The following are a selection of podcasts that help understand migrant issues, asylum seeking and border crossing. Some look at the macro and others consider individual stories. Read this helpful advice on how to listen to podcasts for class. This page is regularly updated. Border Subjects Melissa del Bosque talks about what motivates her to…
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Outsider Insiders: Francis Alÿs and Melanie Smith at the Liverpool Biennial
There are two artists who moved from Europe to Mexico exhibiting their work as part of the Liverpool Biennial 2018: Francis Alÿs at the VG&M and Melanie Smith at the Bluecoat. Alÿs from Belgium and Smith from the UK. As a country more associated with departures than arrivals, especially with the current US President, Donald…
Coincidence and Curation Part II: The Liverpool Biennial, HUO and Agnès Varda
On Friday 13th July, I had the privilege of seeing Agnès Varda being interviewed by Hans Ulrich Obrist (HUO). The interview is now available online. They are both seasoned interviewer/interviewees and this was evident in the interaction. She is delightful, highly articulate, and gave fascinating responses to the questions. He was warm, careful, and attentive…
Coincidence and Curation: The Liverpool Biennial, HUO and Me (or, at least, what I’m reading)
I am finalising a book proposal, which means that I am avidly synthesising and summarising my ideas so that I can pitch it succinctly and clearly to a future publisher. The book is on tastemakers and tastemaking and will draw on some ideas around curation. For this, I have been reading Curationism (2015) by David…
Sea Birds, Liverpool, Clipperton and the Mexican Revolution
:A recent art piece on the waterfront in Liverpool reminded me of the different possible approaches and modes of reflecting on a place and its inhabitants. This bird is a blue-legged Masked Booby who are primarily found on Clipperton, a small atoll in the Pacific Ocean. I have just finished editing a chapter on two…
Central American Children and the Mexico-US border: Learn More
The uproar surrounding the detention of children at the Mexican-US border has brought attention to the migration of Central Americans to the US. The majority are from what is called the Northern Triangle – Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala – and are seeking asylum because of increased violence in their home nations. Many of these…
Mariana Chenillo: A Brief Introduction
In 2010, Mariana Chenillo was the first female director to have won an Ariel for her opera prima. The award for first film is technically for direction, but is distinct to that of direction. Established in 1947, Ariels are the Mexican film academy awards and a woman has yet to be awarded specifically for direction. There…
Digital Footprints
I am just refining a chapter on Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el amor? (Mariana Chenillo, 2013). It’s currently available in the UK and Ireland on Netflix as Paraíso [Paradise]. Dark humour characterises Chenillo’s approach. The women in her films have non-standard and disruptive bodies that present challenges to the social constructions of wellness and women’s agency. Paraíso ¿Cuánto pesa el…
1976: Haunted by 1968
I have spent much of the last few weeks drafting and re-drafting a chapter for a forthcoming edited collection on Memory and Trauma in Mexican Visual Culture, a project I am co-editing with Miriam Haddu. My chapter considers three films released in 1976 that I contend are all haunted in different ways by the ghosts…
The Latino* Family who are Latino: One Day at a Time
One Day at a Time (2017) is a multi-camera sitcom produced by Netflix. The original was released in 1975 and I don’t recall seeing it. The concise IMDB summary describes it as, “The misadventures of a divorced mother, her family, and their building superintendent in Indianapolis”. The present-day version shifts the action to Los Angeles (LA), the opening…