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 1 // Telling Our Own Stories: Louis Massiah + Chrislyn Laurie Laurore
What would it look like to put the tools of media production into the hands of people at the margins of society? Community media activists -- with help from organizations like Scribe Video Center -- have been engaged in this work for decades. In this episode, Louis Massiah discusses how his film projects harness the power of time-based visual media to help ordinary Philadelphians craft their own narratives about their lives and their neighborhoods in relation to American history and politics.
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.