This week, IMAGINAL DISCO is pleased to present a special LIVE recording of YEAR ONE: Meaning-Making for the Commons, the first public roundtable discussion of the ongoing “From Survival to Sanctuary | Speculative Solidarities in Conversation" series. This episode is presented unedited and uncut, and the full transcript is available above alongside a video of the session! For this session, I (your host, Elæ Moss) am joined by Marcelo López Dinardi and Clarinda Mac Low.
In this conversation we are thinking together about what Speculative Solidarities look like as an approach to personal and collective transformative being-in-the-world, and invite the public to dialogue with us, as three creative practitioners working with commons tools and strategies.
Some of the questions we’re asking in this roundtable are:
How are thinkers and makers across disciplines approaching the commons? How is this social practice sometimes invisible, operating in the margins or in liminal spaces between fields and systems of power?
What does meaning-making for a range of publics look like in art, design, pedagogy and practice -- in, beyond, and perhaps despite institutions?Who is building tools, strategies, and resources for future publics? How do we recognize, locate, share, and build on these blueprints?
We also dive into our own and the public’s familiarity with the concept of the Commons itself, walking through some of our ideas as well as some of our projects that approach this idea in different ways. (Want to explore further? Here’s a definition from the p2p/peer2peer foundation I shared during our talk).
And: we consider our “big arc,” within the framework of my YEAR ONE project, which invites us all to make a commitment to being part of the new story. What’s going on in your revolution, if it’s already started?
A few of those offerings, for you to check out, are:
Making the Public Commons (Marcelo, 2021) — an “installation and conversation marathon project” for which there’s a full playlist I’ve embedded above.
Sunk Shore (Clarinda, 2017-current) — “a speculative experiential tour of our climate crisis future that takes place along specific shorelines.”
Speculative Solidarities (Elæ, 2018-current) — “a network of tools and infrastructures built to adapt to and with communities, investigating potential forms of systemic innovation across space, place, body, structure and biome”—
Bennington Interventions, APRIORI @ Ars Electronica, training videos archive
Find more about my incredible interdisciplinary guests this week — and more about this series, and what’s coming next, below. You have two more chances in April and May to join us live, we’d love to have you! You’ll find registration links here as well.
About the Series:
From Survival to Sanctuary is running simultaneously as a mini-season of podcasts (find episode one, “The Get Along Gang,” here) as well as a public roundtable series offering Speculative Solidarities in Conversation.
The discussion series invites the public to join in collectively imagining the path that might allow humans to take this journey (from a state of survival to that of lasting sanctuary), alongside a stellar roster of visionary, change-making guests across fields and disciplines. Together, we consider what shifts we might implement to move us away from our conditioned distrust, the invented illusion of scarcity, and competitive drive towards embodying liberatory care. We hope you will join us — whether via the archive or live at a future event (more info / register here) to dig into these questions – and ask your own – as we explore the ways radical humans across practices and disciplines are modeling transformative Speculative Solidarities.
Our three initial live events, hosted by Elæ Moss and co-produced by Autonomous Mechanics Studio and the Center for the the Advancement of Public Action (CAPA) at Bennington College, are:
April 9, 2024: YEAR ONE: Meaning-Making for the Commons - with Marcelo López Dinardi and Clarinda Mac Low [info and registration]
April 30, 2024: ARCHIVE + ACCESS / MOVING and BEING MOVED: Documentation as Radical Praxis - with Luciana Achugar, Chloë Bass, and Arien Wilkerson [info and registration]
May 14, 2024: QUEERING THIRD SPACES: Blueprinting Futures of Care - with Micah Bucey, Dina Janis, and Ira Rain [info and registration]
Joining me for these conversations are choreographer, dancer and somatic practitioner Luciana Achugar, social practice artist Chloë Bass, radical faith leader Micah Bucey, researcher and architect Marcelo Lopez Dinardi, director, producer and performance educator Dina Janis, interdisciplinary performer and artist Clarinda Mac Low, healer and sensorial artist Ira Rain, and multidisciplinary artist and producer Arien Wilkerson—all of whom practice radical pedagogy alongside our creative and public facing work.
More about this week’s collaborators:
MARCELO LÓPEZ-DINARDI (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Texas A&M University. He is interested in the scales of design, the role of the public and commons, and in architecture as an expanded media. He is the editor of Architecture from Public to Commons (Routledge, 2023) and Degrowth (ARQ, 2022). He is working on the project Cemented Dreams: Material and Ecological Stories in Puerto Rico. The project examines the role of cement, architecture, the environment, and politics in the context of colonial Puerto Rico to the present day as a fellow of the Mellon-funded initiative Bridging the Divides: Post Disaster Futures Study Group of CENTRO’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, CUNY. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico and an MS in Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices for Architecture from the GSAPP at Columbia University.
More at https://marcelolopezdinardi.com
CLARINDA MAC LOW (she/her) started out working in dance and molecular biology and now creates participatory events investigating social constructs and corporeal experience, and new institutional forms. She is also a design and technology professor and a former HIV/AIDS researcher and medical journalist. Mac Low is co-founder and Executive Director of Culture Push, an organization linking artistic practice, social justice, and civic engagement, and co-founder of Works on Water, supporting art working with waterways. Recent work includes: “Sunk Shore,” participatory tours of the future rooted in climate change data, in collaboration with dancer/historical marine ecologist Carolyn Hall; “The Year of Dance”, a self-ethnography of how unconventional kinship structures form in the NYC dance world; and “Free the Orphans,” investigating the spiritual and cultural implications of intellectual property in a digital age. Residencies include Back Apartment Resident (CEC) (2019) Yaddo and Mount Tremper Arts (2012), MacDowell (2000, 2016). She received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant, 2007 and a 2010 Franklin Furnace grant. BA, double major in Dance and Molecular Biology, from Wesleyan University and MFA in Digital and Interdisciplinary Arts Practice from CCNY-CUNY. She has taught at NYU, CCNY-CUNY, Parsons School of Design, and elsewhere. Through the CRNY Artist Employment Program, she is an artist in residence at Genspace, a community biology laboratory in Brooklyn.
More at https://clarindamaclow.com
LIVE! || YEAR ONE: Meaning-Making for the Commons