In early February I went to hear Paul Dourish when he was visiting the University of Illinois. He’s a professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, with courtesy appointments in Computer Science and in Anthropology. In addition to the Informatics program, he also teaches in the interdisciplinary graduate program in Arts, Computation, and […]
Continuous City
The Builders Association performed their show, “Continuous City” last night here in Champaign-Urbana. I was intrigued by the publicity, since it was supposed to be about cities, social networking, and theatre all at once, and how cool is that? The funders also touted the “boundary-pushing” and “cross-cultural” understanding of interdisciplinary art productions like this one. […]
The Political Equator 2
Champaign, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, and then back again. I was really tired when I got home. The idea of this event was truly fascinating: “an exploration of the intersection between sociopolitical and natural domains, foregrounding the notion of collective territory, but also a territory of collaboration that transgresses hemispheric boundaries. At the […]
Teddy, Tacos and Talk
One man after another, talking and talking. The tacos were fantastic and Teddy Cruz must be thirty times more tired than I am. What energy and passion that man puts out, bilingually and all over the map. At the start of our journey from LA, Teddy noted our tendency to “hide beneath weird complexity.” It […]
Political Equator 2
The Tijuana-based artist ERRE (aka Marcos Ramirez) created this “Toy an Horse” in 1997. Its two heads faced north and south, with one set of wheeled legs in the US and the other set in Mexico. Ten years later, this border intervention seems no less apt.
Publico transitorio
The website for the eight-day moving public event between Los Angeles, San Diego and Tijuana–Political Equator 2— is now online. It looks terrific and represents, in a phenomenal way, the collaborative possibilities of artists, scholars, and designers coming together around issues of common concern.
Laurie Long
I just heard that Laurie Long died quite suddenly of heart failure, during treatment for lung cancer, on Thursday, September 13. Laurie is in black in the photo with (L to R) M. Simon Levin, Piotr Adamczyk, and Kevin Hamilton. I remember when Laurie came to my cabin during one of her trips to Champaign-Urbana […]
Just Space(s)
I’m getting prepared to go to Los Angeles in November to see the Just Space(s) exhibit and participate in the tour from LA down to the Mexican border at Tijuana, called The Political Equator. This will be another version of a trip organized in 2006. Also during the Just Spaces exhibit there will be a […]
