One of the core activities of the Tishman Center is to support the work of students engaging in scholarship and activism related to the climate crisis and environmental and climate justice. Each academic year, we offer support to students or groups of students that are advancing the work and conversations on these topics. You can view projects that we have supported below and be on the lookout on our site and social media channels for upcoming award applications.

2021-2022

Dillon Bernard, Journalism + Design, Eugene Lang: Content By Us Amplify Climate Strategy

Content By Us is a youth-led media lab created to empower young, multicultural storytellers who use digital media and narratives as a force for self-empowerment and transformative justice. On its mission to empower young Black and Brown content creators and cultural organizers, Content By Us is expanding the digital media infrastructure of social justice movements by providing critical digital amplification and content production support. As we accomplish this mission, we are developing an issue-specific amplification network for climate, dubbed #AmplifyClimate. We will complete an audit of the climate justice space by interviewing key communications team members from prospective and current partners about their views on what’s needed in terms of climate communications.

As part of this effort, we talked with several climate justice leaders to discuss the needs around communications needs, including the Executive Director of a youth-led climate organization and leader of a climate justice communications shop. What has emerged is a clear understanding that we need more strategic communications that expands the conversation we’re having with national audiences, which we've outlined as a detailed strategy and general plan as part of this deliverables. Inspired by our conversations, we have ideated a digital series that focuses on intergenerational dialogues between young people and adult allies.

The climate justice movement acknowledges that climate change can have differing social, economic, public health, and other severe impacts on underprivileged populations (Yale Climate Connections, 2020). Decisions about the climate and our planet’s wellbeing are constantly being made, but the options and choices vary depending on the generation. Our pursuit of climate justice seeks to recognize, address, and unpack the inequities of climate change head on. 

Through this inaugural season of the series, we will engage members of different generations in meaningful conversations about their lived experiences, ideas, and feelings about what climate justice means. By the end of each episode, our aim is to collaboratively reimagine a sustainable future for our planet.

Cynthia Golembski, Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management, Milano: Carceral and Climate Crises: Advancing health equity solutions by addressing the impact of the climate crisis on people involved with the criminal legal system

Contributors:

Cynthia Golembeski, MPH, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar, PhD candidate at The New School, and JD candidate at Rutgers School of Law.

Andrea Armstrong, MPA, JD, professor at Loyola University, New Orleans, College of Law.

Ans Irfan, MD, EdD, DrPH, MPH, faculty member at George Washington University, director of Climate and Health Equity Practice Fellowship, an inducted member of the Harvard Climate Entrepreneur's Circle, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar.

Michael Méndez, PhD, assistant professor of environmental planning and policy at the University of California at Irvine, and a visiting scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Nicholas Shapiro, DPhil, assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, Institute for Society and Genetics, and director at Carceral Ecologies.

Julie Skarha, PhD, researcher at Brown University School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology and Brown University Institute for Environment and Society.

Our work focuses on the political determinants of contextual vulnerability to the twin forces of incarceration and climate change, independently and interdependently. Limited empirical evidence exists regarding the specific health effects of climate change and mass incarceration. Legal documents, media, and grey literature describe deaths in jails and prisons due to extreme temperature exposure, whereas systematic surveillance, tracking, and reporting is sorely lacking. 

We have a book chapter in press, which assesses the political determinants of the twin anthropogenic forces of incarceration and climate change and related health inequities. We illustrate “contextual vulnerability” amidst climate-society interactions involving people in prison within these contexts: 1. Extreme heat, storms, and flooding in Louisiana; and 2. Wildfires and valley fever in California.

Golembeski, Cynthia, Andrea Armstrong, Ans Irfan, Michael Méndez, Nicholas Shapiro, and Julie Skarha. “Contextual vulnerability to climate change and incarceration: Extreme temperature, floods and storms, wildfires, and valley fever.” In Climate Change and Health Justice: Applying An Equity Approach, edited by Daniel E. Dawes, Maisha Standifer, Christian Amador, and Shaneeta Johnson, Chapter 18. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, In Press.

We also published this article for the Council of Foreign Relations Think Global Health initiative. 

Golembeski, Cynthia, Andrea Armstrong, Ans Irfan, Michael Méndez, and Nicholas Shapiro. “Climate-Society Interactions and Differential Vulnerability While Incarcerated.” Council on Foreign Relations Think Global Health Initiative, 2022. https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/climate-change-and-incarceration

We aim to extend on this modest work to empirically examine climate vulnerability in association with people who are involved with the criminal legal system. We are so grateful for this support for our work. 

Evan Henritze, Clinical Psychology PhD, New School for Social Research & Sonora Goldman, Psychology MA, New School for Social Research: Moral Injury, Climate Trauma, and Pathways to Collective Action

Climate trauma, or clinically significant feelings of dread, uncertainty, and powerlessness, affects both people who do, and do not, identify as having exposure to distressing events related to climate change. One useful but understudied trauma framework is moral injury (MI), or how betrayals of “what’s right” can lead to feelings of guilt, shame, and anger. This framework addresses the psychological complexity of the crisis: we are each to varying degrees both individually complicit in contributing to carbon emissions and also embedded within systemic governance and cultural practices contributing to irreparable collective harm. Individuals can thus feel both responsible and powerless, leading to despair associated with inaction and anxiety. 

Our project investigates the moral injuries of past, present and future climate trauma. We first launched a pilot survey of our climate trauma moral injury scale and analyzed the results to refine the items and develop additional methods to explain the various ways in which people experience care, responsibility, and betrayal as it relates to the climate crisis. 

Currently, we are awaiting institutional review board approval to administer the most recent version of our scale along with related measures to over 700 participants representative of the United States population based on age, race, gender and political affiliation. We will then produce a network analysis to provide a visual depiction of the symptomatic profile of moral injury. We are interested in how people’s perceived access to political power impacts different experiences of responsibility and intuitional betrayal related to the climate crisis and in turn climate justice behaviors and mental health. 

We have since received further funding from the New School to build on the work supported by the Tishman award. This additional support will be used to conduct an experiment that will assess predictive factors causing moral injury and the impacts of moral injury on collective and individual action. 

We are proud that our project provides a climate justice informed psychological framework that reflects mental health difficulties without stigma and identifies pathways to restorative collective action. The Tishman award served as the catalyst for refining our ideas to be most effective for supporting future mental health interventions not divorced from political action.

Julián Muro, Master of Music Performer-Composer: Mind Fields or La tierra, una criatura.

Multimedia, multidisciplinary work in progress that involves music, poetry, visual arts, field recordings, international collaborations, and a permanent online exhibition. A project that consists of field recordings that I gather during my travels to create soundscapes that are combined with visual poetry as a starting point for improvisation and creation. A creative process in which the Earth is the main collaborator that is a result of the intersection of narrative, composition, improvisation, and collaboration. I have been developing this project over the past year, encouraged by my graduate music and interdisciplinary studies at The New School in NY, and it already counts with collaborations by drummer Ches Smith (US), tuba player Magnus Løvseth (Norway), electronic musician viñu-vinu (Canada), while a collaboration with harpist Marina Mello Andrade (Brazil, Switzerland) is in the works. The wide spectrum of styles, genres, performance practice, career stages, and even the geographical origin of all these musicians is something I find fascinating and I think it holds a beautiful relationship with the main force driving the project.

The current state of the work is that of a rough demo and the only reason why I still haven’t developed this work further is because of the lack of funding.

Future steps: The visual/site-specific component

The project has developed to involve a visual site-specific aspect that I would like to explore in the year to come, and I am actively looking for opportunities to realize it. Creating a multimedia, immersive exhibition that combines audio with visuals and text is the goal. The exhibition of the visual poems as a thought-provoking element of aesthetic value departs from Augusto de Campos’ work, in this case, in interaction with and supported by soundscapes, music, and photography, all of which hold a relationship with each other as part of very specific landscapes where I’ve lived. Being fairly new to the particulars of an exhibition, I do have the technical and conceptual support of my father, the exhibition designer and visual artist Tam Muro.

➔ Side note: Unyoked presents Lazydaze . 001. 2022

Two of the pieces of this project, gathered in one track named "Los cencerros y las guitarras", has been released as the opening tune on this compilation, which is a collaboration between Australian label Unyoked records and DJ mix series and sound collective Lazydaze. The piece is a collaboration between myself and Montreal-based artist viñu-vinu and, most importantly, it features field recordings that I did in the Bavarian Alps. I produced this music from a room in the mountain cottage Kreuzeckhaus, which was my home and work in the last months of 2020.

Description of Works

Veronica Olivotto, PhD in Public and Urban Policy, Milano School for Urban Policy & Katinka Wijsman, PhD in Politics, New School for Social Research: Procedural Justice and Participation: Insights from theory and practice

What does participation mean theoretically and empirically? How do participation and justice relate?

Democratic participation is infused with procedural justice (PJ) issues. PJ is concerned with the norms, rules, and approaches that govern decision making which in turn inform the distribution of rights, liberties, and entitlements among social groups. The theoretical literature on PJ is scattered across many disciplines and underlying principles for PJ as well as their clear systematization across disparate literatures is lacking. Our project works on filling this void, by answering three questions: How can an interdisciplinary literature review of PJ inform what PJ principles matter in environmental work? What do empirical EJ studies say about what matters on a case by case basis, instead? How do EJ practitioners in NYC frame what matters for PJ in urban resilience to climate change and other environmental threats? 

In this project we thus  interrogate and explicate the different meanings that ‘participation’ can take, specifically its requirements and commitments to further justice. We qualify what ‘good’ participation looks like for EJ organizations through interviews and document analysis. We will in the future report on this through an academic article and policy brief to audiences. The outcomes of our research will help better prepare academics and policy makers seeking to engage in partnerships with EJ organizations, so that the leaders from the latter can focus on their work rather than explaining their core values time and again. Ultimately we hope that this work will contribute to solidarity and mutuality by sharing EJ organizations’ goals and values about PJ across groups and with policy makers. 

Hanwei Su, BFA Fashion Design, Parsons & Ziyu Zhang, MPS Fashion Management, Parsons: “I’M BLIND, BUT I HAVE OCD OF COLOR-MATCHING"

With 300 pages of interview transcripts and hours of interview footage as references, this collection aims to educate: eliminate stereotypes towards visually impaired groups and show a multi-angle and in-depth image of the group. How can we re-interpret fashion, this most visual form of expression,  into a message carrier of the visually impaired community is the core of our design challenge. Since last September, we have worked with 7 visually impaired individuals across 3 countries (the US, Canada, China), career varies from doctor / therapist / influencer / ice hockey player /  drag queen / students. The collection also aims to incorporates technology as medium to communicate information (text/video/audio) to the audience in future stage. Due to the complexity of this system, the project so far is at the very beginning of a bigger picture, how to establish the "interaction" is what we will develop in the future as we accumulate more experience. 

Some significant discoveries based on our conversations with the interviewee:

Blind people do SEE!

Most of the Blind community are "legally blind.,"

which means the majority still have different levels of vision left, such as light perception and can see color.

They like colors!

especially bright neon colors, but this can vary from individuals

They have a life. They enjoy life!

They embrace fashion, makeup, skincare, coffee making, "watching" movies, doing sports, etc.

Blindness is not that away from everyone.

All it takes is one accident.

Special thanks to:

Ezekiel | "Blind Gay Latino" | NYC

Erick Marinez  | “ Young Independent Impaired Dominican College Student" | NYC

Britney Ellis | "Blind Beauty" | Baltimore

Clement |" The Blind Drag Queen Sienna Blaze ka The Visually Impaired Bitch Clement!" | Vancouver

Yang Yong Qian | Blind Senior Doctor. Former President of the Association for the Blind in Henan Province China

Yang Zhen | Blind Doctor in China Guangzhou Province China

Jeremy | High School Blind Ice Hockey Player | NYC

Ron Schankin | New York Metro Blind Hockey | NYC

New York Metro Blind Hockey Team

Enrique Valencia, MS International Affairs, Schools of Public Engagement: Evaluating Meaningful Engagement Under Environmental Justice Mandates: A Case Study of California’s SB1000 Implementation in Santa Ana

Technical Advisors: Madeleine Wander, University of California, Los Angeles and Michael Mendez, Ph.D., University of California, Irvine

Photo Credit 

My project involved researching the implementation of California’s Senate Bill 1000 – a planning mandate that required the inclusion of environmental justice in municipal general plans – in Santa Ana, CA, to understand how the mandate impacted the engagement of environmental justice communities. I conducted a document review and 14 informant interviews with environmental justice activists and city officials and distilled these insights into a thematic analysis. I drew from scholarly and the Environmental Justice Movement’s definition of “environmental justice” and “meaningful engagement” to construct an analytic framework for evaluating SB1000’s implementation. My analysis found that SB1000 did not lead to the meaningful engagement of EJ communities in Santa Ana because the general plan framework was captured by NIMBYs, the City was unable to pivot to meet SB1000 mandates, and the City resisted activist and State demands to halt general plan adoption amid COVID-19. This research contributes to critical planning research that documents the influence of white supremacy in planning and it also provides insights into the impacts of pandemics on public participation in planning. I presented my research findings at the 2022 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting in a session titled “Resilience and Adaptation.” Additionally, I submitted my paper to UCLA’s Critical Planning journal, vol. 26,  and it is undergoing a secondary review. I am hopeful that the article will be published in in Critical Planning and when it does, I will reach out to the environmental justice organizers in Santa Ana to share my findings.

 Product of the project:

1)     Presentation of the research findings at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting 2022: https://aag-annualmeeting.secure-platform.com/a/solicitations/19/sessiongallery/3838

2)     Journal article in Critical Planning (forthcoming)

2020-2021

Much the previous academic year, the world dealt with myriad challenges due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While the pandemic still rages on, issues associated with the climate crisis worsened and inequality rose globally. In spite of that, the spirits of mutual aid, care and community grew to address these issues. Even though we were still physically separated, we still wanted to empower students to explore policy solutions, artistic practices and dialogues to further environmental and climate justice globally. Summaries of the project are below and a virtual gallery of all the projects can be seen here.

Anjali Nair, Maria Dominguez, Hannah Rose Fox, Miriam Young,

MFA Transdisciplinary Design, Parsons School of Design

Your Mating Call Is Important To Us: A Sonic Apothecary for Synanthropes

Soundscape ecology is a field that monitors a given landscape’s health through sound recordings that can then be analyzed by humans - and more recently, by machine learning. As Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” first noted, the decrease in sonic activity and insects often have to modulate the sound frequencies of their calls just to communicate with one another.

Similar to the concept of keystone species that spark a positive reinforcing loop to heal struggling ecosystems, what if there were keystone sounds that could do the same?

In speculative fiction, we imagine a group of vigilantes, the Resounders, who believe urban landscapes can be healed through various sonic prescriptions. Their Sonic Apothecary and hotline for synathropes emits elixers to heal the given ills of urban environments. Of course, not everyone agrees with the Resounders. The Anthropophonists, otherwise known as the Loudfellas, think soundscape ecology is a hoax and need to “see it to believe it.” Meanwhile, the Shushers advocate for the sanctity of silence, believing it to be the fundamental healing element. The interactions between these groups reveal a dysfunctional dynamic that challenges the narrative that humans will become saviors of the planet.

Anya Isabel Andrews,

BA, Sociology, Eugene Lang & Liberal Studies, MA, New School for Social Research

A Luta Continua Dialogues: The Struggle Continues

A Luta Continua Dialogues: The Struggle Continues. A Luta Continua Dialogues is designed to bring Black activists, community workers, and thought leaders across the diaspora together in conversation. Through robust dialogue, we integrate our different identities in a space that explores our interconnected realities as people working for liberation and empowerment. Furthermore, we work to combat the consistent sidelining of the voices of Black people, Indigenous, and people of color at large in social movements.

In our Environmental Justice episode, we worked to shift the mainstream narrative around organized action for climate change to one that both addresses systemic barriers to climate justice and centers BIPOC environmental knowledge, healing, innovation, and preservation practices. By uniting a multi-racial, multi-generational group of environmental activists, scholars and educators, we engaged in a vibrant and productive conversation surrounding the realities of climate change, environmental racism, and the significance of environmental education.

Feel free to join the conversation in the comments and on our social media with #ALutaTheEarthIsOurs

Instagram: @aluta_dialogues

Twitter: @aluta_dialogues

Facebook: A Luta Continua Dialogues (@alutadialogues)

Ashley Lituma

BA Global Studies, Eugene Lang

Restoring the Land: Traditional Agriculture for the Future

As climate change develops further, it has threatened the food production for communities-made-vulnerable around the globe. On Turtle Island (North America), Indigenous people are some of the most affected. So it is no surprise that in planning for the future of their tribes, they are at the forefront of the food sovereignty movement. By interviewing people working on the ground, we can begin to learn how to transform our current industrial food model into healthy food systems that benefit everyone.

Bergamont Quartet: Ledah Finck, Sarah Thomas, Amy Tan, Irene Han

Graduate String Quartet in Residence, PDPL, Mannes School of Music

Slow Movement: a musical exploration of tempo in the fashion industry

Slow Movement: a musical exploration of tempo in the fashion industry is a sonic and visual concert experience that interweaves contemporary and experimental music with multimedia social commentary. It reckons with the pace of “fast fashion” through the lens of an artistic medium that is centuries old – the string quartet – by tracing the path and challenges of making sustainable choices as clothing consumers and as a musical ensemble.

Devin Hentz

MA Fashion Studies, Parsons School of Design

KAN MO MOM ÀDDUNA? (WHO OWNS THE WORLD?)

KAN MO MOM ÀDDUNA? (WHO OWNS THE WORLD?) is a visual research platform that interrogates clothing, cultures, desire, & power. With a starting point in Black cultures, KMMA engages with the transformative and fantastical power of fashion to help communities and individuals to voice their fantasies and to self-advocate to fulfill them. By working with established practices and infrastructure around the making of clothing and textiles, KMMA works with local craftspeople and artists to make textiles that reflect Africa’s urban visual culture. KMMA will host events and workshops where the participants are co-creators, ensuring a fun/safe place to speak desires into existence.

Gabrielle Houston

MA, Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management, Milano

Long Island Waste Flows

For this project I am partnering with GAIA (Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives) to research and map waste flows on Long Island that lead to Long Island's four incinerators. I will be working closely with local community groups such as BLARG (Brookhaven Landfill Action and Remediation Group). I will also help GAIA identify other community/environmental groups on Long Island interested in efforts to close the four incinerators and shift towards zero waste.

View the Mapping and EJ Analysis here.

Génesis Abreu and Kaija Xiao

MA Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management Graduate Program, Milano

Food Sovereignty Land

This project is the culmination of the graduate research Genesis Abreu and Kaija Xiao have been undertaking during their studies in the EPSM program at The New School. We, as queer, trans, Brown and Asian students, farmers, and aspiring land stewards seek to co-liberate land through regaining connection, community, lifeways for QTBIPOC communities’ ultimately leading to intergenerational healing, resisting assimilation into the colonial project, and reverse climate chaos destruction. We have been in conversation with a queer Haudenosaunee land rematriation project. One part of the project we’ve been tasked with is to conduct a comparative analysis of a variety of QTBIPOC land projects across Turtle Island in an effort to explore models of organizing communally, examples of solidarity economies, and stories of success and struggles on land reclamation in an effort to learn from and with, for the growth and sustainability of future land projects. We hope this work serves to strengthen their project, as well as other decolonial and reparations based land projects in the future.

Zainab Koli

M.S., Environmental Policy & Sustainability Management, Milano

Faithfully Sustainable

Faithfully Sustainable is a community organization whose mission is to bridge Islam with environmental, climate and social justice by equipping Muslim Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) with the educational and financial resources needed to create a more sustainable world. Our vision is to build a translocal movement of young Muslims fighting for justice within and outside of their communities. With the TEDC award, we will organize a (virtual) event series focusing on the intersection between environmental/climate justice/sustainability and Islam.

2019-2020

In light of all the tumult happening this semester, the Tishman Center felt a need to support environmental justice and equity work of students across the university. We put out a call for applications in April of 2020 and are proud to present the fourteen projects that we decided to support below. These projects represent almost all of the colleges across The New School and embody the transdisciplinary approach that both the university and the Tishman Center embrace as the best way to solve the issues of our time.

The Climate Resource Hub, a student-led collaborative project, is an online platform which aims to serve as an instrument to support mobilization and educational efforts to address the climate crisis by (1) presenting a vision of what an equitable, ecocentric, decolonial, feminist future looks like, (2) providing a pool of knowledge and resources on transformational systemic solutions to tackle the climate crisis, (3) amplifying the voices of frontline grassroots organizing, and (4) prioritizing assistance for youth, activists, and organizers in the climate justice space and beyond (5) using accessible language, resources, and programming to create an inclusive educational, yet action-oriented space to connect The New School students, faculty, and staff with those not in academia, from people already in the climate justice movement to newcomers.

The pamphlet is intended to create a meaningful avenue for advocacy. It is intended to be resourceful to the communities impacted by hydropower dam projects, other advocacy groups, local leaders or local organizations. It will be available for distribution in the print, web version and downloadable files translated in three languages [English, Nepali, and Hindi]. The contents of the pamphlet will include the general information of hydropower dams, environmental risk, global trends in energy production, highlight case studies, local mobilization success against hydropower dams in South Asian countries and highlight alternatives.

The Roots Cafe Food Pantry is a donation-based pantry and soup kitchen in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Recognizing that members of our community were facing illness, financial instability, and person loss during the Covid-19 crisis, Roots opened its doors to the community in an effort to provide our neighbors with basic nutrition and human kindness. We serve free vegan chili and grilled cheese, dry goods and pantry items, and warmest smiles- seven days a week. We also deliver free groceries bi-weekly to over 20 families who are otherwise without food access. The Roots Cafe Food Pantry is committed to joyfully providing for our neighbors in need.

Agritopias is an experimental agri-tech project designed in partnership with Prime Produce & Seeds to Soil Cooperative. It is a decentralized food network comprising fifteen fostered food production stations adopted by participants. Through sustainable ethos and community based art practice, the project will produce a revised, open-source system of healthy food sourcing that prioritizes accessibility and contains a lightweight system of support through information exchange. Participants fostering plants have the option to exchange and transplant their desired portion of their plant yield into an on-site aeroponic chamber. This project documents a network of exchange grounded in mutual aid principles.

In recent years, foundations in the United States have become increasingly interested in participatory grantmaking as a strategy for allocating resources to these same marginalized areas. Using the Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal and Ecological Health (GCF) as an example of participatory grantmaking in the Gulf South post-Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, this proposed qualitative case study (my dissertation) will apply the method of situation analysis to explore the process by which participatory grantmaking was applied in disaster response and recovery efforts in the region.

Assembling Coasts interrogates how 'resilience' informs the governance of coasts - sites considered frontlines in dealing with climate change. Katinka examines how localized responsibility arrangements take root, while considering how global circuits of knowledge and finance shape the various (im)possibilities for specific practices of responsibility to emerge. As a TEDC awardee, she will develop a photo essay of her work in Suriname, where adaptation practices of mangrove restoration turn out to be intimately linked to the physical and affective consequences of colonial hydrological projects of the former plantation economy, profoundly shaping the aspirations, hopes, and fears of local communities in the face of climate change.

The Three Sisters Sovereignty Project is a food and culture sovereignty project launched by three indigenous women of the Mohawk tribe in Upstate, NY. The project aims to create a community away from the polluted land where the Mohawk reservation resides, which has been affected by the toxic waste of four superfund sites. Ludovica has been supporting the project through creating partnerships and fundraising. She plans to travel Upstate during the summer to help record footage of the place in order to create promotional videos about the Project and interview tribe members in order to write more articles and share them with local and national news outlets.

In order to to promote localized production of corn products and furniture in Mexico, Maryangela designed a stool made from corn husks. The purpose of this stool is to replace the promotional plastic furniture that is provided by foreign companies like Coca Cola in exchange for exclusively selling their products and, thus, eliminate the element of colonization from food and manufacturing. Maryangela is looking into connecting with groups that work around nutrition and food justice in Mexico and try to develop this project in partnership with local corn growing communities.

cede. is a nonprofit co-op investment platform that disrupts the modern idea of wealth. Its mission is to build “wealth” via cooperation, collaboration, and regenerative practices in BIPOC communities to cement a vision of a world that’s actively interdependent.

This research project aims to examine the experience of Central Americans and their encounters with the current migratory systems in Mexico and in the US. While it is true that Central American migration through Mexico has been constant for more than four decades, the forms, dynamics, configurations of migratory flows, and the government responses have varied over the years. Moreover, the causes of displacement have varied, and in recent years the factors that drive the decision to migrate have become more complex and intersectional. I believe that the case of Central American migration set the grounds for the intersection between political persecution, climate, and environmental justice, and transnational migration.

Wool Brick is an alternative building material for architecture and interiors that is circular in design. It is made from biodegradable sheep wool indigenous to the lower Himalayas where it is produced. Sheep wool is a naturally occurring renewable resource and wool-felt can be reused for multiple life-cycles, reducing material consumption. Wool is naturally sound and temperature insulating and regulates humidity. Wool Brick is a modular textile tile that can be used in interior environments to create soft insulating walls, room dividers and furniture like tables and stools.

Our climate efforts are doomed by our framing. We instinctively see the crisis as an external problem and call for new materials and methods to imagine all the ways we can shape the world around our lives but we can hardly imagine different ways of living. This project presents problem framing as an essential piece of the solution by exploring how entangled societal factors—politics, economics, culture, etc.—which typically present barriers to change can become the material for experimentation and innovation. A 2031 broadcast from the Global News Network carries the viewer through the journey of two nation-states that have emerged from a tumultuous upheaval of American politics due to the rapid escalation of climate issues paving the way for a “bioborg” in Hawaii named LAKA and “artifactual intelligence” in San Francisco named SAM to make local, administrative decisions based on those values and with a post-post truth era definition of objectivity.