"Inflatable Worlds"

Susanneh Bieber | Associate Professor, Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts

Abstract:

In 1960, architect Victor Lundy collaborated with engineer Walter Bird to design an inflatable, double-domed pavilion that housed the Atoms for Peace exhibition on its Latin American tour. Seven years later, the pavilion was refurbished for a second tour across the Atlantic with stops in the Middle East and North Africa. Taking Lundy’s pavilion as a starting point, Dr. Bieber explores the use of pneumatic technologies across art, architecture, and engineering. Rather than understanding inflatable artworks, objects, structures, buildings, and environments as emerging out of Western modernity and high-tech innovations, she recovers a more expansive and diverse history that features innovations of the Global South and practices by Indigenous people. In this paper, she first discusses Lundy’s innovative pavilion, then focuses on the pioneering 1968 Air Art exhibition curated by Willoughby Sharp, and then expands the history of inflatables beyond Western modernity.

 

 

 

 

 

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“Reciprocal Sustenance and Altar Spaces: An Ethical Grounding for Invoking Death”

Denise Meda-Lambru, Ph.D. Candidate | Philosophy

Abstract:

Día de los Muertos altars and altar spaces are material expressions to honor the dead and maintain communal relations. Art historians argue that Chicanx Día de los Muertos traditions were initiated as community commemoration and practices related to death in their social realities (González 2019, Romo 2000). In this presentation, Meda-Lambru shows that Chicanx networks of relations engage an ethical relationship with the dead by dedicating a space and giving an offering or ofrenda. Building from María Lugones (1983, 2003) and Armando Rendón (1972) analyses of community, Meda-Lambru theorizes the ethical dimensions of altar practices focusing on the altar, Árbol de Amor y Ramas del Recuerdo/Tree of Love and Branches of Remembrance (2022), by Consuelo Flores. Analyzing this communal altar, Meda-Lambru argues that Chicanx Day of the Dead altars perform an ethical relationship with the dead that supports social relations and acts of solidarity that can extend across boundaries of local spaces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Colloquium Series offers Glasscock Center Fellows an opportunity to discuss a work-in-progress with faculty and graduate students from different disciplines. By long-standing practice, colloquium presenters provide a draft of their current research, which is made available to members of the Glasscock Center listserv. Each colloquium begins with the presenter’s short (10-15 minute) exposition of the project, after which the floor is open for comments and queries. The format is by design informal, conversational, and interdisciplinary.

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