This episode explores bodies of water as sites for the coalescence of time and place, where mythology, cultural and ecological narratives, citizenship, belonging, and familial legacies, can be traced and archived.
Zahra Malkani reads her text and plays accompanying field recordings that thread together other segments throughout the episode. Dilip da Cuhna talks about The Invention of Rivers in a lecture from 2019 at Harvard GSD. Architect Ola Hassanain and curator Michelle Mlati listen and respond to an oral excerpt of a performance by Ola at The Rijksakademie in The Netherlands last year as part of her project Tell the waters what the clay kept secret. In this performance, she recites a prayer towards water as a reparative act to the ecological emptying witnessed in Gezira, Sudan. Ola and Michelle discuss the role of the “Watcher” that has been entangled with Sufism and other ways of watching liminal waters. Arjuna Neuman presents part of the radio show For Lula, Mississippi, unearthing the ecological unconsciousness, from early blues to Choctaw music and culture, to contemporary pop. He connects Charlie Patton’s High Water Everywhere that describes the great flood of the Mississippi to Beyonce’s Formation. Priyageetha Dia presents the soundscape of her animation work, The Sea is A Blue Memory, and architect and researcher Marina Otero Verzier reads an essay she wrote about her research on Aguas curativas (healing waters) in Northwestern Spain. Lastly, we pay tribute to the late Bill Viola with The Reflecting Pool, 1977–1979.
SOUND AND VIDEO CREDITS
Harvard GSD (2019)Daniel Urban Kiley Lecture: Dilip Da Cunha, “The Invention of Rivers” [Film, excerpt]
Dia, Priyageetha (2022) The Sea is a Blue Memory [Audio Files]Viola, Bill (1977-1979) The Reflecting Pool[Film]
Aural Fragmentation is the fourth and final installment of season two of Storefront: Broadcasts. This special episode is produced and sound-designed by Mexican artist, researcher, and community organizer Jerónimo Reyes-Retana. He expands upon the ideas explored in our previous episode, Fugitive Terrain, such as the tension of water bodies as contested sites of catastrophe, conflict, and violence, but also as frontiers of freedom and retreat.
Aural Fragmentation compiles a selection of ideas, provocations, and speculations stemming from a unique encounter at the easternmost edge of the Mexico-US borderlands. In this hidden corner of Tamaulipas, an oyster field vital to the local economy of the marginalized community of El Campo Pesquero de Playa Bagdad is now in alarming proximity to the SpaceX launch port at Boca Chica, Texas. In this context, confluence extends beyond the meeting of the waters of the Rio Grande and the Gulf of Mexico, creating a threshold not only between Mexico and the US but also between the so-called Third World and the First, inviting reflection on the emergence of new frontiers in outer space.
AUDIO CREDITS
Sound design, mixing, and editing by Jerónimo Reyes-Retana.
Text written by Jerónimo Reyes-Retana, read by Ceci Bastida.
Testimonies by Reyna San Juan Gabino.
Field recordings by Jerónimo Reyes-Retana.
Archive material collected from SpaceX’s YouTube channel.
“El Cascabel,” composed by Lorenzo Barcelata, performed by Arcadio Hidalgo and Grupo Mono Blanco.
This episode traces the swamp as a site where something can both belong and not belong, as a space of possibility and impossibility, where multiple ideas, forms, and ways of life can exist in harmony and disharmony all at once.
Participants in this episode include: Natasha Ginwala and Vivian Ziherl reading passages of their essay that will thread together the other segments throughout the episode. Environmental scientist Gonzalo Carrasco and architect Feifei Zhou discuss their project “Before There Was Land, There Were Mangroves”, commissioned for the 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale. The project involves a series of mapping analyses examining Singapore’s history of land reclamation and the chemical impacts of recent industrial and urban transformations along the Southern coastline. Anthropologist Marcus Barber talks to Waka Mununggurr, the chairperson of the Djalkiripuyngu Aboriginal Corporation, about Indigenous relationships to land and sea. Tejah Shah reads five poems that were written by Minal Hajratwala, commissioned for Shah’s project Between the Waves. Chris Cyrille-Isaac tells a story he wrote called The Crab and the Aparahiwa in French for his exhibition “But the world is a mangrovity.” An English translation of The Crab and the Aparahiwa can be read here. Collaged in between are audio clips from soundscapes, interviews and films by Nicole L’Huillier, Thao Nguyen Phan and Barbara London, Sónia Vaz Borges and Filipa César, and Magnetic Ideals.
SOUND AND VIDEO CREDITS
Mary Sabbatino and Gallerie Lelong, “Ana Mendieta at Gallerie Lelong,” Video, 2013.
Jota Mombaça in collaboration with Anti Ribeiro, Darwin Marinho, and Luana Peixe, “until the last morning,” Video, 2023.
Fred Moten and Boston Ujima Project, “Poetic Narratives of Black Fugitivity,” Video, 2024.
Dala Nasser and Mhamad Safa, Red in Tooth, 2021. Video, 19 min.
Seba Calfuqueo, “Ko ta mapungey ka (Agua también es territorio),” Video, 2020.
Seba Calfuqueo, Stephanie Comilang, Dr. Senam Okudzeto, and Art Basel, “Conversations | Activating environments: New ways of thinking of land, sea, and life,” Video, 2024.
abdo Fg. “جزء من خطاب الزعيم الليبي معمر القذافي في افتتاح النهر الصناعي العظيم.” Video, 2021.
abdo Fg. “زوري النهر اوصل يامروة – حفلة افتتاح النهر الصناعي العظيم.” Video, 2019.
abdo Fg. “زوري النهر اوصل يامروة.” Video, 2019.
abdo Fg. “سلم علي من يسلم علينا – اوبريت النهر الصناعي العظيم.” Video, 2021.
Nathaniel Mackey and The Creaking Breeze Ensemble, Fugitive Equation, Fonograph, “Skeletal Water, X-Ray Water (Part 1).” Audio, 2021.
This episode traces the swamp as a site where something can both belong and not belong, as a space of possibility and impossibility, where multiple ideas, forms, and ways of life can exist in harmony and disharmony all at once.
Participants in this episode include: Natasha Ginwala and Vivian Ziherl reading passages of their essay that will thread together the other segments throughout the episode. Environmental scientist Gonzalo Carrasco and architect Feifei Zhou discuss their project “Before There Was Land, There Were Mangroves”, commissioned for the 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale. The project involves a series of mapping analyses examining Singapore’s history of land reclamation and the chemical impacts of recent industrial and urban transformations along the Southern coastline. Anthropologist Marcus Barber talks to Waka Mununggurr, the chairperson of the Djalkiripuyngu Aboriginal Corporation, about Indigenous relationships to land and sea. Tejah Shah reads five poems that were written by Minal Hajratwala, commissioned for Shah’s project Between the Waves. Chris Cyrille-Isaac tells a story he wrote called The Crab and the Aparahiwa in French for his exhibition “But the world is a mangrovity.” An English translation of The Crab and the Aparahiwa can be read here. Collaged in between are audio clips from soundscapes, interviews and films by Nicole L’Huillier, Thao Nguyen Phan and Barbara London, Sónia Vaz Borges and Filipa César, and Magnetic Ideals.
SOUND & VIDEO CREDITS
L’Huillier, Nicole (2018). Amphibian Songs [Audio Files]
Amphibian Songs was originally composed for Futurity Island, a project by Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, designed in collaboration with Indrė Umbrasaitė, that is an infrastructure for interspecies communication and an open space for learning.
Borges, Sónia Vaz & César Filipa (Directors). (2022) Mangrove School [Film, excerpt]
LOOP Barcelona (2020) Becoming Alluvium Thao Nguyen Phan in conversation with Barbara London [Film, excerpt]
Shah, Tejal (2012) Between the Waves [Audio Files]
Lumm, Kirsty and McKnight, Heather (2023) The Swamp: Ritualising our Biodiversity as a Utopian Somatic Practice [Film]
This episode focuses on our online obsessions, the digital realm, and how technology and commerce have changed the urban landscape and public life. It is a part of our 2023–2024 research theme: On the Ground.
Poet and artist Benjamin Krusling layers and collages audio textures to explore structures of dispossession and the constitution of public space. Architect Jesse LeCavalier reads NYC Local Law 166, a local law established in 2021 in relation to micro-distribution centers for distributing goods from ecommerce platforms otherwise known as microhubs. Artist Danielle Dean talks about post-Fordism, Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, and specifically how capitalistic structures are maintained through specific forms of labor organization and data collection. Artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s 4-channel video and live performance titled At Those Terrifying Frontiers Where the Existence and Disappearance of People Fade into Each Other. Writer and technologist Sophia Tareen brings together Claudia Irizarry Aponte, senior reporter covering labor and work issues for THE CITY and AI researcher Ria Kalluri to discuss contemporary labor movements and digital technology. Architect and curator Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli reads an excerpt from his research project Riders not Heroes, introducing us and setting the foundation for his video essay of the same name which we listen to next, that investigates the precarious conditions of food delivery riders in Milan. Artist David L. Johnson meets sociologist Sharon Zukin about their shared ongoing interest in the transformation of New York City and the increasing privatization of civic infrastructure. Artist Cao Fei’s documentary 11:11, recorded the work overload of the entire JD.com logistics sectors before and after the Double Eleven Shopping Day in China which is the equivalent of the Black Friday, sketches out the landscape of consumption driven by the powerful Internet economy and asks how this situation will lead us into a future social ecosystem. Curator and researcher Camila Palomino reads from her recent essay on artist Emily Jacir and unpacks her 2000 work, My America (I am still here).
This episode was originally published through Montez Press Radio.
SOUND CREDITS:
2050+ & -orama (Directors). (2021). Riders Not Heroes: Anatomy of a Delivery
Fei, Cao (Director). (2018).
Mauriès-Rinfret, Emmanuel (Director). (2022) Retail Apocalypse: The Epilogue | SSENSE x CCA
Julmud (2023). Tuqoos | ط ُ ق ُ و س
This episode focuses on different projects that are rooted in care and mutual aid through the lens of the city’s ground floor, and how practices that strengthen bonds of affection can transform and reshape our immediate environment. It is a part of our 2023–2024 research theme: On the Ground.
It opens with an experimental choral performance read by Natalia Boumatar and Zara Zulfiqar. Red Canary Song introduces us to their advocacy around Asian and migrant massage parlor workers through their short film, “Fly in Power”. Curator Diya Vij, writer and organizer Ted Kerr, and artist Zacarías González have a conversation about the 90s Chicago-based art collective titled Haha, and their project Flood, which was a hydroponic garden in a storefront that grew vegetables and herbs for people with HIV. Curator Eric Booker reads archival texts from Smokehouse Associates, the artist collective that transformed Harlem with vibrant, community-oriented abstract murals and sculptures during the late 1960s. Writer Lam Thuy Vo reads from an article she wrote on Pearl River Mart for Documented NY. Artist Cudelice Brazelton talks to Senior frieze editor Terence Trouillot about his recent exhibition at Wschod Gallery in the Lower East Side and how his work relates to intimate micro practices of care. We learn from OlaRonke Akinmowo how the Free Black Women’s Library is fueled by tenants of Black Feminism, and the transformative power of both reading and creating. Huda Tayob discusses her research on Architectures of Care. Scholar Adam Anabosi performs a poem by Palestinian poet Tawfiq Zayyad written to the Palestinian people in their different places of refuge. Interspersed throughout the episode are clips and archival sounds from professors and writers Premilla Nadasen, Carlos Sanabria, Sharon Zukin and artist Jenna Bliss’s documentary “The People’s Detox.”
This episode was originally published through Montez Press Radio.
The Peoples’ Forum (Director). (2023). BOOK TALK: Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism with Premilla Nadasen and Ujju Aggarwal
Red Canary Song (Director). (2022). Fly In Power
Bliss, Jenna (Director). (2018). The People’s’ Detox
Global Cities Local Streets (Director). (2015). Orchard Street, New York Center for Puerto Rican Studies – Centro (Director). (2017). The Bodega: A Cornerstone of Puerto Rican Barrios
Tayob, Huda. (2015). Architectures of Care
This episode focuses on the various registers of emptiness across the built environment, and is apart of our 2023–2024 research theme: On the Ground. The void is unpacked as spatial absences, erasure, unmet potential, permissive emptiness, liberating silences, and capital-driven failure. We explore the many languages of vacancy in New York City in dialogue with other socio-political contexts with shared challenges.
Dominique Petit-Frère from Limbo Accra talks about Into the Void, a digital project aimed at archiving West Africa’s unfinished property developments and revitalizing their existence through collectivity and embracing liminal space. Dragonfly (aka Robin LaVerne Wilson)—member of The Stop Shopping Choi—brings us into The Earth Chrxch. Writer Jeremiah Moss reads an excerpt from Feral City, a book they published in 2022 about life in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic. Artists Tom Burr and Carlos Motta think about voids in their multiple possibilities and what it means in the context of queer life. Artist Igancio Gatica has a conversation with Martha Snow from the Urban Design Forum and Gina Lee from the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development about their studies on the hidden stories of city vacancies and their potential. Dia Art Foundation curator, Jordan Carter, reads an excerpt from a text by Glenn Ligon published in Artforum in September 2004, titled Black Light: David Hammons and The Poetics of Emptiness. Collaged within the episode are clips from archival videos and audio from artists Amanda Williams, Gordon Matta-Clark, June Jordan, Zoe Leonard, and Francisca Benítez.
This episode was originally published through Montez Press Radio.
SOUND CREDITS:
The Peoples’ Forum (Director). (2023). BOOK TALK: Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism with Premilla Nadasen and Ujju Aggarwal
Red Canary Song (Director). (2022). Fly In Power
Bliss, Jenna (Director). (2018). The People’s’ Detox
Global Cities Local Streets (Director). (2015). Orchard Street, New York
Center for Puerto Rican Studies – Centro (Director). (2017). The Bodega: A Cornerstone of Puerto Rican Barrios
Tayob, Huda. (2015). Architectures of Care
This episode explores the tensions between public and private space through a close look at New York City’s ground floor, and is a part of our 2023–2024 research theme: On the Ground.
Architect Sol Camacho reads from Lina Bo Bardi’s seminal text, Vitrinas. Artist Alvaro Barrington discusses the storefront as a threshold between life and work. Canal Street Research Association further explores their inquiry into billboards and the “facadification” of Manhattan in conversation with artists Nick Poe and Gabriela D’Addario, and Levi Eichenstein, CEO of Red Rock Outdoor. Journalist Nathan Kensinger and UPENN Media Studies professor Shannon Mattern engage in a conversation on their respective works on the transformation of the city’s streets and sidewalks. Architect Germane Barnes expands on his long-standing research project Porch Politics.
Threshold was originally published through Montez Press Radio.
SOUND CREDITS:
Brown, Barry Alexander (Director). (2010). Sidewalk
Cohen, Jem (Director). (1996). Lost Book Found
Fitzgerald, Kit and Sanborn, John with Van Tieghem, David (Directors). (1982). Ear to the Ground
Houston Jr., Otis. (2020). I Like Where I Stay. On AMERICA
Wilson-Tanner. (2022). Sun Room. On 69