Digital Salon Podcast

Follow Digital Salon Podcast
Share on
Copy link to clipboard

The Digital Salon is a podcast series and a multi-media blog meditating on the theme of the PORTAL produced by the alumni and affiliated practitioners of UCLA’s Urban Humanities Initiative. In our pilot season, we respond to Arundhati Roy’s provocation in saying that the “pandemic is a portal.” As the pandemic fractures the cities we study, live in and love, alumni (and friends) fabulate responses that draw on the practices we call urban humanities. Through readings, soundwalks, audio-collages, interviews and more, we seek out the openings, fissures and apertures within the pandemic. digitalsalonpodcast.org

UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative


    • Aug 1, 2021 LATEST EPISODE
    • infrequent NEW EPISODES
    • 33m AVG DURATION
    • 18 EPISODES


    Search for episodes from Digital Salon Podcast with a specific topic:

    Latest episodes from Digital Salon Podcast

    "Who is the We in Diaspora?"

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 1, 2021 30:05


    And for our 12th episode, Dr. Jonathan Jae-an Crisman, Assistant Professor of Public and Applied Humanities at the University of Arizona and a founding faculty of the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative composes  a sonic exploration of Asian American and diasporic collective identity through a chorus of sixteen different voices, recorded shortly after the Atlanta shootings of six Asian spa workers.

    Sankofa: Black Healing Matters

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 28, 2021 29:24


    And for our 11th episode, UHI alumni and Urban Planning Master's student Eliza Franklin explores the Black Matrix Collective, reimagining the ways in which Black Folx attain their higher self through internal and external healing.

    Growing Resilience

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2021 27:08


    And for our 10th episode, Bangkok-based interior architect, researcher and bread baker, Marta Kwiczała casts a collective of home bread-makers that emerged in the Covid-19 pandemic, in, as she calls it, a story of bread in three acts.

    Family-ing/Familiando

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 23, 2021 21:43


    And for our 9th episode, Ana Maria Alvarez, founding artistic director of CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater and 2020 Doris Duke Artist  weaves a sonic tale about family-ing as a verb, tuning us into unrevealed practices of kinship that link us through a DNA of care.

    Imagining Spatial Collectivity within UCLA Arts

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 18, 2021 40:44


    And for our 8th episode, UHI alumi and PhD student of World Arts and Cultures and Dance at UCLA Lili Flores Raygoza and Roya Chagnon, Master student in Architecture at UCLA, investigate the potential for collective knowledge production through the creation of a Knowledge Center in the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture.

    My Commute is Home

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2021 36:39


    For our 7th episode, UHI alum and PhD student of Urban Planning at UCLA, Gus Wendel explores the state of the UCLA student commute to and from campus.   

    Aerobics in the Age of Data Sprawl

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 11, 2021 40:13


    For our 6th episode, UHI alumni, graduate of UCLA Architecture and Urban Design M.Arch I program, also, founder and leader of the Earth Girl Helen Brown Center for Planetary Intelligence Band, Heidi Alexander, relays the communal knowledge disseminated by the synchronized, vocalized, embodied practice of aerobics.

    Jitney and Anarchy: A 100-Year Global History of Rideshare in Popular Music

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 6, 2021 32:40


    For our 5th episode, UHI alumni Peter Chesney and PhD candidate of History at UCLA dives into the history of rideshare in Los Angeles and beyond, illuminating the collective organizing practices that bear relevance to today's so-called ‘sharing economy.' 

    Un/planned Transitions

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 4, 2021 29:45


    For our 4th episode, UHI alumni and architects Martha Kriley and Hideyo Kameda reflect on a changed work environment for designers wrought by the pandemic.

    You Are What You Read: Creating Critical Intimacy in the Zoom Classroom

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 30, 2021 30:40


    For our 3rd episode UHI alum and PhD student in the English Department at UCLA, Miranda Hoegberg investigates the intersections between food, literature, and sound with her undergraduate students in an English class at UCLA. 

    #CancelRent: Digital Organizing and Collective Struggle in a Global Pandemic

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 26, 2021 22:59


    For our second episode, UHI alum Dr. Brady Collins and professor of Political Science at Cal Poly Pomona tells a story about collective struggle during the pandemic by tuning into the ways the coalition Healthy LA navigates the bureaucratic dissonance of a call-in public comment system.

    #TalkAboutBeirut

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 22, 2021 45:00


    Welcome back to Digital Salon Podcast, Season 2: The Collective. For our first episode, we take you to the scale of global memory, as a collaborative group of sound artists and architects, led by Lena Pozdnyakova and Yara Feghali, walk us through the streets of Beirut, past and present, to reflect on collective trauma, grief, and healing.

    Cruising On A Ship of Fools: Renaissance Reason, Modern Civilization, and the Covid Pandemic

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2020 27:01


    A critical playlist diagnoses our present day situation as passengers aboard globalized capital’s  ship of fools. Episode by Teo Wickland.

    Production in the Age of Data Sprawl

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2020 71:15


    In this week's episode, members of the Center for Planetary Intelligence Band reflect on technology in the age of COVID, surveying the highs and lows in conversation, and veering way off track with no look back. For additional musing on washing machines, internal combustion, cooking, optics, dump trucks and Duḥkha visit digitalsalonpodcast.org to listen to Part 2 of Production in the Age of Data Sprawl.

    Sounds of Home: Nostalgia & Discovery

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 22, 2020 31:26


    In this episode, a global sonic archiving project remixes our journeys home. Episode by Cassie Hoeprich, Akana Jayewardene & Ru’a Al-Abweh.

    A Bruin Walk: The Campus Under Pandemic

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2020 17:33


    Listen to the uncommon quiet and radical emptiness that is UCLA’s campus during the shutdown. Episode by Genevieve Carpio.

    First Portal: Reading With Arundhati Roy

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 8, 2020 37:19


    In our pilot, we pay tribute to the writer and activist Arundhati Roy, through a reading of the first chapter of her newest novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and discuss the episodes to come. Episode by Jacqueline Barrios & Gus Wendel. digitalsalonpodcast.org/First-Portal

    Esta Tienda Me Importa Mucho

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 8, 2020 31:23


    Tune into the soundscapes of LA’s ethnic supermarkets and the story of the essential work they perform in urban space. Episode by Brady Collins. digitalsalonpodcast.org/esta-tienda-me-importa-mucho

    Claim Digital Salon Podcast

    In order to claim this podcast we'll send an email to with a verification link. Simply click the link and you will be able to edit tags, request a refresh, and other features to take control of your podcast page!

    Claim Cancel