Tomorrow is the Problem: A Podcast by Knight Foundation Art + Research Center at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami

Our season concludes with a discussion about David Medalla, an internationalist who – much like his work – resists easy categorization. Best known for his kinetic sculpture series Cloud Canyons, David Medalla's whimsical art invites people to see beyond borders and limitations.  Jane England, the director and founder of the gallery England Co, and Contemporary Art Professor at McGill University Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol join Dr. Donna Honarpisheh to discuss the life, philosophy, and art of David Medalla.  Tomorrow is the Problem is brought to you by the Knight Foundation Art + Research Center and is produced in partnership with FRQNCY Media.

stanley brouwn is one of the most enigmatic and elusive artists of this century. brouwn created performative conceptual experiments in identity, perception, scale, and relation, among other topics. Almost as important as his conceptual practice is his refusal to share biographical information and requests for his work to never be photographed, replicated, or even analyzed. In other words, what we don't know about brouwn is almost as important as what we do know.  Host Dr. Donna Honarpisheh is joined by Adrienne Edwards, the Ingalls Speyer Family Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Programs at the Whitney Museum, E.C. Feiss, Assistant professor of modern and contemporary art at Providence College, and writer, art historian, and editor, Annie Ochmanek to discuss this enigmatic artist.  Tomorrow is the Problem is brought to you by the Knight Foundation Art + Research Center and is produced in partnership with FRQNCY Media.

Tomorrow is The Problem, kicks off its fifth season with a deep-dive into the groundbreaking work of conceptual artist, Charles Gaines. Over the course of his ongoing career, Gaines repeatedly revolutionized understanding of art: how it can be made, what makes it meaningful, and why art criticism consistently fails Black artists.  Host Dr. Donna Honarpisheh sits down with art historian and curator Ellen Tani, contemporary artist Edgar Arceneaux, and Charles Gaines himself to discuss Gaines' prolific work.  Tomorrow is the Problem is brought to you by the Knight Foundation Art + Research Center and is produced in partnership with FRQNCY Media.  Zapatista Orchestration recording courtesy of Charles Gains and the Hammer Museum.

Tomorrow Is The Problem, is back! This season, Dr. Donna Honarpisheh will explore the works of three conceptual artists: Charles Gaines, stanley brouwn, and David Medalla.  Tomorrow is the Problem is brought to you by the Knight Foundation Art + Research Center and is produced in partnership with FRQNCY Media.

This last episode of the season is dedicated to a singular artist whose layered portrayal and use of humor to relate to issues of belonging, home, racism, and brutality are part of a lifelong dedication to telling stories.

Haiti's relationship to time goes back and forth along a spiraling line that repeated patterns while identifying them. Artists have long played a role in calling out failings and offering paths to rectifying trajectories. In the face of mounting crises, who will listen to the voices of the past and the call for home-grown resilience?

The fractures left by inside and outside forces following Haiti's double revolution against racial slavery and colonialism are still felt today. Analyzing history through a contemporary interpretive lens empowers a nuanced narrative that informs the present moment. It also reminds the present of the potential of revolution.

Haiti has had a definite role in shaping the Miami cultural and physical landscape. As we explore the growing root system that gives rise to the singular cultural hub that is Miami, we dive into both its diasporic past and the climate changes its future is signaling.

Tomorrow Is The Problem PodcastWelcome to the ICA Miami Podcast. Each season, we'll explore familiar concepts from everyday life that we often take for granted.We'll expand these concepts to understand their critical historical and cultural underpinnings and forever change the way you view them.The Art of RitualSeason 3 focuses on ancestral ritual practices that find resonance in today's art and culture.We explore the practices of artists as they birth new meanings from ancient rituals, linking past, present, and future.Art as Trance: Lucy Bull and Psychedelic CounterculturesArt functions as a perception prism, aiming to divert and change how we experience our world. As psychedelics take root in white America, an appropriation shift occurs.From meditating with paintings, to representations of altered states, we probe the nature of the relationship of the artist with themselves and with the viewer and finally between art and our senses.Time stamps[0:00] Becoming lost, then self-aware.[2:43] Tug-of-war, layering, digging and scratching her way to the finished product.[4:41] Lucy aims for variable, shifting paintings, objects that seek to generate sensory meld, a trance of sorts.[5:57] Renewing her perspective as an artist is something that Lucy does during the creation of each painting. She aims for the viewer to lose and find themselves again, maybe even in strange new places.[7:42] The feelings of paintings, the comforting background hum of non-narrative cinema, and finding inspiration in the unknown aspects of cinematic storytelling.[10:35] Psychedelic iconography generates alternate sensorial scapes, extracting artistry from non-Western sources.[12:41] Looking for Mushrooms is one of the key experiences of psychedelia. Johanna Gosse proposes that to fully grasp the subliminal extent of this type of work, ritualized viewing may best fit.[17:20] A shift in resources: mining cultural virtuosity, from Jazz to indigenous shamanistic rituals.[21:09] Hegemon is as Hegemon does.[23:05] Johanna argues that the perception of time is an influential force through which we can examine the use of psychedelics in art.[25:10] Getting anyone to spend any time in front of a painting today is a challenge, and the infinite scroll is no way to commune with art.[27:21] Season 4, Reimagining Haïti: Past, Present, and Future is next.Contributors + GuestsLucy Bull / Artist.Johanna Gosse / Lecturer in Lens- and Time-based Art Histories at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.Donna Honarpisheh / Assistant Curator and Host.Links + LearnICA MIAMIPodflyLucy BullLooking for MushroomsJazz as a Critical Way of Life ICA MiamiLisaNa Macias-Red BearDr. Beatriz Caiuby LabateJodi A. ByrdQuotes + Social“Yeah, I think that there, there's something that happens when you're using repetition and it's almost like it becomes this sonic landscape.” — Lucy Bull“The paintings that I'm most subconscious about at the end, there's something weird going on where I feel like I'm exposed. Those end up being my favorites. I think I am looking for that certain level of vulnerability.” — Lucy Bull“The term psychedelic is often used to discuss altered states of consciousness, and I think this is where we see a lot of overlap with the goals and aspirations of many artists to manipulate perception.” — Johanna Gosse“We see the emergence of the hippie who's really the protagonist of the psychedelic counterculture, and I argue that with that generational shift, we also see a shift in cross racial identification from African American culture to indigenous people.” — Johanna Gosse“Everyone's so used to kind of scrolling through images, and that's not really how the paintings communicate.” — Lucy Bull

Tomorrow Is The Problem PodcastWelcome to the ICA Miami Podcast. Each season, we'll explore familiar concepts from everyday life that we often take for granted.We'll expand these concepts to understand their critical historical and cultural underpinnings and forever change the way you view them.The Art of RitualSeason 3 focuses on ancestral ritual practices that find resonance in today's art and culture.We explore the practices of artists as they birth new meanings from ancient rituals, linking past, present, and future.A Lightning Stroke: The Poetic Vision of Etel AdnanEtel Adnan's art practice exists outside of traditional notions of time and spaces. She paints and writes a broader objective view of the cosmos all while wrestling with the everyday.Today's episode explodes out of time and follows repetition and meditation rituals as anchors for the therapeutic process. From letting go of the written word, to painting, to reclaiming a voice amid the chaos of war, we look at Etel Adnan.Time stamps[0:00] The mountain's anchor.[3:08] Stefania Pandolfo shares her friendship with Adnan.[4:57] Sensitive to the world's anguish, Adnan's relationship to colonialism evolves and gives new shape to her voice, and her art.[7:17] Adnan finds her point de référence in Mount Tamalpais and makes it her creative and physical home, also feeling the sense of home it has been for generations of indigenous peoples.[12:15] The folded poems, the Leporello Zikr as Adnan's relationship to the divine, blur the lines between painting and writing, which the artists sees as twin.[13:21] Julian Myers-Szupinska recounts that as a journalist, Etel unfurls the span of her thought from politics to sport, honing her lyrically impassioned voice.[15:50] Looking out from the moon, Adnan's objective worldview is rocked and broadened.[17:06] From these moon meditations, Etel is dragged back into the very visceral atrocities of a germinating war, with Sitt Marie Rose, she is chased from home and land and retreats to Mount Tam.[18:49] The sun is life and death.[22:07] Etel's work points to the broader nature of perception, from language to images in relationship to our collective imagination[23:56] Painting Mount Tam, or the red square as a daily ritual akin to morning ablutions, out of time and space.[26:06] Adnan is “Adopted” into the art world somewhere in 2011. As Naz Cuguoğlu states, this shines a light on a problematic historical attitude and overly narrow curatorial practices.[30:00] Having a timeless and abstract notion of home and working as an artist requires privilege that Etel as an immigrant did not have.[31:31] Episode 4 is next: Art as Trance: Lucy Bull and Psychedelic Countercultures.Contributors + GuestsStefania Pandolfo / Cultural Anthropologist and Researcher.Julian Myers-Szupinska / Associate Professor of Curatorial Practices.Naz Cuguoğlu / Curator and Art Writer.Donna Honarpisheh / Assistant Curator and Host.Links + LearnICA MIAMIPodflyEtel AdnanLeporellosSitt Marie RoseThe Arab ApocalypseQuotes + Social“And so, the poetry is painful. The poetry is animated by an urge to testify and to transform the moment in which it is testified. But she sees her poetry as pained.” — Stefania Pandolfo“As she says, writing is drawing and drawing is writing..” — Julian Myers-Szupinska“She talked about her love of sports writing as being a place where description could run wild. People had to write very, very quickly, and some sense of that, like sharpness, freshness, timeliness, and spontaneity does filter into the writing in some way.” — Julian Myers-Szupinska“And she sees painting as a space of meditation and peace and so that painting becomes an antidote, becomes an art cure.” — Stefania Pandolfo“What kind of poem to the Sun can be written if one has to also mourn the dead? The sun will burn us, the sun is both life and death. The sun gives life and takes life, the sun is both murder and birth.” — Stefania Pandolfo“This repetition and dailyness is part of everyday life in the way that doing morning ablutions would be. It's the condition and the form of her relationship to the world.” — Julian Myers-Szupinska “We do not have a holistic enough curatorial approach to hold someone like Etel Adnan at our institutions who is beyond boundaries in terms of time and in terms of geographies.” — Naz Cuguoğlu

Tomorrow Is The Problem PodcastWelcome to the ICA Miami Podcast. Each season, we'll explore familiar concepts from everyday life that we often take for granted.We'll expand these concepts to understand their critical historical and cultural underpinnings and forever change the way you view them.The Art of RitualSeason 3 focuses on ancestral ritual practices that find resonance in today's art and culture.We explore the practices of artists as they birth new meanings from ancient rituals, linking past, present, and future.Rituals of Transformation: Betye Saar and Black Feminist ArtFrom a young age, Betye Saar collected objects as a form of ritual, to hone their energy and activate their spirit. To protect and potentialize them.Today's episode explores ritual as a methodology for healing and power. From the ritualization of Betye Saar's installation sites to the reclamation of the black body by Krista Franklin we follow, and deconstruct the Brookes Ship.Time stamps[0:00] Young eyes watch as Simon Rodia builds his Watts Towers.[3:10] Sampada Aranke describes The Liberation of Aunt Jemima.[5:49] Black radical aesthetic existed outside the confines of the Black Panthers political Party, and some artists engaged in it have been collecting overdue on their work in the past 15 years.[7:34] The sacred magic of everyday objects as conduits of transformative energy for Saar.[10:26] Stephanie Seidel explains that while remaining political, Saar's work shifts to a more spiritual way of making art.[11:39] House of Fortune Saar brings in aspects of Haïtian Voodoo and so aspects of ritual become part and parcel of her art.[12:35] The ritual: Imprint, Search, Recycle and Transform, and finally, Release.[15:17] The altar — and the invitation to an offering — in The Wings of Morning.[16:50] Krista Franklin speaks of the altar as a tended space, a place of discipline and surrender.[18:08] The ritual aspect of Saar's work — of any art practice — is rightfully formidable, beautiful, troubling even.[19:15] Voyage Whose Chartings are Unlove was to be a thoughtful piece about literacy and the echoes of the middle passage. Krista speaks of the trauma the creation of the piece activated in her and what it became as it took life.[23:04] Art as a ritual for understanding will be a double-edged sword: it can summon terrifying emotions and ancestral communal memories.[24:51] Troubled Waters, the Brookes Slave Ship, and Saar's poetic use of hope to broaden the Black life violence narrative.[28:17] Reclaiming the wholeness of the black body and using the power latent in objects to create healing and understanding through ritual.[31:32] Rituals as an hommage to the past and a projection into the future. [32:48] Episode 3 is next: A Lightning Stroke: The Poetic Vision of Etel Adnan.Contributors + GuestsSampada Aranke / Researcher and Assistant Professor.Stephanie Seidel / Curator at ICA Miami.Krista Franklin / Writer and Contemporary Artist.Donna Honarpisheh / Assistant Curator and Host.Links + LearnICA MIAMIPodflyBetye SaarSimon RodiaBrookes Slave ShipQuotes + Social“It was actually surprising how quickly this kind of offering grew over the course of the exhibition and how many people brought really specific little items that might remind them of people. I saw buttons, little pearls, and cards. And I think that is something Betye encourages and intends in the work.” — Stephanie Seidel“I reassembled the book and I was going to submerge it in the tank of water, thinking very much about the bodies who were thrown overboard on the slave ships.” — Krista Franklin“I feel like this is exactly the poetic kind of mysticism and energy that Saar is working with. How do we think about the violences that form us, that form the experience of everyday life without merely reducing Black life to those violences by suggesting another way, another set of sensations.” — Sampada Aranke

Tomorrow Is The Problem PodcastWelcome to the ICA Miami Podcast. Each season, we'll explore familiar concepts from everyday life that we often take for granted.We'll expand these concepts to understand their critical historical and cultural underpinnings and forever change the way you view them.The Art of RitualSeason 3 focuses on ancestral ritual practices that find resonance in today's art and culture.We explore the practices of artists as they birth new meanings from ancient rituals, linking past, present, and future.The Border Between Art and RitualWith the African Diaspora came Yoruba, Kongo, the Orishas in their richly pluralistic forms as well as a great many other cultural and spiritual influences.From ancestral means of worship to the blurry lines between art and ritual, two cuban artists share their experience of Santeria and ritualistic practices in their art, community, legacies and timelines.Time stamps[0:00] A controversial Santeria church and its First Amendment protection.[2:59] María Magdalena Campos-Pons shares her childhood experience of Santeria in Cuba both during spectacular festival celebrations and in the everyday.[4:50] The intense beauty of the Orishas and the potent force of deified ancestors and natural phenomena representations.[6:01] Javialito's cleaning ritual, from ancestral Yoruba roots to performance art.[8:29] José Bedia speaks of his Tata (godfather) who as Nganga Ngombo (priest), introduced him to the Orishas and ceremonies of the Kongo tradition.[10:46] Though his art is public-facing, culturally and spiritually inspired, José keeps his ritual practice private.[11:20] María Magdalena uses her art and her rituals to call in love and healing. She also shares how it fosters lineage and belonging.[14:13] Symmetry enables a duality that José explores both in conceptually and concretely while painting bimanually.[16:04] The idea of coming of age spans a breadth of cultures, José uses a form of anthropological inquiry to draw inspiration from those rituals in societies that grow and change. [18:36] The trauma of colonialism is shared in multiple cultures, but José offers that now is a magnificent time to watch all those cultures finally be free to express what they really are.[19:07] Rituals speak to shared cultural truths, a way to reconcile past, present and future.[20:57] María Magdalena explains why she choses to share an offering with the participants as well as her understanding of Felix Gonzalez-Torres' piles of candy.[24:35] On the endless and collective legacy of rituals in both the physical and spiritual realms.[26:17] Episode 2 is next: Rituals of Transformation: Betye Saar and Black Feminist Art.Contributors + GuestsMaría Magdalena Campos-Pons / Artist and Professor.José Bedia / Painter and Sculptor.Donna Honarpisheh / Assistant Curator and Host.Links + LearnICA MIAMIPodflyCarlos AlfonzoCristine BracheBetye SaarQuotes + Social“The potent force of those celebrations and everything around it, the sense of community... The intensity of what I witnessed there had never left me ever.” — María Magdalena Campos-Pons“I don't think I do ritual for public. I do art influenced by those rituals, but I don't do rituals. I do art. and I try to respect the borderline between one area and the other.” — José Bedia“Rituals allow for place of trust, complicity, understanding, relief, opening of the soul, space. Every time that a ritual is performed, everyone that is in in it become part of that link and that lineage.” — María Magdalena Campos-Pons“We all have this colonial past and it was traumatic. This is a common link between the Caribbean, Africa, and the Native American peoples. But for first time, all those cultures have the right and the conditions to express themself and what they really are.” — José Bedia“Let us never forget our origins, the future is full of unforeseen.” — María Magdalena Campos-Pons

Tomorrow Is The Problem PodcastWelcome to the ICA Miami Podcast. Each season, we'll explore familiar concepts from everyday life that we often take for granted.We'll expand these concepts to understand their critical historical and cultural underpinnings and forever change the way you view them.Sound WavesThe focus of this second season is sound as art, music, protest, and violence.An exploration of how sounds shape our experience of the world requires a study of music, but also that of the less explored sonic landscapes that exist outside of the anthropomorphic auditory register.On Listening as an Ethical PracticeFor our season finale we offer hot, crunchy, gooey sounds!We discuss the ethics of sound and how the old lexicons of sound have trained our cognitive biases to hear in racialized, gendered,and classist terms.Time Stamps + Takeaways[0:00] Hearing versus listening, passivity and intentionality. A reading of Claudia Rankine's Citizen.[3:40] Nina Eidsheim talks about the intermaterial vibrational quality of sound as well as the implicated nature of the listener — the receptor as an integral part of sound itself.[7:45] “Figures of sound” — like figures of speech — are susceptible to cognitive biases. Nina explains what this looks like, and how to challenge this in ourselves.[12:02] Hot, cold, crunchy, gooey, explosive sounds? Nina invites us to disrupt our patterns and revisit long-established lexicons.[14:35] Jana Winderen speaks to the sounds of the seas, and while they are quiet, they are by no means silent — and neither are humans — as well as how she records her work.[18:43] We weren't always this loud. Jana shares the destructive impacts of human noise pollution.[22:54] Tina Campt on quiet photographs and the inexistence of silence in the world.[26:43] Black Germans and their relationship to sounds of war was a path to a new sonic modality for Tina. She also speaks to the power of photographs as a tool for control and propaganda.[30:46] Tina reads a photograph, which leads to thoughts on how we consume media.[30:47] Season 2 closes with a quiet encouragement to be intentional in our listening practice and invites listeners to tune in for season 3.Contributors + GuestsNina Sun Eidsheim / Scholar + Professor.Jana Winderen / Artist.Tina Campt / Professor.Donna Honarpisheh / Assistant Curator and Host.This podcast was made in partnership with Podfly Productions. This episode was written by Isabelle Lee and Donna Honarpisheh, and edited by Frances Harlow. Our showrunner is Jocelyn Arem, and our Sound Designer and Audio Mixer is Nina Pollock. Links + LearnICA MIAMIPodflyJunk, by Bruno Hunger and Gregor HuberPauline OliverosCitizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia RankineThe Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music, by Nina Sun EidsheimQuotes + Social“If we believe that something like gender exists, then we will hear gender in people's voices, if we believe that something like class, or race exists, then we will hear that as well, even when we listen to music.” — Nina Sun Eidsheim“Humans are around most of the planet all the time. So when you start recording with hydrophones, you will realize how loud we are with engines, with ferries, shipping traffic. All this kind of seismic testing, air guns, sonars, military sonar…” — Jana Winderen“What we mistake for quiet is an assumption that silence actually exists in the world. So quiet to me is a profoundly overlooked sonic modality. It is overlooked because we think of it as an absence when in fact it is a really subtle presence. “ — Tina Campt

Tomorrow Is The Problem PodcastWelcome to the ICA Miami Podcast. Each season, we'll explore familiar concepts from everyday life that we often take for granted.We'll expand these concepts to understand their critical historical and cultural underpinnings and forever change the way you view them.Sound WavesThe focus of this second season is sound as art, music, protest, and violence.An exploration of how sounds shape our experience of the world requires a study of music, but also that of the less explored sonic landscapes that exist outside of the anthropomorphic auditory register.Jazz as a Critical Way of LifeImprovisation is the shaping force of jazz, but as it shapes jazz it also structures community, and enables resistance.Today's episode explores where jazz finds its roots and how far it sends its shoots.Time Stamps + Takeaways[0:00] Prose — poetry, improvisation, and the world — as shaped by jazz. [2:49] The structure of jazz in opposition to the discourse that jazz has no design. Donna shares her thoughts on the expansive musical genre.[4:47] Farah Jasmine Griffin on how the U.S. was using jazz as a tool to showcase democratic equality on the world stage, while many jazz artists continued to critique American racial politics and colonialism.[7:03] The meaning of jazz and improvisation through the eyes and hands of Endea Owens, Juilliard graduate and house bassist for the Late Show with Steven Colbert alongside.[11:45] Farah shares her experience of jazz in New York — especially on a random weekday.[17:40] How improvisation shapes more than jazz — more than art — a community.[21:00] Writing as a question to be answered and its relationship to jazz and improvisation, according to Farah.[24:23] Endea speaks of her community involvement and the impacts of music, and especially live music, on neighborhoods.[26:47] Before jazz became a myth, Farrah recounts the History.[30:56] The pandemic may have launched a new-found need for natural, free, unique sounds of improvisational jazz. Endea shares Solange's ask, as well as her own hopes for the future of jazz, and women in jazz.[34:35] Episode 8 is next: Sounds Silence (Listening).Contributors + GuestsFarah Jasmine Griffin / Professor.Endea Owens / Musician.Donna Honarpisheh / Assistant Curator and Host.This podcast was made in partnership with Podfly Productions. This episode was written by Jocelyn Arem and Donna Honarpisheh, and edited by Frances Harlow. Our showrunner is Jocelyn Arem, and our Sound Designer and Audio Mixer is Nina Pollock. Links + LearnICA MIAMIPodflyJunk, by Bruno Hunger and Gregor HuberTony MorrisonNathaniel MackeyFred Moten poetic workCharles GainesTerry AtkinsMaya Konfeld, Structure in the Moment, Rhythm Section ResponsivityJelly Roll MortonLouis ArmstrongDuke EllingtonBillie HolidayElla FizgeraldBlue NoteEsperanza SpaldingRobert GlassperAmiri BarakaDizzy GillespieJon BaptisteGeri AllenBrandee YoungerJoyce JonesCassandra WilsonThe Community CookoutSolangeQuotes + Social“I think that that's one of the great difficulties of being a minority group in the United States that has suffered at the hands of the government, but then also being used by the government.” — Farah Jasmine Griffin“Jazz to me is freedom of expression. Of course, it's Black freedom of expression … It morphed into something that was so free and so just such a breath of fresh air that it is now an inclusive art that's for everyone.” — Endea Owens“I sometimes start writing because I don't know the answer … for me, writing starts with a question.” — Farah Jasmine Griffin

Tomorrow Is The Problem PodcastWelcome to the ICA Miami Podcast. Each season, we'll explore familiar concepts from everyday life that we often take for granted.We'll expand these concepts to understand their critical historical and cultural underpinnings and forever change the way you view them.Sound WavesThe focus of this second season is sound as art, music, protest, and violence.An exploration of how sounds shape our experience of the world requires a study of music, but also that of the less explored sonic landscapes that exist outside of the anthropomorphic auditory register.Sounds of MiamiA mixtape of Miami unicity, History, future, culture, losses and rebuildings.Time Stamps + Takeaways[1:33] Your Miami mixtape.[2:13] Ashley Solage describes her Miami, humid days, mangoes in mom's backyard and island music in the streets.[3:00] Alexandra Vazquez, 305 or die, talks about her book The Florida Room and why this architectural feature is used in her work.[5:49] Tiger Tiger cover of Patti Smith's Because the Night. Alexandra talks about the Miccosukee.[9:27] Etapp Kyle and Tarra Remix Moscow by Danny Daze (Danny From Miami). Ashley shares her experience as the venue manager and founder of ‘The Void' at LMNT.[15:20] DJ Uncle AL and Felix Sama Mega Mix. Alexandra explains the Miami (Liberty City and Overtown) crosses and losses and rebuildings that this song underscores.[22:35] Rocking Chair by Gwen McCray. Alexandra and Ashley's hopes for the future and for Miami's music.[27:34] Bonus Track: The Institute at Midnight by Matthew Evan Taylor, as well as his own words on what Miami music is.[29:21] Episode 7 is next: Sounds of Jazz as Critique.Contributors + GuestsAshley Solage / Artist, Community Organizer.Alexandra T. Vazquez / Associate Professor.Donna Honarpisheh / Assistant Curator and Host.This podcast was made in partnership with Podfly Productions. This episode was written by Jocelyn Arem and Donna Honarpisheh, and edited by Frances Harlow. Our showrunner is Jocelyn Arem, and our Sound Designer and Audio Mixer is Nina Pollock. Links + LearnICA MIAMIPodflyJunk, by Bruno Hunger and Gregor HuberThe Florida Room, by Alexandra VazquezBuffalo Tiger, Miccosukee LeaderTiger Tiger Because The NightEtapp Kyle and Tarra Remix, MoscowDJ Uncle AL and Felix Sama, Mega MixGwen McCrae, Rockin' ChairMatthew Evan Taylor, The Institute at MidnightGean MorenoQuotes + Social“Part of what happens, especially around Miami music history, is that it kind of mimics some of the apartheids of the city itself, where it keeps people and music in these separate camps … That's not the truth of the music.”“In that moment, none of us had any care in the world. We weren't thinking about bills, jobs, about homophobia, nothing. I think about that day and how it is possible for marginalized or oppressed communities to actually come together and support each other and experience freedom.”

Tomorrow Is The Problem PodcastWelcome to the ICA Miami Podcast. Each season, we'll explore familiar concepts from everyday life that we often take for granted.We'll expand these concepts to understand their critical historical and cultural underpinnings and forever change the way you view them.Sound WavesThe focus of this second season is sound as art, music, protest, and violence.An exploration of how sounds shape our experience of the world requires a study of music, but also that of the less explored sonic landscapes that exist outside of the anthropomorphic auditory register.Deep SoundsThe somatic experience of sound is inspected from its potential for violence and torture to the transcendence of healing, by way of its actual physical form.A discussion on the ambiguity of the human relationship with sound through science, technology, and spirituality.Time Stamps + Takeaways[0:00] Sound as a physical phenomenon and an ambiguous dance-fight.[3:44] Kode 9 speaks to the somatic experience of sound, whereby the whole body is a listening device in a kind of tactile phenomenon.[5:42] From military sounds to music by way of sonic branding, Steve Goodman talks about the blurred relationship between coercive and aestheticized sounds.[7:13] Jill Linz touches on the differences in the understanding of sound in physics and psychoacoustics disciplines.[9:05] Sound as a weapon has more to do with atmosphere according to Steve, he offers a few choice metaphors to illustrate this idea.[11:23] On the inaudible sounds we can see Jill's work with Atom Music.[16:50] With the understanding of sound as a physical force, Steve's thoughts on sonic warfare take on a more ominous practical aspect, from the Havana Syndrome to LRAD cannons.[21:55] As civilians, the acoustic experience of a battlefield — say from a bomb shelter — is often the only one. Besides sonic fear, and on a smaller scale, sonic torture can take place.[23:20] From nightclub to nightmare, how context, agency and affect impact perception.[25:58] Sound as violence also has its counterpart in medicine, Guadalupe Maravilla talks about his healing practice.[29:00] More than frequencies, Guadalupe shares the extent of the work required to prepare for a sound bath.[30:00] Beyond the sound is our capacity to receive it.[30:49] Episode 6 is next: Sounds of Miami.Contributors + GuestsSteve Goodman / Sound Artist.Jill A. Linz / Physics Instructor.Guadalupe Maravilla / Healer, Artist, Choreographer.Donna Honarpisheh / Assistant Curator and Host.This podcast was made in partnership with Podfly Productions. This episode was written by Isabelle Lee and Donna Honarpisheh, and edited by Frances Harlow. Our showrunner is Jocelyn Arem, and our Sound Designer and Audio Mixer is Nina Pollock. Links + LearnICA MIAMIPodflyJunk, by Bruno Hunger and Gregor HuberSonic Warfare: Sound, Affect and the Ecology of Fear, by Steve GoodmanThe Last Angel of History, by John AkomfraThe Black Audio CollectiveNotting Hill CarnivalAtom MusicHavana SyndromeLRADSound BathQuotes + Social“The whole body becomes an eardrum.” — Steve Goodman“So in the psychology or psychoacoustics camp, sound does not exist until it enters into your ear. But from a physics perspective, sound occurs whenever you have the motion of particles.” — Jill Linz

Tomorrow Is The Problem PodcastWelcome to the ICA Miami Podcast. Each season, we'll explore familiar concepts from everyday life that we often take for granted.We'll expand these concepts to understand their critical historical and cultural underpinnings and forever change the way you view them.Oceanic Ways of KnowingThe focus of this first season is the ocean as a source of knowledge. Understanding identity and history inevitably requires a study of the seas, the communities it affects, and the secrets it was made to hold in the deep.Rising TidesFrom Miami's Tequesta to Hawaii's Kanaka Maoli, indigenous peoples everywhere are living memory of what the water has already taught us.Today's guests discuss the effects of handing stewardship back to native peoples to stem the tides of climate change.Timestamps + Takeaways[0:00] The Oahu Water Protectors versus the U.S. Navy, an exercise in indigenous rights and demands.[3:37] Land stewardship in Hawai'i is an issue best tackled by Kanaka Maoli whose methods of systematic observation resemble science but without the drastic excision of spirituality. Candace Fujikane shares some of the 4000 deities that describe natural and elemental processes.[7:09] Candace speaks to the importance of indigenous knowledge and methods — Hawaiian and otherwise — for combating climate change through restoration.[15:11] ICA Miami sits on Tequesta land, an extinct people whose stewardship duties have been transferred to the Miccosukee tribe.[17:41] Dina Gilio-Whitaker explains the significance, for the Colville Confederated Tribes, of the now flooded Kettle Falls along the Columbia river as well as the fracture and cultural wound the damming created.[21:53] Mending her connection to water by way of surfing, Dina embraced humility. She speaks about her work correcting false narratives and reclaiming surfing as a spiritual practice.[25:44] Climate change is a philosophical problem brought about by a commodified relationship to the land, and incidentally to water which can be directly countered with indigenous principles, knowledge, and practices.[31:22] Season 1 of Tomorrow Is The Problem podcast closes with a quiet reminder to reconnect the middle passage with the Afro-Futures seas of Drexciya, the healing waters of Hawaii, and the indigenous knowledge we all need to sail forward through unknown waters.Tune in for season 2.Contributors + GuestsDonna Honarpisheh / Assistant Curator and Host.Candace Fujikane / Professor and Activist.Dina Gilio-Whitaker / Journalist, Author, and Activist.This podcast was made in partnership with Podfly Productions. This episode was written by Isabelle Lee and Donna Honarpisheh, and edited by Frances Harlow. Our showrunner is Jocelyn Arem, and our Sound Designer and Audio Mixer is Nina Pollock. Links + LearnICA MIAMIPodflyThe Oahu Water ProtectorsCartographies of Kanaloa, Inundation and Restoration, by Candace FujikaneAs Long As Grass Grows, by Dina Gilio-WhitakerQuotes“I think that's what these restoration projects give us, not just physical manifestations of restoration, but it also restores our mental health and wellbeing. It provides a kind of spirituality that you don't see in many discussions of anthropogenic climate change.” Candace Fujikane“It's not a catastrophic event causing panic and anxiety but rather a practical question: Kanaloa is rising, how are we to greet him?” Candace Fujikane“It's the values of understanding how to live in relationship to the earth and the natural elements, that's what needs to be restored and that's why indigenous knowledge is so critically important to how we imagine a response to climate change, how we adapt to it or even how we mitigate it.” Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Tomorrow Is The Problem PodcastWelcome to the ICA Miami Podcast. Each season, we'll explore familiar concepts from everyday life that we often take for granted.We'll expand these concepts to understand their critical historical and cultural underpinnings and forever change the way you view them.Oceanic Ways of KnowingThe focus of this first season is the ocean as a source of knowledge. Understanding identity and history inevitably requires a study of the seas, the communities it affects, and the secrets it was made to hold in the deep.Transoceanic RelationsWhether firmly grounded in the geographical idea of “place” or that of placelessness, the diasporic experience across oceans manages to keep historical notions of connectivity.Our guests ponder the crisis or borders in voluntary and forced migrations across borderless oceans.Timestamps + Takeaways[0:00] Drexciya provides one perception of Afro-Futurism, but not all agree…The Mundane Afro-Futurist Manifesto by Martine Syms sets the tone.[4:12] The world's deadliest border was born of a crisis of European identity. SA Smythe breaks down how this identity also defines the “other” and the ways shifting ocean borders have enabled the abandonment of black bodies.[7:11] The Black Mediterranean enables framing of the current migrant crisis by recentering African participation in the historical building of Europe and the intersecting aspects of black culture throughout the diaspora.[10:00] A migrant crisis or a crisis of border treatment of migrants? Racial issues are not the trope of America, the European treatment of Ukrainians, as opposed to racialized migrants, has shed a stark light on this.[12:57] Edwidge Danticat speaks to the highly transient nature of Miami as well as her obsession with the ocean's borderless connectivity.[18:38] On the other side of the water in Haitian Kreyol can mean migration or death, Edwidge shares her understanding of continued ancestry, culture and History through — and despite — the middle passage break.[21:16] There tends to be an assumption that Europe is a place of whiteness. SA talking openly about black activism in Italy and around the Mediterranean raises the major point that black people in Europe exist.[22:40] Both historically and currently, migration and the precarity it bears is central to the diasporic experience as Edwidge sees it.[25:00] Mapping the overlapping, historical, and connective sea.[26:04] Episode 4 is next: Rising Tides.Contributors + GuestsDonna Honarpisheh / Assistant Curator and Host.SA Smythe / Writer, Translator, Performer, and Scholar.Edwidge Danticat / Novelist and Writer.This podcast was made in partnership with Podfly Productions. This episode was written by Isabelle Lee and Donna Honarpisheh, and edited by Frances Harlow. Our showrunner is Jocelyn Arem, and our Sound Designer and Audio Mixer is Nina Pollock. Links + LearnICA MIAMIPodflyThe Mundane Afro-Futurist Manifesto, by Martine SymsQuotes“What if the migrant crisis as we heard about it in the media isn't a crisis of migrants, but a crisis of how migrants are treated at the border.” Donna Honarpisheh“The race problem comes from Europe itself. It's a crisis of European white supremacist identity because the ships that went to the African continent and brought black people across the Atlantic were European ships. They exported race and racecraft.” SA Smythe“They didn't take everything away from us, they didn't divide us completely with languages and locations. There is still something that is unbreakable in our ties and even if it's a small thing like gesturing, movements that we make, some things are unerasable.” Edwidge Danticat

Tomorrow Is The Problem PodcastWelcome to the ICA Miami Podcast. Each season, we'll explore familiar concepts from everyday life that we often take for granted.We'll expand these concepts to understand their critical historical and cultural underpinnings and forever change the way you view them.Oceanic Ways of KnowingThe focus of this first season is the ocean as a source of knowledge. Understanding identity and history inevitably requires a study of the seas, the communities it affects, and the secrets it was made to hold in the deep.The Sea Is FutureThe sea isn't the exclusive domain of History, it also nourishes the ebbs and flows of the futures we could build.The wordless work of Drexciya provided a new means to explore racialized narratives and reappropriate cultural works, join our guests as they explore the 3 decades of communal world-building.Time stamps + Takeaways[0:00] A visit to Drexciya: the underwater bubble metropolis of the future made alive by aquatic warriors, a free people whose roots can be traced back to Africa.[4:16] Abu Qadim Haqq shares the genesis of Drexciya, the sinking of trans-Atlantic slave ships carrying pregnant mothers… and what a day in the life of modern day Drexciyans might look like.[8:45] The deeply unexplored oceans gave rise to the possibilities of a strong counter-narrative when it comes to the fate of the 2 million black lives lost to the horrors of the middle passage.[12:07] DeForrest Brown Jr. shares his involvement in the great 3 decade long communal world-building exercise of Drexciya and touches on how the duo inspired his upcoming book.[16:08] DeForrest explains how the remains of the great music industrial complex left behind by MoTown enabled the birthing of Drexciya and free jazz techno as a black musical genre.[18:50] European techno has come to be what is known as “techno” DeForrest touches on his Make Techno Black Again project.[20:06] Katherine Mckittrick frames music's — and Drexciya's — relationship to non-linear narrative, to the unknown and unbound, in opposition to the European need to know and acquire knowledge. She also talks about the importance of adding creative works to archival memory.[23:02] Katherine speaks to works like The Black Atlantic and Drexciya as a metaphor and a geography for navigating the diaspora as well as its relationship to water.[25:00] Drexciya's lyricless story provides a different way to enter a discussion about race, Katherine explains how this openness takes us elsewhere without any map at all.[27:00] Katherine shares her thoughts on the possibilities of “belonging” to the sea, as opposed to the land, as well as how Afro-Futurism can think the world no-linearly — like Drexciya's alternate present narrative.[32:30] Episode 3 is next: Transoceanic Relations.Contributors + GuestsDonna Honarpisheh / Assistant Curator and Host.Abu Qadim Haqq / Illustrator and Artist.DeForrest Brown Jr. / Rythmanalyst, Media Theorist, and Curator.Katherine Mckittrick / Professor (Gender Studies) and Writer.This podcast was made in partnership with Podfly Productions. This episode was written by Isabelle Lee and Donna Honarpisheh, and edited by Frances Harlow. Our showrunner is Jocelyn Arem, and our Sound Designer and Audio Mixer is Nina Pollock. Links + LearnICA MIAMIPodflyDrexciyaWatery Ecstatic, by Ellen GhallagerMatthew Angelo HarrisonBinti Trilogy, by Nnedi OkoraforBlack Atlantis, by Ayesha HameedAssembling a Black Counter-Culture, by DeForrest Brown Jr.Make Techno Black AgainThe Black Atlantic: Modernity And Double Consciousness, by Paul GilroyQuotes“There is an estimate of 2 million people that were thrown overboard during the trans-atlantic slave trade. So those are millions of people we'll never know who are human beings, had families… and that is a dark void in itself.” Abu Qadim Haqq“You have the Ford Motors Company which was financing many black people, building neighborhoods and kind of paternalistically building an economy for freed black people up north while working with George Washington Carver in Georgia to finance plantations.” DeForrest Brown Jr.“Our preoccupation with optics — to see each other and the racialized body and to know what that racialized body means — instead Drexciya provides us with this lyricless soundtrack that asks us to enter into a conversation about race in a different way.” Katherine Mckittrick

Tomorrow Is The Problem PodcastWelcome to the ICA Miami Podcast. Each season, we'll explore familiar concepts from everyday life that we often take for granted.We'll expand these concepts to understand their critical historical and cultural underpinnings and forever change the way you view them.Oceanic Ways of KnowingThe focus of this first season is the ocean as a source of knowledge. Understanding identity and history inevitably requires a study of the seas, the communities it affects, and the secrets it was made to hold in the deep.The Sea Is HistoryExamine the sea as a collective memory of violence, an underwater keeper of often obscured identity and meaning.Archaeologists Ayana Flewellen and Justin Dunnavant probe the relationship between the sea and human history alongside Master Diver and Marine Biology Ph.D. student Kelsey Sapp.From sunken slave ships to coral preservation as an act of trauma healing, listen in to this deep dive on the historical and symbolic meaning of our physical oceans.Time Stamps + Takeaways[0:00] The Guerrero — a short intro of humans and History lost to the sea.[4:22] Ayana Flewellen paints a portrait of the slave trade's monumental and poorly accounted for human losses — 1.8 million African lives, names, family lines, and stories were lost to the sea.[6:05] Diving With a Purpose is tasked with surveying maritime wrecks to document and preserve this History.[7:37] Justin Dunnavant shares his work uncovering traces of the African diaspora kept in the material record if not the written one.[9:43] Marcus Garvey's entrepreneurial spirit offers Justin an opportunity to reinvigorate a historical narrative that explores Black History and the relationship to the sea outside of the discussion of slavery.[11:13] Justin touches on the idiosyncrasies of underwater archaeology and the debate against western and colonialist practices on how we are meant to interact with objects of history, if at all.[14:56] On the undoing of norms in academia opening up exploration and the possibilities in a space — like the sea — that can never be fully owned.[18:23] Ethical commemoration as a goal can also be an environmental statement. Justin shares his and Ayana's idea on how to counter the Black death narrative with an underwater memorial garden.[19:30] Kelsey Sapp touches on her work in assisted coral migration and how she is participating in Justin and Ayana's vision for a living museum.[22:46] On the intersection of cultural and environmental preservation. Ayana fleshes out the underwater trans-Atlantic living monument project, moving it away from the spectacle of Black death and towards a meditative healing experience.[25:00] The somatic experience of Black divers recovering this History helps facilitate the transition of the narrative of the ocean as a space of Black death to one Black life.[29:00] Episode 2 is next: The Sea Is Future.Contributors + GuestsDonna Honarpisheh / Assistant Curator and Host.Ayana Flewellen / Black Feminist, Archaeologist, Storyteller, and Artist.Justin Dunnavant / Anthropologist, Archaeologist, and Historian.Kelsey Sapp / Ph.D. Student (Marine Biology) and Master Diver.This podcast was made in partnership with Podfly Productions. This episode was written by Isabelle Lee and Donna Honarpisheh, and edited by Frances Harlow. Our showrunner is Jocelyn Arem, and our Sound Designer and Audio Mixer is Nina Pollock. Links + LearnICA MIAMISlave Voyages DatabaseDiving With a PurposeSociety of Black ArchaeologistsPodflyQuotes“Imagine the magnitude of it: 12.5 million Africans were forced to make this voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, and out of that, you have about 1.8 million that were lost at sea.” — Ayana Flewellen“We've come to an understanding that there are certain sites that don't necessarily need to be explored, studied or excavated in part because actually uncovering them would damage the integrity of what they are meant to do.” — Justin Dunnavant“There is a wide variety and spectrum of Florida coral reefs and you realize that you have entered an alien world, a place that only about 1% of people in the world will ever see, and that is a great privilege and a great responsibility.” — Kelsey Sapp