While we’re all disappointed the #ALT_MKE conference had to be cancelled, we’re still excited to showcase our planned plenary speakers and their research, which is as relevant and essential now as ever. Below you can find some of the exciting things our plenaries have been working on, including research and ideas that continue to shape our understanding of shifting relations and agencies in urban spaces.
We will also be hosting two livestreamed events (details below): L.A. Kauffman on May 8 and Monique Liston and Dasha Kelly Hamilton on May 15.
And don’t forget to learn more about all the local MKE artists and activists that are helping us keep the conversation going around #ALT_MKE!
Brian Larkin: “Ambient Infrastructures. Generator Life in Nigeria”
Brian Larkin (Barnard College, Columbia University) examines the way contingent energy plans and sources like portable generators work to create a kind of ubiquitous “ambient space” within the existing urban energy structure of Nigeria.
From Technosphere Magazine
Monique Liston: “My Black Story” and “Act II”
Monique Liston (Ubuntu Research and Evaluation) discusses how she thinks about her role as a black woman and a leader within her community, as well as the community roots of larger organizing and activist movements.
AbdouMaliq Simone: “Looking Out for the Dark”
In this talk AbdouMaliq Simone discusses “Navigating Contemporary Complexities in Jakarta and Hyderabad,” exploring how networks of agency and care emerge and reconfigure themselves in urban spaces. (This is the final lecture of a three-lecture series delivered at Cambridge University titled “Afterlives of the South: Relations Across the Urban Postcolony.”)
New Inside C21 Podcast: Conversations with Arijit Sen and Camille Mays
Listen in on conversations with C21 conference organizer and former C21 Fellow Arijit Sen (Architecture & Urban Planning, UWM) and Milwaukee activist Camille Mays, founder of Peace Garden Project MKE. Arijit discusses his success in his courses as they pivot to online learning and what he hopes people will learn from the pandemic. Camille discusses Milwaukee and how COVID-19 is affecting the city’s urban population, including Wisconsin’s in-person voting that occurred on April 07, and offers some silver linings to the pandemic.
**For additional information on this episode’s guests as well as all past episodes, visit the Inside C21 Podcast page.
Inside C21 was hosted and created by C21 graduate fellow Mallory Zink. The opening song was created by former C21 graduate fellow Allain Daigle. Other music and closing song were created by Brad Stech.
Livestreamed Lecture by L.A. Kauffman: May 8
***Updated: You can now view Kaffman’s talk below and the C21 YouTube channel.
As we continue to engage in a conversation around these issues, please also mark your calendars for a special virtual talk by author and activist L.A. Kauffman, who will be doing a livestreamed version of her keynote address next Friday, May 8, at 3:30 p.m CDT via Zoom. We’re thrilled to host her!
Please RSVP to C21@uwm.edu and we will send you the link to the talk. Space is limited to 100 guests.
“I Want a Haircut”: Toward a History of the Ultra-Right in Milwaukee’s Suburbs (and Why It So Often Fails)
Talk Description
L.A. Kauffman spent many an afternoon at that very mall in the 1970s, having grown up in the adjacent village of Elm Grove. For much of that time, she lived next door to one of the founders of the John Birch Society, the secretive far-right organization that championed the unrestricted rights of business owners; railed against government health, safety, and enviromental regulations; and worked assiduously to undermine any institution, from the mass media to public libraries, that stood in the way of its aims.
Weaving together images and stories from her suburban Milwaukee childhood with the history of her neighbors and their checkered attempts to implement a far-right agenda both in Wisconsin and nationwide, Kauffman will shed new light on how Milwaukee’s suburbs became such an important incubator for the extremist views showcased in the anti-lockdown protests — and why they have repeatedly failed to gain wide support.
Livestreamed Lecture by Monique Liston and Reading by Dasha Kelly Hamilton: May 15
Please join us for a special version of Monique Liston’s planned plenary talk as well as a special reading by Dasha Kelly Hamilton on Friday, May 15 at 3:30 p.m CDT. We’re so happy to be able to share their wonderful work!
You can tune in to the talk/lecture via YouTube livestream at 3:30 p.m. CDT on Friday, May 15. No RSVP required!
Monique Liston: “Sebayt (Wisdom Instructions): Our Word Work is Sublime”
Sebayt is an ancient Kemetic phrase that means wisdom instructions. Ancestors leave us wisdom instruction in their memories. As we embark on the task of conscious disruption of the status quo through stories, we must look to our past for wisdom concerning our future. As we center stories, we lean on the sebayt of Toni Morrison, one of the greatest storytellers of the last century. Toni Morrison was the first Black woman of any nationality to be awarded the Nobel prize. In her speech she stated, “Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life.” In this conversation, we look at the power and utility of language, especially for those most marginalized through the social construction of the city. If we do not look at our word work with intention and tenacity, we will subject our stories and subsequently our power to continued repression and harm. Here’s to looking at word work as sublime for honesty, vulnerability and transparency that speaks to a future of liberation.
Dasha Kelly Hamilton: “Imagining Forward”
The core of any movement is fueled by will, want and wonder. Will and want are intrinsic to a city’s politics and power systems. In Milwaukee, wonder is tragically deficient, discouraged, even. Without wonder, we are detached from curiosity and our city stays distant from imaginative solutions. Creativity is an authentic process of discovery, and an essential benefit to humans at the mercy of a city’s politics and power structures. Creativity is not about art; it is intrinsic to progress. The invitation to wonder –to consider truths outside of the slanted stories presented — is real “power” to a people.