The eighth session of LOUDREADERS welcomes VenidaDevenida discussing dissident practices.
VenidaDevenida identify as a collective, centred on the collaboration between Ana Olmedo and Elena Águila. With shared backgrounds in architecture and art, they first worked together while at the European University of Madrid in 2014. Their joint research focused on an approach to architecture and design as tools for activism, using them as speculative and investigative mediums.
The name VenidaDevenida refers to being and becoming, based on the idea that identity is a continual process of conflict and negotiation. The name was adopted from 2016 on, and established a mode of working related to identity manifested through reappropriated objects and spaces used as resistance to promote divergent positions. As a collaborative work, their projects underline the importance of building a collective alternative to question the prevalent architectural narratives. VenidaDevenida’s work is centered on the idea that architecture and design can be unfixed, in flux, and constantly changing. Through these ideas they see users not as mere spectators, but actors who can construct and perform their own rules within architecture.
Their practice exists across multiple channels –spatial installations, publications, garments, graphic identities, and videos– to examine the hegemonic means of representations in visual practices and suggesting critical alternatives to them. Their aim is to be sensible to the political understanding of cities, communities, and spaces.
Sat 23 May | 4:00pm EST | online
The discussion takes place via zoom meeting and will be livestreamed on Facebook live.
View the full LOUDREADERS schedule on the WAI website.
About the LOUDREADERS Conversation Series
Making the most out of staying safe at home during quarantine, Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz García of WAI Architecture Think Tank created a series of weekly online sessions that each feature a different LOUDREADER. Each LOUDREADER will select a book or a series of books as background to discuss urgent positions on the state of architecture, urbanism, art, and culture with a live-audience through a Zoom-meeting format. Produced in collaboration with inter·punct, these events will be a great opportunity for students and faculty to interact with practitioners, architects, designers, thinkers, authors, and artists from around the globe.