected Black and Brown voices. We also talk about modernity and mobility, the role of new media in the creation of academic portfolios, and the accessibility of knowledge. How podcasts, youtube channels, and others are helping to reach larger audiences, but also how these are not yet fully accepted in traditional academic circles as accomplishments through "tenure track" i.e. 

For lack of time, and because what happens when two Juarenses are left to talk about their life experiences in the U.S.?, we didn't get to talk about architecture and space. But the promise for a future recording of an episode where such topics are going to be discussed was made. From colonial architecture and its systems of oppression. Where does it come from? (not just Spain) and, What of it has prevailed in modern and contemporary architecture in Mexico?... and much more to come in a future episode.

Reccomendations

Silencing the Past by Michael-Rolph Trouillot

Unsettling Journeys - Youtube Channel 

Music

Colombian group - Meridian Brothers

Album - Cumbia Siglo XXI

Colombiana by Niño de Elche

In this episode, i talk to Eduardo Rega Calvo who's research and design work focus on architecture's capacity to translate, operate in, and contribute to insurgent social and political movements. Eduardo is an architect, urban designer, and researcher based in New York. He is a graduate architecture faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, where he teaches history/theory seminars, design studios and runs a summer program in Colombia. His most recent project, Architectures of Refusal aims to compile an atlas of social mobilization against capitalism, colonialism, and human rights violations by uncovering their spatial manifestations, urbanism, and architectures. We talk about decolonizing, decolonization, and anticolonization strategies in architecture and teaching architecture. Eduardo talks to us about his projects of publishing and research, and how that relates to his teaching strategies and methodologies. We discuss grassroots organization based architecture, commonspoly as a method, and the white savior complex that reigns architecture practice. 

Recommendations. 

Change the Wolrd Without Taking Power by John Holloway

The Rebel by Albert Camus 

Commonospoly

Parasite Directed by Bong Joon Ho

Shoplifters Directed by Hirokazo Koreeda

In this episode, I talk to Luis Carranza a researcher whose work focuses primarily on modern architecture and art in Latin America (with an emphasis on Mexico). His work emphasizes how the relationships between social, literary, philosophical, and theoretical ideas impact the conceptualization and materialization of architecture and design. Luis is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and Professor of Architecture and of Art and Architectural History at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. He obtained his B.Arch. at the University of Southern California and his PhD in Architectural History and Theory from Harvard University. He has published Architecture as Revolution: Episodes in the History of Modern Mexico (University of Texas Press, 2010) and Modern Architecture in Latin America: Art, Technology, Utopia (with Fernando Lara, University of Texas Press, 2015). We talked about writing history, researching, and doing archival work in Latin America and specifically in México, and how the culture of material conservation and access needs to change. We also discuss the work of women architects in Latin America and México, and how it hasn't been included in the narrative of modern architecture of the territory, its link to the archive culture, and the need to research and publication of those histories. We discussed teaching history of Latin America, the meaning of being modern in these territories, and how these courses are still on the margins of the narratives of modern architecture history. Luis told us about his courses, the material they produce, and why they are still considered non-western histories. 

Recommendations

Vivienda y Ciudad - Wladimiro Acosta

Nice Try Podcast - With Avery Trufelman

The World as an Architectural Project by Gabriel Kozlowski, Hashim Sarkis, and Roi Salgueiro Barrio

Fantasma by Lisandro Alonso

Güeros by Alonso Ruizpalacios