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
S2.E5 // El Arte de Recordar: Una Historia Oral con el Artista Marcelo Brodsky
Hablando sobre la desaparición, Marcelo Brodsky comparte cómo su pasión por la fotografía y el arte floreció en medio de las dolorosas realidades de la última dictadura militar de Argentina. Exiliado y llorando la pérdida de su hermano y amigos entre las 30.000 víctimas, el regreso a casa de Brodsky lo vio canalizando el dolor en un impactante activismo artístico. Proyectos como Buena Memoria y Parque de la Memoria, las obras de Brodsky, lidian con las cicatrices de la violencia sancionada por el estado; afirman la memoria, la reflexión y el arte como bálsamos sociales. El arte es acción, sostiene Brodsky. Bajo regímenes opresivos, ¿qué debe hacer la expresión creativa para resistir? ¿Para reclamar la libertad? ¿Para trazar nuevos mundos?
For episode extras, and to learn more about the artists, hosts, and organizations involved, check out the Reckoning and Repair website: rnrphilly.com
This podcast was created at the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania, a multimodal research hub that views creative practice as intellectual work that necessarily historicizes the inequalities that pervade our society, and that develops solutions for their present iterations through collaborative and participatory work.