social justice

In this podcast, Imani Jacqueline Brown tells us about her formative experience as an activist in New Orleans and in the crucible of Zuccotti Park during the Occupy Wall Street movement. We also talk about eugenics and about how Carl Linnaeus’s philosophy during the Enlightement divided existence into parcels of private property, about oil infrastructure networks and environmental racism in Death Alley, and about apocalypse as repeated events. Along the way, Imani imagines paths to ecological reparation, ways to steward and attend to the world. She finds that it is precisely the uncultivated land at the back of the plantation that is rich with life and possibility: the seed banks of new growth.

In addition to her theoretical work, academic and researcher Eleonora Belfiore has a particular interest in socially engaged arts practice. In this sector, she plays a crucial role in highlighting the labor injustices promoted and reinforced by decades of neoliberal policies and argues for demanding an overall improvement in working conditions in a sector traditionally undervalued by funders and policymakers. Her work, mostly focusing on the UK context, often challenges the assumptions underlying cultural value —and questions the methods used to evaluate cultural impact, in an attempt to bridge the gap between cultural theory and practical policy-making. In this podcast, we talk to Eleonora Belfiore about self-exploitation, value metrics, austerity, social change, community development, feminist ethics of care and cognitive dissonance.

We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with researcher and transdisciplinary curator Yaiza Hernández. We unpack the relationship between militarism and tourism by looking at zonified border territories that also model touristification. Through this lens, we also see that the tourist resort replicates the architectural layout of the colony, offering safe spaces for privilege, wealth, and whiteness. Then, we take a look at the current form of the museum model, warning of certain symptoms suggesting it is reaching a terminal stage. We wrap up with a digression into Yaiza’s understanding of cultural appropriation.