Reckoning and Repair
An experimental oral history podcast with artists, curators, and organizers speaking on the need for reckoning, and the (im?)possibilities of repair in art worlds and social spaces around the globe.
Season 2 of Reckoning and Repair: The Art of Resistance in Argentina endeavors to explore these stories and the legacy of art activists from Bueno Aires and beyond. Originally captured in Spanish from June to July 2022, these narratives have since been condensed and adapted into the English language to share these incredible artists and their activism more broadly.
Season 1, "The Art That's Touched Philadelphia", was recorded, written, and produced by students in "Conversations with Contemporary Artists" a course by Alissa Jordan at the Center for Experimental Ethnography. This CEE production runs alongside the 2023 exhibit "Rising Sun-Artists in an Uncertain America", an African American Museum of Philadelphia (AAMP) and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) collaboration. How do artists and organizers confront the troubling histories of Empire in their midsts? Is it even possible for colonially-based art institutions to meaningfully reckon with their own exclusionary histories? What models of reckoning and repair already exist in Philadelphia's art worlds?
Reckoning and Repair
S.1 Episode 4 // And I Listen to the Robin Sing: Sheida Soleimani + Angel Gutierrez
Under colonial order, what do mind and body internalize? What colonial desires and banal attitudes have we yet to expel from within us? In this conversation, Sheida Soleimani's practices of care and labor light the path that host Angel Gutierrez walks with her. While tracing memories, Sheida has us consider care for self and for the web of relations we inhabit. Sheida's work, too, is concerned with the power wielded by institutions and governments and how they flatten and shred(or attempt to) any politic that challenges "what power seems to be up to" at the present moment(la paperson). Considered in this episode are the false promises of neoliberal multiculturalism and liberalism; while breath is shared and presence is formed. Sheida's stories, art and politics flash through not just the discursive or ideological contours by which we frame our thoughts but also through our embodied experiences.
This season was produced in connection to 2023 exhibit, "Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America", an AAMP and PAFA collaboration curated by Dejay Duckett (AAMP), Judith Tannenbaum (PAFA), Mekhala Signal (PAFA), Michael Wilson (AAMP). This exhibit brings together 20 artists to respond to the question: Is the sun rising or setting on the experiment of American democracy? The exhibit runs March 23 through Oct 8 of 2023 at the Historic Landmark Building in Philadelphia.
For episode extras, and to learn more about the artists, hosts, and organizations involved, check out the Reckoning and Repair website: rnrphilly.com
Reckoning and Repair is part multimedia counter-archive, part laboratory, for telling stories and listening to stories in cities. Each season traces stories of resistance to (and repair from) the enduring and specific legacies of exclusion/withholding/erasure that haunt our cities. Through immersive oral histories and collaborative storytelling, student scholars, activists, and creatives illuminate the slow, difficult, yet vital work of accountability and healing in haunted worlds. The project is directed by Dr. Alissa Jordan at the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennyslvania.