In an unprecedented moment of global transformation (health crisis accompanied by a much belated global reckoning with anti-blackness) art programming infrastructures are forced to radically transform their models of production, delivery, and audience engagement. Many are turning to Zoom webinars or Instagram or Facebook Live as digital platforms for real-time connection between artists and publics….
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Black on Black Love: Boom Concepts’ Collaborative Action at the Carrie Furnaces
This month, Boom Concepts partnered with Rivers of Steel to create a mural at the Furnaces as part of a two year series. The mural, organized, produced and curated by D.S. Kinsel, explores the thematic of “Black on Black Love,” and lays the groundwork for a broader interrogation of the value of including Black voices…
Hemispheric Conversations Urban Art Project: Interview with Bel2, Reflections on Work and Art
These past couple weeks Hemispheric Conversations Urban Art Project (HCUAP) has hosted two visiting artists. One is from León Guanajuato, Victor Ayala Kart, and the other is from Chicago, Bel2. I had the chance to do a quick interview with Bel about her experience in between paint sessions. She created an amazing piece at the…
Malecolor: Visual Linkages Between Different Generations of Writers, the Possibility of Permission?
Dante. November 2017. Chuen 2017. Dafne and Yuda. 2017. Zanko (right) 2017. Brote 2017. The Malecón del Rio, a riverbed that cuts through the center of León, is the primary transportation artery for the city aside from Bulevar López Mateos, Torres Landa, and Mariano Escobedo. Since the beginning of writing culture in León it has…
Panteón San Nicolas: Mictlarte and Arte Urbano as Mediating, Conservative and Future Oriented
Panteon from above. October 2017. On October 31 IMJUV inaugurated a new project called Mictlarte. Drawing from the name of the Aztec god Mictlántecuhtli, who is the god of the underworld, the walls of Panteon San Nicolas were repainted during the month of October to represent images of local urban legends, pre-hispanic identity, and cinematic…
Graffiti Workshops at the Festival Internacional Cervantino: Access, Exclusion, and Innovation in the Shadow of the International Art Festival
The Festival Internacional Cervantino (FIC) is a world-class art festival held in Guanajuato, Guanajuato for the bulk of the month of October. The programming is diverse in terms of artistic medium and country of origin: in the same day one can see a play be a French theater troupe, a DJ session by a Chinese…
MOS Mexico 2017: A Performance of Graffiti’s Multiplicity
“MOS Mexico: The most important graffiti event in the Americas” the Meeting of Styles Mexico website boldly states. Perhaps there is some truth to the statement insofar as the event attracts participants from across the globe, with representation from Western and Northern Europe, North America, Central America, and South America. But important for whom? The…
“Shifting Definitions of Art: Municipal Support, Graffiti Production, Institutional Constraints”
Over the last six weeks I have continued my field work with the Muraleon team in León, am also been building my knowledge base about youth culture and the emergence and function of youth as a social category for political and intellectual inquiry, and through observation and conversations learning more about the social and political…
León Guanajuato, August, Month 1: Multiple Cities
This marks a little over a month since I have arrived in León. Though I have visited five other times, living here for an extended period is much different. You get a sense of the daily rhythms of neighborhoods, of the larger cultural calendar of the city, the impact of the seasons and more durational…
Hemispheric Conversations: Urban Art Project, Public Debate
Last I wrote, I was finishing field note writing for a research trip to León. This past week (10/6-10/8) I, along with my collaborators (Oreen Cohen and Shane Pilster) co-organized a set of events designed to spur conversations about the relationships between Chicago, Pittsburgh, and León in terms of urban histories, graffiti practices, and post-industrial…