Forms of Solidarity: On Art, Architecture, and the Pluri-Economy
In this conversation, Marisa Morán Jahn and Rafi Segal explore the power of art and architecture to build new narratives and re-imagine urban space. Traversing sculpture, film, installation, and architecture, Segal and Jahn’s collaboration creates forms and spaces for emerging collective identities, communal self-determination, and a pluralist economy.
An artist and transmedia filmmaker of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Morán Jahn’s works redistribute power, “exemplifying the possibilities of art as social practice” (ArtForum). Codesigned with immigrants and working families, Jahn’s key projects include Bibliobandido (a story-eating bandit), Video Slink Uganda (experimental films slipped or “slinked” into bootleg cinemas), and CareForce, a project that amplifies the voices of America’s fastest growing workforce, caregivers, through two mobile studios (NannyVan, CareForce One), an app for domestic workers named by CNN as “one of 5 apps to change the world,” and a PBS/ITVS film series. Jahn’s works have been presented at Obama’s White House, The United Nations, Museum of Modern Art, Tribeca Film Festival, and The New Museum.
Rafi Segal is an architect and Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at MIT. His work involves design and research on the architectural, urban and regional scale, currently focused on how emerging notions of collectivity can impact the design of buildings and cities. His current ongoing work includes designs for new communal neighborhoods in Israel, Boston, Rwanda, and the Philippines. Segal directs Future Urban Collectives, a new design-research lab at MIT that explores the relation between digital platforms and physical communities asking how architecture and urbanism can support and scale cohabitation, coproduction, and coexistence. Segal has exhibited his work at venues including Storefront for Art and Architecture; KunstWerk, Berlin; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Venice Biennale of Architecture; Museum of Modern Art; and the Hong Kong/Shenzhen Urbanism Biennale.
Our lecture series is made possible by generous support from the MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms program.
