What are the affordances of editorial projects like the Hydrocommons Map in promoting the emergence of a knowledge commons of practices that support the care and wellbeing of bodies of water? Our talk will present a series of open access research and mapping processes that we’ve been engaged in with different water care initiatives and communities in Latin America. We’ll explore how art and humanities research intersects with a rising tide of water protection movements emerging across the world and hemispherically, where our work is focused. Focusing on the work of the arts-led research platform entre—ríos, we will delve into values and practices that recognize our more-than-human connection through water and modes of cooperation that foster ecosocial wellbeing. Through a discussion of collaborative editorial and curatorial projects developed over recent years, this session opens a space to think together about how art-science-community collaborations, mapping processes based on fieldwork and remote work, and art and storytelling can support emergent and resilient practices that care for common waters. 

Speaker: Lisa Blackmore 

Lisa Blackmore is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Philosophical, Historical, and Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Essex (UK). Her work explores the relationship between humans and the environment, focusing on the intersections of politics, art, and architecture in Latin America and the Caribbean. She has taken a special interest in how authoritarian regimes affected bodies and landscapes, producing spaces of ruination and traces of violence in memory. She works with the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA), curating exhibitions and public programs for the University Gallery Art Exchange. Her projects merge practice and research, balancing writing and editing publications on the arts and ecology with curatorial and audiovisual projects.

Speaker: Alejandro Ponce de León

Alejandro Ponce de León is a Colombian editor and researcher. He is the founding editor of the Plataforma Latinoamericana de Humanidades Ambientales, an online editorial collective that promotes dialogues on environmental thought, arts, and education throughout the Americas. His work stands at the intersection of environmental humanities and technoscience studies and has been published in Cultural Studies, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, ASAP/J, Humanidades: Revista de la Universidad de Montevideo, Revista Tabula Rasa, Revista Endémico, Diffractions, Tapuya, and Sociological Forum, among others. Alejandro holds a Master's degree in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Cultural Studies at the University of California, Davis. 

SEEKCommons is a project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, grant #2226425. Learn more at seekcommons.org