S.1 Episode 4 // And I Listen to the Robin Sing: Sheida Soleimani + Angel Gutierrez

Under colonial order, what do mind and body internalize?  What colonial desires and banal attitudes have we yet to expel from within us? In this conversation, Sheida Soleimani's practices of care and labor light the path that host Angel Gutierrez walks with her. While tracing memories, Sheida has us consider care for self and for the web of relations we inhabit. Sheida's work, too, is concerned with the power wielded by institutions and governments and how they flatten and shred(or attempt to) any politic that challenges "what power seems to be up to" at the present moment(la paperson). Considered in this episode are the false promises of neoliberal multiculturalism and liberalism; while breath is shared and presence is formed. Sheida's stories, art and politics flash through not just the discursive or ideological contours by which we frame our thoughts but also through our embodied experiences.

This season was produced in connection to 2023 exhibit, "Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America", an AAMP and PAFA collaboration curated by Dejay Duckett (AAMP), Judith Tannenbaum (PAFA), Mekhala Signal (PAFA), Michael Wilson (AAMP). This exhibit brings together 20 artists to respond to the question: Is the sun rising or setting on the experiment of American democracy? The exhibit runs March 23 through Oct 8 of 2023 at the Historic Landmark Building in Philadelphia. 

For episode extras, and to learn more about the artists, hosts, and organizations involved, check out the Reckoning and Repair website: rnrphilly.com

This podcast was created at the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania, a multimodal research hub that views creative practice as intellectual work that necessarily historicizes the inequalities that pervade our society, and that develops solutions for their present iterations through collaborative and participatory work.