borders

General description
During this first thematic session of the minor, we will focus on borders with a particular focus on the U.S.- México border. Our guest lecturers and authors will guide us through these borderlands via their own particular lens, experience and work, ranging from sound to theory and from poetry to architecture. As we listen, look, read and think along, we will collectively reflect on what borders we experience in our lifeworlds and learning environments and how to imagine beyond.

Learning objectives
After this thematic session, you will:
- be able to approach and think about borders in multiple ways (e.g. theoretical, sonic, cultural)
- be able to identify and reflect upon your own borders

Schedule

10:00-11:30. Lecture. Dr. Álvaro G. Díaz. Sound Through the Looking Glass. An Approach to the Dimensional Sonology on the Tijuana-San Diego Border.

11:30-12:30 Lunch break

12:30- 14:00 Close reading. Gloria Anzaldúa. Borderlands. La Frontera

14:00-14:15 Short break

14:15-14:45 Workshop. Borders. El otro lado (the other side)

14:45-15:00 Short break

15:00-16:30 Lecture. Prof. Ronald Rael. Borderwall as Architecture.

suggested readings and videos (not mandatory)

-- Gloria Anzaldúa (1987), Chapter 7: "La conciencia de la mestiza. Towards a new consciousness" (pp. 77-91), from: 'Borderlands = la frontera : the new mestiza'.

-- Álvaro G. Díaz Rodríguez (2020), Chapter 1: "Sound Through the Looking Glass" (pp. 1-29), from 'Musicians' Migratory Patterns: American[US]-Mexican Border Lands'

-- Watch: lecture by decolonial scholar Maria Lugones on the contemporary importance and value of the work of Gloria Anzaldúa (1:40 mins)

--Watch: An architect's subversive reimagining of the US-Mexico border wall | Ronald Rael (11mins)

Dr. Álvaro G. Díaz

During his lecture, Dr. Díaz will talk about the dimensional sonology on the Tijuana-San Diego border.

Dr. Díaz is a full-time professor and researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC), Mexico. His research focuses on contemporary music, cyber-culture and music, and soundscapes supported by technology. He is the founder and CEO of the SONVI project, which has an app and platform for the recognition and classification of soundscapes.

He is the author of the chapters in the books: Musicians' Migratory Patterns: American-Mexican Border Lands (Routledge, Forthcoming). A razón de la nostalgia (UABC, 2006), Sound in motion: cinema, videogames, technology and audiences (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018), La investigación musical en las regiones de México (Texere, 2018) https://www.diazalvaro.com

Professor Ronald Rael

Professor Ronald Rael holds the Eva Li Memorial Chair in Architecture and a joint appointment in the Department of Architecture, in the College of Environmental Design, and the Department of Art Practice. He is both a Bakar and Hellman Fellow, Director the Masters of Architecture program, and founded the print FARM Laboratory (print Facility for Architecture, Research and Materials). His teaching spans the curriculum, from graduate design thesis, undergraduate courses on Design & Activism, and he has twice directed the one year post-professional Master of Architecture program, Studio One. He is an applied architectural researcher, design activist, author, and thought leader in the fields of additive manufacturing and earthen architecture. In 2014 his creative practice, Rael San Fratello (with architect Virginia San Fratello), was named an Emerging Voice by The Architectural League of New York—one of the most coveted awards in North American architecture. In 2016 Rael San Fratello was also awarded the Digital Practice Award of Excellence by the The Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA).
He is the author of Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (University of California Press 2017), an illustrated biography and protest of the wall dividing the U.S. from Mexico.

Filippo recommends the work of vibraphonist and “Urbanist” Christopher Dell. Here some links you might find interesting. It is mostly about the idea of using improvisation as the form in which we can perform our subjectivity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl0fmnWiJgM
lecture in Thesalloniki

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdHAnBAKGt4&t=1s
improvisation as technology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZP0H0Wx5hw
Dell on space and music