January 2021 Low Covid testing rates in western Sydney blamed on failure to get message to migrant communities The Guardian Migrant Caravan, Now in Guatemala, Tests Regional Resolve to Control Migration The New York Times Biden to propose overhaul of immigration laws on first day of office Washington Post
Author: Guillermina Zabala
July/August 2021 Newsletter: A Conversation with Ina Adele Ray by Sumita Chakravarty and Guillermina Zabala Suárez
Entanglements: A Conversation with Mediamaker Ina Adele Ray – conducted by Sumita S. Chakravarty and Guillermina Zabala Suárez In recent months, we have become painfully aware of racial attacks against Asian Americans in San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, and elsewhere in the U.S. Some have attributed the hatred to fears stoked by the COVID-19 virus, …
March/April 2021 Newsletter: Pandemic Media and Emergent Infrastructures by Sumita Chakravarty, Isabel Munson, Rachel Pincus, Nick Travaglini, and Guillermina Zabala
Pandemic Media and Emergent Infrastructures On April 16, 2021 Professor Sumita Chakravarty, along with graduate students Isabel Munson, Rachel Pincus, Nick Travaglini, and Guillermina Zabala, held a workshop on the topic of Pandemic Media and Emergent Infrastructures as part of The New School’s online events. Each student presented a different aspect of this theme and …
May/June 2021 Newsletter: A Conversation with Amir Husak by Guillermina Zabala Suárez and Sumita Chakravarty
Welcome to Bihac!: A Conversation with Amir Husak Interview conducted by Guillermina Zabala Suárez and Sumita S. Chakravarty. Photography by Amir Husak. “What I have observed first-hand could be called a border-industry complex, with IOM (International Organization for Migration), EU authorities, border police, smugglers, local and federal politicians all implicated in a severe humanitarian crisis …
January/February 2021 Newsletter: Sumita S. Chakravarty & Guillermina Zabala reflect on Kamala Harris and the immigrant story
Kamala Harris and the Immigrant Story by Sumita S. Chakravarty Dr. Chakravarty, PhD is the founder of the Migration Mapping initiative and is currently working on a book titled Unsettled States: Towards a Media History of Migration. By hiding a big part of your ethnicity, heritage, religion—you are practicing bigotry and bias, in a new …
Worlds without Ends: Stories around Borders
WWE opens a visual dialogue on the impact of borders on individuals and communities. The twelve participating artists are drawn from different regional traditions and challenge our perceptions of national identities, envisioning utopian possibilities for understanding the place of borders, their proliferation and seeming obsolescence, in contemporary society. The exhibiting artists reveal their deep interest …
News Articles: 2020
January 2020 Trump Administration To Curb Immigrants From 6 Nations, Including Nigeria – NPR News Supreme Court Allows Trump to Implement Income-Based Restrictions on Immigration – Wall Street Journal Los Angeles church raided in FBI immigration-fraud bust – Fox News
November/December 2020 Newsletter: Interview with Christina Antonakos-Wallace & Corine E.R.’s review on Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
From Here: A Documentary by Christina Antonakos-Wallace Christina Antonakos-Wallace is an American documentary filmmaker whose acclaimed film, From Here (2020), explores what it means to be considered a racial, ethnic, or religious outsider in mainstream society. Moving back and forth between New York and Berlin, the film follows four people who are first or second …
Ramin Samandari: Huddled Masses
The project is a collection of 300 portraits featuring people holding whiteboard placards on which they’ve written details of their ethnic heritage. In the wake of the last presidential election, Samandari was motivated to explore his own experience as an immigrant. “Right from the get-go during the candidacy and post-election, there was a lot of …
Art 21: Border Tuner
Spurred by his Mexican heritage and the growing nationalism in the United States, Lozano-Hemmer embarks on his most ambitious project to date: Border Tuner, an enormous intercom system at the border between El Paso and Juárez that allows participants from both sides to speak and listen to each other via radio-enabled searchlights. At his studio in …
Richard Blanco: How to Love a Country
The Cuban American civil engineer turned writer, Richard Blanco, straddles the many ways a sense of place merges with human emotion to make home and belonging — personal and communal. The most recent — and very resonant — question he’s asked by way of poetry is: how to love a country? Read more…
Near Strangers San Antonio 300
An installation by Proyecto Diáspora. Considering San Antonio’s Tricentennial and Luminaria Contemporary Arts Festival as SA’s cultural connector between artists, audiences and the world, Near Strangers San Antonio 300 proposes a site-specific light installation made from copper maps and portraits of San Antonio’s inhabitants. The installation is in fact an electrical circuit that reacts to touch and lights …
Public Secret Society of Conceptual Migrants
Public Secret Society of Conceptual Migrants is an intervention project created by artist Patty Ortiz as part of her continuing performance series Work Won’t Kill You. PSSCM was built around the word migrant, its specific definition and common assumptions. Ortiz proposed to take the historical concept of a secret society and turn it inside out, …
From the Other Side
A 3/9 – channel video installation by Argentinian artist Gabriela Golder. The video installation focuses on the topical issue of migration, zooming in on migrants’ real-life situation and experience of uprootedness. Asked about their stories, they cite political and economic reasons for emigrating to Argentina. Their narratives bring out the underlying processes of cultural transformation …
The Waiting Room: Rethinking Latency After Covid-19
By Neta Alexander Neta Alexander is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media at Colgate University, New York. Her first book, Failure (Polity, 2020; co-authored with Arjun Appadurai) studies how Silicon Valley and Wall Street monetize failure and forgetfulness. The following is a brief excerpt from a new essay by Prof. Alexander, to be published …
Media’s Border Logics: Reflecting on Platforms to the World Symposium
By Juan Llamas-Rodriguez Juan Llamas-Rodriguez is assistant professor of critical media studies in the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research spans digital media, border studies, infrastructure studies, and Latin American film and television. At the end of January of this year, twenty scholars interested in …
September/October 2020 Newsletter: Juan Llamas-Rodriguez reflects on Platforms to the World & Neta Alexander rethinks Latency After Covid-19
Media’s Border Logics: Reflecting on Platforms to the World Symposium By Juan Llamas-Rodriguez Juan Llamas-Rodriguez is assistant professor of critical media studies in the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research spans digital media, border studies, infrastructure studies, and Latin American film and television. At the end of January …
Immigrant Art: A new perspective on the U.S. melting pot
By Guillermina Zabala Guillermina Zabala is a multidisciplinary artist and educator whose art examines the intersection between the individual and their social-political-cultural environment. Her works have been exhibited in museums and art galleries in Los Angeles, New York, Texas, Miami, and San Francisco; and internationally in Germany, Latin America and Spain. She is a second …
August 2020 Newsletter: Ishita Tiwary on Migrating Media Technologies & Guillermina Zabala on Immigrant Art
The Suitcase Entrepreneur: Migrating Media Technologies By Ishita Tiwary Ishita Tiwary is a postdoctoral fellow at Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. In the summer of 2019, I conducted fieldwork in India and Nepal for my new research project. The project seeks to track the migration of media technologies and video …