Shifter: Waiting | Diego Gerard & Margarita Sánchez Urdaneta

December 3, 2020
Event Types
Talk / Lecture
Public Program
Virtual
Shifter 25: Session 5 Diego Gerard & Margarita Sánchez Urdaneta

A black, whtie, and red graphic reads "Shifter 25: Session 5 Diego Gerard & Margarita Sánchez Urdaneta"

Featuring

Diego Gerard

Margarita Sánchez Urdaneta

Accessibility

This online series will use Zoom with live closed-captioning.

For more information, contact:

Emily Garner eagarner [at] mit.edu (eagarner[at]mit[dot]edu)

A businessperson waits for a delayed subway. A wrongly convicted prisoner awaits justice. A refugee waits for their asylum case. A nation waits for the promised boon of economic development. The world waits for a vaccine. Nature waits for its exploitation to end. 

Waiting is usually what we do between things. It is the space between two destinations, an empty and anxious time to fill with distractions. But when we look more closely, we see that waiting is also an activity in itself, bristling with energy, uncertainty, and inequality. What does the condition of waiting reveal about us, our world, and the natural environment that sustains it? 

This series of eight sessions offer glimpses into the thought and practices of artists, architects, historians, and theorists who grapple with this question.

In this hour-long session, Diego Gerard will use strategies of absurdity and magical realism to discuss the ongoing tragedy of forced disappearances in Mexico in the midst of the drug war. Margarita Sanchez Urdaneta will use the concept of horrorism to consider the terror of waiting for a legal sentence.   A brief moderated discussion and audience Q&A will follow. 

These events, and the resulting publication, Shifter 25: Waiting, are co-hosted by MIT List Visual Arts Center and Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati in conjunction with solo exhibitions by Sreshta Rit Premnath to be held in March 2021 (MIT List Center) and October 2021 (CAC).

About the Speakers

Diego Gerard is a writer, editor and translator. He is the cofounding editor of diSONARE. His fiction, translations, interviews and other writings have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, The River Rail, Terremoto, and Boiler House Press among others. His book Waiting for More than One (John of the Thing Press, 2021) is forthcoming. He lives in Mexico City.  

Margarita Sánchez Urdaneta is an artist, writer, and educator. Her work investigates how systems, historical accounts, and fictional narratives sanction and permission lawful and unlawful violence. Margarita holds an MFA from Parsons, The New School, a graduate degree in Journalism from the Universidad de Los Andes, and was a fellow at the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art and SOMA Summer. Her work has been featured at several international venues, including The Kitchen; The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts; Museo del Barrio; The BID; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bogotá; Galería Gabriela Mistral.

About Shifter

Shifter explores the intersection of contemporary art, theory, and experimental writing. They convene public dialogues and produce publications. Shifter is programmed by Sreshta Rit Premnath and Avi Alpert.