Joe Galarza

4 Murals

Joe Galarza is a visual artist and musician who grew up in El Sereno, an area of Los Angeles surrounded with gang violence and much self-hate. He is a painter, muralist, sculptor, musician, instrument maker and an arts educator. Joe teaches at community centers and correctional facilities with youth and strives to bring resources through the arts that can serve for a better alternative. His goal is to share with them that they can change and endeavor toward self-determination for a better future despite any odds they face. When Joe is not playing the role of teacher, he plays bass for internationally known music group AZTLAN UNDERGROUND, which has toured throughout the United States, Spain, France, Basque country, Mexico, Australia, Venezuela, Canada, and throughout Indian Country using music as an educational tool to empower community.

 

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(ElociN) Nicole Olivieri Pagán

The sinking of the tank

This large-scale piece (30inx48in) is a dedication to the environmental beauty that Puerto Rico has to offer. The surrealist aspect of this piece can be seen in the mountainous image of mother Earth absorbing sunlight and feeding it to the mangrove tree, offering life to the flora and fauna in the image. The tank in the image holds a heavy history for the people of Puerto Rico, particularly that of the occupation of the US military in the small island of Vieques, where waste, land mines and tanks are still present and were never removed, to the point where certain parts of the island are blocked off to the local residents who call the island home. This tank is only an example of the reign of the US over Puerto Rico. The image shows the tank covered in indigenous taino symbols, along with the puertorican flag, as a message of hope for a future where our natural environment is loved and protected and the people are free of symbols of US colonization. Particular mention is made of the turpial, boa puertorrique~na and the puertorican parrot, visible on the branches of the tree, as endemic and endangered species of the island. Oil on canvas.

My Home is Not For Sale

This piece depicts recent occurrences within the island of Puerto Rico, involving the naming of the leaders of the Fiscal Control Board and the movement of US government toward constructing beach front hotels on the island, to bring in tourism and increase revenue. This process would devastate the natural environment of the island and put many endemic and endangered species of flora and fauna at risk. Many puertoricans have protested these actions and have been exposed to aggression by police officials in the process. The three figures in the image are Pedro Albizu Campos, Lolita Lebron and Ramon Emeterio Betances, famous nationalist activists who fought for the rights of Puerto Rico. They can be seen raising their fists in protest at a White hand holding an excavation vehicle. Oil on canvas.

Mayo 1ro

This piece was created on May 1st of 2017, as a symbol of solidarity with Puerto Rico, during a day of protest against the Fiscal Control Board. On this day, one of the biggest topics of protest was that of the threat to invade natural environments, such as beach fronts and natural reserves, to establish hotels and other tourism attractions. This initial protest was not the first of many, but simply one of the multiple protests against the US government attempting to take control of Puerto Rican lands and social workings, reaching back a century. Since the establishment of the Fiscal Control Board, a number of hospitals and schools have also been closed down, leaving many jobless. The image of a racially ambiguous figure, painted in black, with a star to symbolize the black and white flag of resistance, reaches ocean blue, as mangroves grow into an afro-like canopy, surrounded by bright yellow. The figure holds its head high in opposition.

Ambiente y Crisis/ Environment and Crisis

A class I took on environmental sociology touched on the topic of pollution to beach fronts, as hotels and other structures rise to increase tourism. The piece depicts a beautiful beach scenery with a woman symbolizing the different types of ancestry that make up Puerto Rican culture and Latin ethnicity, with roots grown into the ocean, as the threat of pollution and deforestation approaches. The figure is in position to push up off the rock, as branches grow into wings so that she can fly away from the environmental crisis. This image expresses the multifaceted issue of environmental threats, along with the people of the island’s population decreasing, leaving the island vacant for companies that seek to build more structures, destroy natural habitats and continue increasing pollution. This image also points to the feelings many experience of inability to stop what is occurring.

Nicole Olivieri Pagán (ElociN) is a Latinx artist and activist originally from Puerto Rico, currently residing in Camden, NJ. Although they have expertise in many art forms, their favorite mediums are ink, oil paint, nature photography, acrylic and linoleum print work. Through these mediums Nicole expresses their love for Puerto Rico and its people, as well as topics of environmental and social injustice, and inequality, with subtle hints of surrealism. Currently, Nicole is studying psychology, while working directly with youths in North Camden. Through it all, their artistic expression continues to expand, hopefully conveying a great need for social change. Art/ Arte de ElociN.

 

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Javier Perez

relics

laughing, my mother recounts when she was young, playing in the fields, she’d find splintered indigenous artifacts secreted in the dirt, the soil spreading its chismes, second-nature-like, my mother toyed the entombed back into childhood, doubling the earth as belly yet playground, crypt yet sandbox, vault yet open fields, death yet

had she only known, she speculates, museums would have paid unimaginable amounts to have the severed relics archived omphalically in Madrid, and i wonder what games she played as a child, if not those involving conquerors and losers who unlatch the ground to submerge their arrowheads and armaments

i long for a toy chest, desperately trying to unsurface the playthings buried in my body, for memories of an alternate past, one that does not involve conquerors, or losing our remains, beneath the doubled land

i am sepulchered, naïve as my mother in her youth

rorschachS

these men offer themselves     that we might measure our sanity        by the inkblots     they bear as faces,   universally met with repulsion;     by way of a joke   my mother makes     the prognosis:

The Sun and the Moon are talking one day / The Sun complains to the Moon how ugly humans’ faces are / The Moon laughs / disagrees / tells how every night She sees so many smiles looking up / one vast garden, She explains / The Sun, confounded, retorts / complains how each face He is greeted with / resembles rather a scrunched up ball of paper…

socrates’ man walked out     in daytime     he knows not of          moon-cycle calendars     so what does it mean to “do time”         is it an enlightened     state of knowing that     the hands of     white clocks         throw up the most     feared gang signs     that odysseus’   sirens         are still seizing men         off the corner         with “reason” as our only     conviction left

Javier Perez is a Salvadoran-American poet, teaching artist and PhD candidate at the University of Cape Town. He is co-founder of Swarthmore College’s spoken-word collective OASIS (Our Art Spoken in Soul); project manager of the Cape Town-based collective, Lingua Franca Spoken Word Movement; and co-founder of the CYPHER (Cape Youth Poetry Hub for Expression & Rhythm). Javier’s work appears in Acentos Review, New Contrast Literary Journal, Apricity Press, Puerto del Sol, and more. Javier’s manuscript was selected as a finalist for the Center for the Book Arts’ 2017 Chapbook Program. He is recipient of the Thomas J Watson Fellowship (2013-14), Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (2012-13), and Roosevelt Institute Fellowship (2013).

 

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Mikaela Miguel

Seven Steps to Coming Out as an Unapologetic Xingonx Incest Survivor

1
Become firmly grounded in this knowledge:
YOU ALREADY SURVIVED THE WORST!

2
Remove your physical body from the protect your family even when your
~familia~                            
doesn’t value your right to safety abyss.

This may require several attempts

Trust your feet.
Trust your intuition.
Trust the spirits.

3
Build a household in
The Borderlands: Brown Child, Sexual Abuse Survivor Edition.

Bring snacks.

4
Freely exist in this grim multiverse.
Become void of time, live outside of certainty
you’re releasing every pre-existing notion of reality.
Resist   rushing
this process  

PSA​:
​Delicious post-PTSD lucidity is exclusively accessible in
the Unrelenting Heat and Ice Storms epilogue portion of said frontera.

Breath.

5
You will em(body) simultaneous
rageshame     and     unapologetic   survivorship.
If you hold these feelings tenderly
becoming the self::parent you needed in

childhood becomes a cinch.

6
Abandon all hope to live a ‘normal life’.
Normal = silence
Your silence ≠ healing

7
Become disciplined in the art of forever remembering your
BodyMemoriesMortalFearFlashbacks
TriggersAnxietyPhysiologicalDisregulation
ChronicllnessesDesperationHeartPalpations
PTSDAutoImmunityMigrainesNightmares

PROTIP​:
After the mess comes the light.
Your meticulously
obscured heartaches and shame
compile themselves into a slideshow of betrayals.
You will bleed
this will save your life
eventually.

8
Praxis makes perfect.

nighttime phantasy about my phantom penis

awakened,
i’m levitating
ride hard, easy rider

the messiah.
a lion
i keep hxr.
still
distracted,

a transitory loneliness.

Do i think if i cry,
i’ll fail??

aren’t we the chosen people?

come
into this unit,
like a slippery slope
i unravel, reveal

a soft head.

walk on water,
i hear hym say.

Mikaela Miguel (pronounced mee-KY-el-ah mee-gual) is a Two-Spirit Shamxn, Activist and Creator whose gender is an amalgamation of radical Trans and Xicanx cultura. In 2015 they alchemized Ihiyotl, a decolonized community healing practice centering the emotional needs of QTPoC & trauma survivors. Mikaela’s work at Ihiyotl is grounded in their belief liberation is only possible when the entire Self is engaged. Mikaela began disassembling the heteropatriarchy in 2017 via the Trans is Magick Collective, a Trans PoC lead art collective building visibility and resilience through celebration. 

Peep them smoking mugwort & predicting the future in occupied Lenape territory, commonly known as New York City.

 

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Mya Morrison-Middleton

the wires are buried deep inside Tangaroa

Locations, art vs human, the fracture between the art economy and people, the careless way institutions are indebting young artists who are overqualified and underskilled, the narrative of white male artists as genius, buzzwords, false engagements, how to decolonise ur life in quick easy steps lol, decolonising the white cube, a romanticised notion of art as therapeutic, practice as catharsis, critiquing modes of production, exhaustion, illness, physical disasters, precarity, inherited mamae, the matrix of whiteness, performing an identity, disassociating/reassociating, 100 artworks you have to see before you die, artworks you experienced that altered your sense of the world, crying looking at a Monet/punching a Monet, fiction and reality as concepts on a spectrum not a binary, rationality vs emotion, boring abstract painting, the redundancy of art criticism, the friction of being both Pākehā and Māori, the history of tangata and whenua as one, how to find an identity again, you can have memories that are not yours, pairing words & art, who is art for, where does it belong, how to make work that isn’t an art school in-joke, the woman as narcissistic, who did the institution forget? how to be mixed, hybrid 101, being fractured into gestures or markers of a race, my body is a fraction, urgency and anxiety, disparate prose sitting next to each other, the destruction of water is the destruction of hapū, the biography of space, Google searching your ancestral lands, binaries are colonial constructs, cataloguing the self, western constructs of history, fact vs myth vs physical reality, i am all my ancestors and they are all me, survival tactics, how boring is a wall text? reassociating practice to life and death, intimacy, the end of it all, the taste of concrete dust in my sinuses.

The apocalypse is finally birthed from capitalism and we spiral into te kore, the void.

Ko te pū

Hine-nui-te-pō storms back into te ao from the kōpū of Papatūānuku, with obsidian teeth baring, to reclaim her time.

Te more

Rūaumoko stomps violently underground, and the hundreds of volcanoes across Aotearoa spew pyroclastic clouds into the sky and land.

Te weu

The marae stand, untouched.

Te aka

Mahuika scratches fire into acres of gentrification.

Te rea

Tearing embers from roads, she forms new pa sites and neighbourhoods.

Ko te wao nui

Rangi-nui weeps the sky on us, holding us in a liquid korowai of protection.

Te kune

The acres of wetlands which were drained by the English are replenished.

Te whē

The wires are buried deep inside Tangaroa,1 connecting oceans and dance floors to feed political and social rhizomes.

Te kore

Chords of filtering systems clear waterways from the pollution of unethical farming.

Te pō

The arteries of ancestral rivers are revived, estuaries are overcome with impenetrable mud and ngahere.

Ki ngā tangata Māori

The ongoing transfer of intergenerational knowledge is maintained through peer to peer networks. This knowledge is stored safely by each marae in microchips made from minute ocean algae.

Nā Rangi rāua ko Papa

Museums and galleries send the indigenous tāonga in their collections back to their rightful owners.

Ko tēnei te tīmatanga o te ao

Credit card debt is nullified.

Ko tēnei te tīmatanga o te ao

Māori life expectancy extends.

On a hilly pa, overlooking the ocean a poutama trellis of plastic and phone cables sway, waving in the wind on the atea.2 The colonial masters are sent home, on the last four ships.

1 Piu-Piu Maya Turei, Karakia (2016).
2 Jacqueline Fraser Matakitaki at Otakou marae (1993). Matakitaki loosely translates to ‘the view’.

Mya Morrison-Middleton (Ngāi Tūāhuriri) is a writer, curator and DJ based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. She plays deconstructed club bangers under the name GG with her boo Brown Boy Magik. She is a member of Fresh and Fruity alongside Hana Pera Aoake, an indigenous art collective with a multidisciplinary practice. Her own writing practice attempts to form a praxis for imagining a future oriented narrative of indigenous sovereignty. Somehow she’s scammed her way into theatre and recently presented a play during Matariki at Basement Theatre.

 

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Sarasija Subramanian

Monoliths

My work unfolds as an assemblage–displayed as a collective of various media that surround the viewer; turning the act of collecting specimens on its head and looking at it from an evocative and open-ended view. Searching for ways to visualize and present ideas of ‘protection’, ‘immortalization’ and ‘embellishment’ in dialogue with those of colonization, taming of the other, ‘wildness’ and violence, the context in which Hal Foster positions an archival impulse may define my present preoccupation best. Constantly referring to compulsion, repetition and the death drive, Foster says ‘Perhaps any archive is founded on disaster or its threat; pledged against a ruin that it cannot forestall’. This in turn raises questions of normalization, hierarchy and even gentrification as the natural repercussion of realty–violence as a way to understand the other, its possible justifications, where they fall short, and if this ‘ruin’ we can archive but not stop, can itself be a means to an end.

Monuments of Memory

As the act of collecting takes the forefront, the work enters the realm of part process, part performance and part installation, each step documenting the previous, but doing so actively so as to add to and remove from it. Even within the media I use–digital and alternative photography, etching, drawing, molds, casts, and mixed media–there is the quality of being able to cut out the noise that surrounds a form and isolate it, linking back to the schizophrenic and the intense feeling of the present (Deleuze and Guattari). The body of works done in Biella, Italy under the project Tame is to establish ties, push the thread of this schizophrenic perception and violence in interactions further.

The right to ‘own’ something that was once not ours has come to be inescapably preceded by the attempt to ‘know’, especially when colonization as a wave is viewed in the South East Asia. In fact, to date, large parts of the archives and database that we have access to about our own country’s resources come from the collections and analyses of the colonizers; collections and documents that were put together with the primary aim as understanding and consequently controlling. In this sense it is impractical to talk of the Indian Subcontinent and its present cultural state without taking the West into account. If realty is opened up to address ownership, we cannot look at what our property is today without going back to the fact that we ourselves were once viewed as realty; a canalized river and its relationship with the barrier itself, for example.

(An)archive

The theory of the ‘Third Space’ which is attributed to Homi K. Bhabha, talks of hybridity as synonymous with normality, stressing on how inherent national identity is often questionable, owing to the waves of foreign rulers and powers. One of the various points of departures from this theory explores the idea of the third space within the construct of what biodiversity is today – an understanding that the point where the manmade and the natural meet is where true biodiversity lies; no longer in the depths of the ocean or in the untouched groves in the Amazon, instead at these points of mutual existence.

This is where the works titled Monuments of Memory come into existence, each systematically documented from canalized rivers across the world, acting as markers of the elusive ‘third space’.

Addressing this violence by being aware of the control I myself impose, but yet guardedly permitting science and myth to guide and point to certain openings, most often my interventions are minimal, allowing the object itself to hold its own ground, creating an archive of not only the forms but of their new-found contexts and narratives.

Alternative Botanicals

From old English volumes of The Herbal Historie of Plants to Indian religious texts, African and Celtic myths, catholic votives of Ex Voto, Imperial archives of the Indian Subcontinents flora and fauna and scientific hatcheries, my practice and research both continuedly straddle aesthetics and science. This need for mutual exchange often creates ruptures in scientific fact and introduces what may be called superstitions and fables. Alternative knowledge–myths, origins, obscure traces and perhaps even lose ends are ‘systems’ that are deemed as non-scientific and often left out of its discourse; these alternative systems are of interest to me and often act as points of departure within my process. Such departures come into play in works such as (An)archive and its inherent totemic and fetishizing qualities, Alternative Botanicals and their addressing of what ‘true’ knowledge is and Bred in Captivity.

Bred in Captivity

The project Bred in Captivity was developed specifically in Ireland, after having spent six weeks at a coral hatchery in the countryside. The idea of bred in captivity is itself one of conflicting morals, where though the creature will never know of its true habitat, it will also never have a chance to miss home. The way that cultural rifts, borders and shifts are dynamically altering from one generation to the next today, the chance to see the such an idea in a micro scale gave it an interesting sense of intrigue. Such a scientifically charged space, as a coral hatchery, being seen in line with the vast and untouched landscapes of Ireland, and stories of Druids and Loch Ness around every corner gave an entirely different entry into the relationship of landscape, sea, man and nature.

Bred in Captivity – Sea Monsters

The widespread acceptance of the Anthropocene, and the constant need for humans to now expect the most improbable (and often thought impossible) responses from nature, force me to look at realty as something a lot larger than what it was understood as even a few decades ago. ‘To look into the tiger’s eyes is to recognize a presence of which you are already aware; and in that moment of contact you realize that this presence possesses a similar awareness of you, even though it is not human’ says it best, where what we have deemed as lesser or at least as something we have knowledge and control of, makes us aware of its own cognizance of us.

Tame is to establish ties

Tangentially, violence–and the premise that any interaction we may have with a demarcated ‘other’ (be it hierarchical or otherwise) has an inherent sense of violence attached to it is another aspect I have just touched upon.

Sarasija attained her M.F.A in Painting from M.S.U. Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, India (2017) after completing her B.F.A in Painting with a Minor in Graphics from M.S.U. Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, India (2015). She has participated in several shows including They Walk Amongst Us, Don’t They, at 1Shanthiroad, Bangalore, Embark with Gallery Ark, Vadodara (2018), Building Bridges Exhibition I, II and III in A.M. Gallery (Kolkata), Art Konsult (New Delhi) and Gallery Sumukha (Bangalore) in 2018, Archival Dialogues and Archival Dialogues Revisited with Priyasri Art Gallery, Kotachiwadi, Mumbai (2017), Art el Centro, UNIDEE-Cittadellarte, Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, Italy (2016), and The First Act, Faculty Gallery and Mayfair Atrium, M.S.U. Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, India (2014).

She was a resident at 1ShantiRoad Bangalore (2018), Art+Science Interface Residency at the Inagh Valley Trust, Ireland (2017-2018), a Studio Residency at Space118, Mumbai (2017), and the Building Bridges Project with Emergent Art Space, USA (2017).   

 

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Sofía Córdova

River is time

Excerpt from Echoes of a Tumbling Throne (Odas al fin de los tiempos) Liveles 5-7

A live and video performance suite imagining our world in a future timeline which covers 1500 years. The landscape of this future world—its denizens, artifacts, and culture—provides both a site for considering new realities and alternative histories, unfettered by the current social order, while serving as a distorted lens aimed at our present in keeping with the tradition of dystopian science fiction. 

The piece is scored by original music ranges from long form experimental scores to reworkings of pop songs originally in English which are translated into Spanish and radically changed to reveal abstract timelines and narratives from within this speculative fiction. These songs are scored by XUXA SANTAMARIA, my music project with Matthew Gonzalez Kirkland. 

Stills from Echoes of a Tumbling Throne (Odas al fin de los tiempos) Livel 8: COOERPOH A COOERPOH, 2016-2017

Once a god, having achieved the singularity, the yt man RayKay_16 is now an irradiated pariah and seeks to be mortal again at any cost.

Echoes of a Tumbling Throne (Odas al fin de los tiempos) Livel 8: COOERPOH A COOERPOH and The Kingdom is Me

As installed at Southern Exposure, 2017. Images by Phil Maisel.

Selections for SIGILOS

Pigment prints corresponding to each of the characters in the piece printed as banners on silk.

Excerpt from Echoes of a Tumbling Throne (Odas al fin de los tiempos) Livel 8: COOERPOH A COOERPOH, 2016-2017

Three apparitions based on cargo cult inspired interpretations of Santeria’s Orishas conjured up to examine the role of myth-making and spirituality during times of duress.

Excerpt from BILONGO LILA: Nobody Dies in a Foretold War

Stills from Echoes of A Tumbling Throne (Odas al fin de los tiempos) Liveles #1,2,3,4, 2014

Born in 1985 in Carolina, Puerto Rico and currently based in Oakland, California, Sofía Córdova’s work considers sci-fi and futurity, dance and music culture(s), the internet, mystical things, extinction and mutation, migration, and climate change under the conditions of late capitalism and its technologies.

She first moved to the US to attend the early college program at Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. She completed her BFA at St. John’s University in conjunction with the International Center for Photography in New York City in 2006. In 2010 She received her MFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. She has exhibited and performed at SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Arizona State University Museum, the Vincent Price Museum, and other venues internationally such as Art Hub in Shanghai and the MEWO Kunsthalle in Germany. She has participated in residencies at the BAVC in San Francisco, Arteles in Finland, Mills College Museum in Oakland and the ASU Museum’s International Artist residency in Phoenix. Last fall she produced a new suite of performances, videos and sound compositions in Spain in an artist exchange supported by Spanish embassy in Washington DC and the city of Málaga, Spain. Most recently she was an artist in residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts. 

Her work is currently featured in the latest edition of Bay Area Now at San Francisco’s YBCA. It is also part of Pier 24’s and The Whitney Museum’s permanent collections and has been the subject of a First Look feature in Art in America. 

She is one half of the music duo, XUXA SANTAMARIA. In addition to discrete projects, performances, and albums the duo collectively scores all of her video and performance work. 

Sofía Córdova is a conceptual, interdisciplinary artist with a focus on performance, music and video from Carolina, Puerto Rico. While the specific interests of her practice and how they’re made manifest in the work vary greatly. In the past she’s materially and conceptually employed pop music, science fiction, taxidermy, prepper culture. Her work is at its core interested in: the future as a site for alternative histories, climate change and colonialism, the contemporary conditions created by late capitalism and its technologies and the mythic and mystic mechanisms our species employ in making sense of the unimaginable. While remaining ambivalent about whether humans can be redeemed and survive in the face of a changing earth, she sees the future, despite the dystopian undertones of the work, as a site of possibility. The work asks: what forms of liberation lie in clearing the decks and starting anew for those bodies whose lives have historically been predicated by the violence of marginality?

 

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Global Futures Lab

The Global futures lab projecT

Critical design, speculative design and design fiction are methodological frameworks in which objects are seen as facilitators of conversations rather than goods to be bought or used.

Bruce Sterling has defined design fiction as “the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change.” Speculative objects, then, help people understand the future consequences of present choices perhaps even more effectively than virtual images or written text, and consequently, enable them to engage with transformation over time.

In the last decade, an impressive creative effort has been dedicated to this field, producing countless scenarios and fostering rich debates about ethics, technology and society. The vast majority of these future visions were and still are, however, a representation of the fears and the dreams of a limited part of the global community. Further, the aesthetic of this work has drawn liberally from the Hollywood imaginary or the design establishment’s style.

The Global Futures Lab is a series of international workshops that aims to counteract the bias and stereotypes of so-called “Western futures” and foster different futures linked to specific geo-cultural
locations. Students from Isfahan (Iran), Ahmedabad (India), Lima (Peru), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and Havana (Cuba) were invited to reflect on their environments, traditions and beliefs, and to envision futures respectful of their cultural needs and coherent with their distinct idea of progress.

In opposition to widespread technological determinism, in which society seems shaped by new technologies, the Global Futures Lab endorses a sort of “cultural determinism” in which any idea of the future should be built on localized visions, with an intention to open dialogue about pluralistic future perspectives.

Preserve The Memory

A project by Aida limón, Cynthia Santos, Gisell Holguín, Lima, Peru

“It is a way to keep the dead alive and to realize how we evolved generation after generation”

Juan y Samiq habían quedado en comer al día siguiente. Sus pulseras se encargaron de establecer una hora en la que los dos estuviesen disponibles.

Llegada la hora en que Juan se tenía que alistar para el encuentro, su ropero tenia listas las sugerencias de ropa adecuada según el clima del día y el tipo de evento. La pulsera de Samiq le aviso cuando Juan había llegado. Los amigos decidieron que cocinarían algo pues pronto seria la hora de almorzar. Samiq consultó con el dispositivo de la cocina qué recetas se podían preparar con los ingredientes disponibles en el edificio. El dispositivo guardaba en sí recetas contemporáneas como recetas grabadas por su abuela. Decidieron que cocinarían arroz Haylli, y en cuestión de minutos los ingredientes necesarios estuvieron listos en el buzón de la cocina. Los amigos fueron guiados paso a paso en la preparación de su platillo. Durante el proceso los dos reconocían que la experiencia de cocinar los hacía sentir vivos, el olor, los colores y texturas de los ingredientes los satisfacía. También disfrutaban el hecho de preparar una receta que sabían que sus antepasados comían muchos años atrás.


Al estar lista la comida, alistaron el espacio para comer en los platos modulares que mantienen la comida caliente y advierten al terminar de comer en qué color de buzón deben echarse los residuos. Juan y Samiq, se separan. Juan debe ir a una taller de intercambio de música experimental y Samiq tiene una reunión familiar.


Dispositivo que almacena historias a través de generaciones, para que estas sigan vivas por más que sus protagosnitas ya no estén vivos. Es una manera de mantener vivos a los muertos, de darnos cuenta cómo evolucionamos generación tras generación y de obtener datos de nuestros familiares a partir de su ADN.

Juan and Samiq had agreed to get together for lunch the next day. Their digital bracelets were in charge to establish a convenient time for both to meet.

When the time to get ready came, Juan’s wardrobe had suggestions ready for him about possible  suitable clothes according to the weather of the day and the type of event. Samiq’s bracelet notified Juan of Juan’s arrival. The two friends decided to start cooking something because lunchtime was approaching. Samiq consulted with the kitchen device what recipes could be prepared with the ingredients available in the building. The device’s archive contained modern recipes and  as well as the ones recorded by his grandmother. They decided they would cook “Haylli” rice, and in a matter of minutes the necessary ingredients were ready in the kitchen mailbox. The friends were guided step by step in the preparation of their dish. During the process they both recognized that the cooking experience made them feel alive, the smell, the colors and textures of the ingredients satisfied them. They also enjoyed preparing a recipe they knew their ancestors ate many years ago.


When the food was ready, they prepared the dining table using modular dishes that helped keeping the food warm. When the food was finished the dishes changed color indicating the recycling nature of the leftover.


Juan and Samiq split up. Juan must go to an experimental music workshop while Samiq has a family reunion.

The pattern edged on the surface of the object has been designed in collaboration with the indigenous Shipibo comunity in Cantagallo, Lima.  With an estimated population of over 20,000, the Shipibo-Conibo represent approximately 8% of the indigenous registered population. Originally from the the Amazonian forest, large amounts of the population have relocated to urban areas to gain access to better educational and health services, as well as to look for alternative sources of monetary income.

Device that stores stories through generations, so that they remain alive even if their protagonists are no longer with us. It is a way to keep alive the dead, to realize how we evolve generation after generation and to obtain data from our relatives from their DNA.

Listening to the Trees

A project by Hemra Teke, Farshad Saffari Ghandehari, Mohammad Ghasemi / Isfahan, Iran

“Dargoosh is a product for listening to the voices and memories of the trees. The trees have spirits and they are affected by their surroundings.”

Once upon a time, a day in many years later, in northern jungles of Iran, people live in tree houses.

Gholi is one of these habitants who lives in his hazelnut house.

A morning, when the roaster sings, he wakes up.

He washes his face with his blanket.

He walks through his green bathroom where he has his own organic garden.

He looks in the mirror and then he takes a look at the photos of his grandfather, he sees his eyes are blue
so he decides to use herbal tea that changes his eye color.

He looks at his plants and he finds out he runs out of blue herbal tea.

He turns back into his room and turns his bed upside down so as to transform it to a treadmill.

He has to run on it every day to generate the electricity of his house.

He takes some purple tomatoes to go to Jafar’s home, who always have blue herbal tea, and eat bread,
cheese and tomato for breakfast.

He looks around on the way Jafar’s home and thanks God for his great life.

He rings Jafar’s house doorbell and Jafar invites him to his house for having breakfast.

Jafar suggests to listen to some tree music while they are eating.

Music comes to the moment that reminds them about a good memory, so, Jafar and Gholi talk about it, while their eyes color is changing to blue.

Dargoosh, Reunion of man and nature and the music of the trees. In a future that, the trees are much important than before they are known as the most important species, “Dargoosh” is a product for listening to the voices and memories of the trees. The trees that have spirits and they will be affected by their surroundings. Dargoosh is made of two words, “Dar” that means Tree in Persian, and “Goosh” that means ear. Dargoosh is a product that has two separate parts, one is a belt that will be enclosed around the tree and the second part will be the player and instrumentalist of the voices of the tree that will be placed in a home, where has the warmth and friendliness of the family and friends. Dargoosh’s belt has a technology that works with sending and receiving electromagnetic waves into the tree and sends the data to the receiver inside the player part of the Dargoosh in the house. There is a controlling knob that helps the user to choose the kind of memories and the time of them and send them wirelessly to the player. Setting the belt up happens on the belt that is on the tree to keep the user and the tree in constant interaction. The main body of Dargoosh is like traditional Tar, a musical instrument from Iran. It is crafted by hand from berry tree. The process of making sound in Dargoosh is almost like the traditional Tar but instead of having strings on the inner stomach skin of sheep there is a comb and pin mechanism under the skin that in the final product Dargoosh player is not only a player it is almost an instrumentalist that receives the notes from the tree and plays them.

Karma Coin

A project by Harshali Paralikar, Annu Mathew, Jansher Aidan Bakhshi, Lorenz Roland, Ahmedabad, India

“The more good you do, the high will be the value of your coin.”

Praveen walked back from his office. It was a warm July evening and something in the air made him take a detour from his normal path. Walking down the lane away from the main road, he now entered a quite complex of houses lined with tall Ashoka trees on either side of the road. Parked at the gate of one of the houses, his eyes fall upon a rarity that he didn’t expect to see in his wildest dreams. A Royal Enfield h-65, one of only two in the world, a true beauty of the past, stood there with the keys in ignition, beckoning him closer. In that moment Praveen knew that it had to be his. He had spent the past year on a fantastic Karma score with not a single crime in his log but the thought that now hit his mind could potentially change that. The next few minutes were a blur and in no time was Praveen headed home, this time on a bike. Despite expecting it, the cool coin still managed to surprise him. It wasn’t the first time but it had been a while. He waited anxiously for it to stop. When it finally did, he felt like a weight had lifted off. His mind was clearer now. As the wind hit his face and he glided along the road, Praveen noticed the flowers, the decorations, the lights. It was Diwali night. Tonight was the night of good deeds, as always.

He raced towards the city circle to check the scoreboard, his heart filled with a new sense of foreboding. The digits were slowly starting to form now and Praveen watched as the new number glowed – 00000000001, and below it were 00978358417

One bad deed on an auspicious day, only his own.

Praveen owned a brass etched karma coin which was newly developed by the government. It has a LED display on the back of the coin which also has an intricate etched work representing the Ashoka chakra. The front of the coin is a basic adaptation of the existing rupee coin. The rupee symbol is replaced by the karma symbol and an endless knot representing the karma is in the centre. The graphical representation of the lotus from the rupee coin is also seen on the karma coin. The lotus is also a symbol of karma.

Each city also has a scoreboard showing the number of crimes or good deeds done by the people. For instance in our story, Praveen does one bad thing and the scoreboard changes to 00000000001.

The coin alerts its user through temperature also. It gets warm when you do a good deed and it gets cold if you do a crime or a bad deed. The value on the coin also changes with the deed. The more good you do, the high will be the value. This coin is used for your daily transactions and it only works when used by the owner himself. The coin could be purchased from any government banks and a person can only own one coin at a time. These coins are available in various choice of metals like silver, brass, gold, etc.

ISOLATION CAFE

A project by Milkessa Abera, Solomon Kifle, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

“He can feel the very distance between everyone. Everyone in its own little bubble. Everyone together and connected, but yet isolated.”

There was always a thought in Kia’s mind. Why every one do seem to forget about it. And their total oblivion about the control over their life. For them every day life is easier. The connection and information you have about everything is important and unbelievable. Even scarier sometimes It’s part of everyday use and its even part of who they are now.

He can see the confusion and disbelieve in their eyes even his. When they are without it. The matter in-fact, it consumes him with fear and confusion, with the sudden change with out it. Not being able to reach out, the total dependency on it and the disability to form attachment to a person and socialize as human being.

So, he goes back to the reality he and everyone have been familiar with for so long. The desire to see what he want to see in things and in people. For him it’s much easier to understand people around him with it.

The idea of being face to face with a person and talking to person and having intimate conversation have become an illusion to think or dream about. Everyone in his family are consumed with it. It’s one thing everyone have in common. Even if he lives with his family.

He can feel the very distance between everyone. Everyone in its own little bubble. Everyone together and connected, but yet isolated.

GallinazO

A project by Ysabel Adelaida Bayona Isidro, Lima, Peru

“Thomas always sees in the sky black buzzards with helmet and cape, he calls them “guardians.”

Samantha y su pequeño hijo Thomas juegan en el parque. Ellos disfrutan todas las tardes de verano en el parque. Thomas siempre ve en el cielo gallinazos negros con casco y capa, él los llama “guardianes”. Su mamá le dice: ellos son gallinazos y su trabajo es limpiar todos los días nuestra ciudad, ellos son nuestros amigos.

Thomas los quiere conocer, pero es muy difícil porque él siempre los ve volando en el cielo. Él sabe que puede conocerlos si él ensuciara la calle, entonces él decide hacerlo. Él ensucia la ciudad y minutos después tres gallinazos estaban cerca a él. Uno de ellos lo escanea y le dice: tú no deberías ensuciar la ciudad. ¿Por qué lo haces? Thomas le dice: yo quería conocerte y preguntarte sobre tu trabajo. El guardián le dice: mi trabajo es mantener limpia nuestra ciudad, y que las personas entiendan que esto es importante porque nosotros podríamos evitar enfermedades y salvar nuestro planeta Tierra.  Mi casco me ayuda a escanear a las personas cuando ellos ensucian la calle e identifica quienes son, y mi capa me ayuda a protegerme y tiene un Sistema de Identificación Global que ayuda a mis hermanos gallinazo a saber dónde estoy. Thomas entendió que es importante limpiar la ciudad.

Samantha and her little son Thomas play at the park. They have fun every afternoons of summer at the park. Thomas always sees in the sky black buzzards with helmet and cap, he calls them “guardians”. His mother says: they are buzzards and their job are clean everyday our city, they are our friends.

Thomas wants to met them, but it is very difficult because he always sees them fly in the sky. He knows that he could met them if he get the street dirty, so he decided to do it. He gets the street dirty and few minutes later three buzzards were near him. One of them scan him and says: you should not the city dirty. Why are you doing? Thomas says: I want to met you and ask about your job. The guardian say him: my work is to keep clean our city, and people understand that it is important because we would can avoid diseases and save our planet Earth. My helmet helps to scan people when their get the street dirty and I identify who are them and my cap helps to protect me and it has Global Identification System that helps my brothers buzzards know where I am. Thomas understood that it is important to clean the city.

A Love Story

A project by Rajdeep Savenkar, Dishant Pradhan, Tirtha Mandal, Himadri Patel, Banani Das / Ahmedabad, India

“…then someone told me about sterilization, I understood what was going to happen to me.”

Samir lost grip of his girlfriend’s hand as the policemen dragged him out of the police van and into the sterilization center. He fell into a dark void of pain when he felt the cold sharp edge of the scissor touched his bear skin.

Samir fell into a pool of flashbacks of his wedding when his husband leaned forward to kiss him and he froze with disgust. He could see both of his fathers smiling with happiness.

Snap! Samir opened his eyes and found himself lying down on a bed with a bright holographic clock on the side table next to the bed which showed 10:30 am 7th Feb 2052. He rubbed his eyes and the blurry image of a silhouette against the window flooded with sunlight cleared up into a couple starring at him. It was his sister Pooja and her wife Mansi. 







Paolo Cardini is designer, educator, and researcher. He is Associate Professor at Rhode Island School of Design where he is also holding the role of Graduate Program Director within the Industrial Design Department. Paolo’s work ranges from product to interaction design with a particular interest in discursive and speculative design. His current research mostly focuses on the relationship between artifacts, identities, and globalization. Paolo asks serious questions about how we live and answers them with whimsical and playful designs. He regularly lectures in conferences and design schools worldwide contributing actively to the field with projects, papers and publications.

 

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Angel Dominguez

Truth #1

T H E Y
C A N’T
KILL US
A L L

Truth #2

THERE
I S N O
NATION
NO LINE

Untitled #1

TODO LO QUE
QUIERO
HACER ES
SOBREVIVIR
CON MIS
QUERIDXS
DESPUES DEL
APOCALIPSIS

Untitled #2

ALL I WANT
TO DO IS
SURVIVE
WITH MY
BELOVEDS
BEYOND THIS
APOCALYPSE

Pequeño Sueño#0

i
dreamt
you were
a
rosebush.

Angel Dominguez is a Latinx poet and artist of Yucatec Mayan descent, born in Hollywood, and raised in Van Nuys, CA by his immigrant family. He’s the author of Desgraciado (Econo Textual Objects, 2017), and Black Lavender Milk (Timeless Infinite Light, 2015). His work can be found in Brooklyn Magazine, Dreginald, Entropy, Queen Mobs, The Tiny The Wanderer, and elsewhere in print or on the internet. Follow him on Twitter @dandelionglitch or IRL in the redwoods, or ocean.

 

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HM

Reorienting the Gaze

HM is an Egyptian Anthropology undergraduate student in Toronto. She’s recently been especially interested in exploring mediums that exist unbounded by elitist walls, to express her frustrations with dominant representations of colonized people in general, and fellow Muslim women in particular. To this end, she’s excited to experiment with After Effects and Photoshop to create art imagining the decolonial.

Reorienting the Gaze Bibliography

1941 Manchester Evening News front page reporting capture of Benghazi, Libya. Digital Image. Alamy http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-1941-manchester-evening-news-front-pagereporting-capture-of-benghazi-72276197.html.

“Ancient Egyptian Music – Pharaoh Ramses II.” Youtube video, 4:18, Posted by “Derek Fiechter,” Posted Jan 11, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vslsS-Uu5x4.

Borges, Samuel. Young black / african american business woman using binoculars, isolated on white background. Digital Image. Shutterstock. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/ young-black-african-american-business-woman-134527640.

“Cairokee – Dinosaur (Official Music Video) / ﻛﺎﯾﺮوﻛﻲ – اﻟﺪﯾﻨﺎﺻﻮر .” Youtube video, 4:22, Posted by “CairokeeOfficial,” Posted Jul 27, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=_4zeNNSManE.

Clark, Timothy. 2013. US Politics New York Mayor Sex. Digital Image. Gettyimages. http://www.gettyimages.ca/license/174342338.

“Destination North Africa | National Geographic.” Youtube video, 5:06, Posted by “National Geographic,” Posted Aug 26, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpNvGd9GcY&t=52s.

“Edward Said explains Orientalism in 5 minutes.” Youtube video, 6:45, Posted by “Noam Chomsky Videos,” Posted Apr 3, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkEbi_rojII.

FRONT PAGE: ‘I CAN ONLY SEE HER EYES’. Digital Image. Paperboy https:// www.thepaperboy.com/australia/courier-mail/front-pages-today.cfm?frontpage=29383.

Lehnert, Rudolf and Franz Landrock. 1998. Orient 1904-1930. Umschau Braus.

Messara, Mohamed. 2011. Battle in Sirte. Digital Image. European Pressphoto Agency. http:// www.epa.eu/war-photos/armed-conflict-photos/battle-in-sirte-photos-50076898.

“Plane overhead sound effect.” Youtube video, 0:26, Posted by “Jojikiba,” Posted Nov 5, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNalChrotUc.

Pratt, Leslie. 2008. MQ-1 Predator unmanned aircraft. Digital Image. US Air Force photo http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/081131-F-7734Q-001.jpg.

“President’s wife makes radio address to Afghan women.” Youtube video, 2:35, Posted by “AP Archive,” Posted Jul 21, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv1xZ_Nusgo&t=37s.

“The Oppositional Gaze.” Youtube video, 3:30, Posted by “Akeem Muhammad,” Posted Apr 20, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2Jg4wTthDM.

The wars on Iraq and Libya: Front pages from 2003 and 2011. Digital Image. Indymedia https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/2011/03/476337.html.

“TOP10 GLITCH Sound Effect [High Quality].” Youtube video, 0:28, Posted by “Sound Effects,” Posted May 29, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsw0dl50nxg.

“ ﻣﺎﺟﺪ اﻟﻌﯿﺴﻰ – ھﻮاﺟﯿﺲ | Majedalesa – Hwages.” Youtube video, 2:52, Posted by “majedalesa | ﻣﺎﺟﺪ اﻟﻌﯿﺴﻰ,” Posted Dec 23, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rUn2j1hLOo.

 

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