Son[i]a #362
Nicole L'Huillier
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Chilean artist Nicole L’Huillier (b. 1985, Santiago, Chile) formulates an antidisciplinary practice that takes up a position on boundaries, generating a liminal and sensorial space in which categories such as architecture, science, music and sound tend to break down and intertwine. Thinking with “surlogics”—the logic of her native south— Nicole defends the need to use multiple kinds of thinking at the same time, and embraces mestizaje—by way of Gloria Anzaldúa—as a way of being and existing that is rich and full of complexity and contradictions. The sense of constant movement and of being outside of linearity has allowed her to unlearn the rigidities of the Western canon and to go beyond anthropocentrism, to see the world “through serpent and eagle eyes,” again in the words of Gloria Anzaldúa.
This borderland gives rise to the idea of the membrane, a conceptual apparatus and physical structure through which she articulates some of her thought and her works. For Nicole, “a membrane is the space where things come together and separate… but it is a space of resonance, not a rigid wall. It is a wall that always vibrates, oscillates, exchanges, receives ands transmits.” Different worldviews, temporalities, experiences, and knowledge coexist and collide in this liminal and sensual space, taking shape and becoming embodied in order to socialise through ritual and sharing.
In this podcast, we open up Nicole L’Huillier’s processes, methodologies, and rituals, in conversation with old friends—Gloria Anzaldúa, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Gabriela Mistral, AM Kanngiesser—and strangers. Their membrane-words caress and jolt us. Sounds, vibrations, resonance, structures, and other multiple sensorial transductions invite us to think up, amidst murmuring, other collective ways of being and incarnations.
Musical references
02:48 Nicole L’Huillier, “Orejona”
09:11 Nicole L’Huillier, “Sistemas – dissertation song” (excerpt)
11:00 Nicole L’Huillier, “Tune In – dissertation song” (excerpt)
15:32 Nicole L’Huillier, “Sistemas – dissertation song” (excerpt)
16:11 Nicole L’Huillier, “Sistemas – dissertation song” (excerpt)
19:26 Nicole L’Huillier, “Outro – dissertation song” (excerpt)
23:13 Nicole L’Huillier, “Ayayay”
25:30 Nicole L’Huillier, “Tune In – dissertation song” (excerpt)
28:23 Nicole L’Huillier, “Orejona” and “Ayayay”
31:05 Nicole L’Huillier, “Tune In – dissertation song” (excerpt)
32:08 Nicole L’Huillier, “Outro – dissertation song” (excerpt)
42:26 Nicole L’Huillier, “Cuchicheos” (excerpt)
48:31 Nicole L’Huillier feat. La Chimuchina and friends, “Plamástica Fantástica” (excerpt)
Open-weather
In this two-voice podcast, researcher-designer Sophie Dyer and creative geographer Sasha Engelmann weave speculative storytelling through glitchy weather satellite transmissions in a dialogue tinged with the feminist meta-practices that run deep beneath their collective operations. Together, they talk about NOAA satellites, about building alliances and about weather literacy, occasionally interviewing each other as friends and guiding us through the generous network of feminist thinkers that informs their practice.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with Chilean artist Nicole L'Huillier. We talk about the agency of the work and working with other agents.