Speaker Bio’s
(alphabetical order)
Che Gosset
Che Gossett is a Black non binary femme writer, a 2019-2020 Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Critical Studies, in the Whitney Independent Study Program as well as a 2020-2021 graduate fellow at the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University. Their work has been published in anthologies including Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (MIT Press 2017), Death and Other Penalties: Continental Philosophers on Prisons and Capital Punishment (Forham UP 2014), Transgender Studies Reader (Routledge 2014). They are co-editing a forthcoming special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly (Duke UP) with Eva Hayward, on trans in a time of HIV/AIDS. They co-organized a program series on abolition with Silver Press and Arika which is ongoing: https://www.silverpress.org/new-blog/2020/7/9/revolution-is-not-a-one-time-event
Sammy Kayed
I’m interested in transdisciplinary approaches to taking action on complex environmental threats with frontline communities. My interests took form at UC Berkeley where I studied the relationships betweenhydrologic, ecologic, social systems. I went on to work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Marine Fisheries Service on issues such as restoringnative american water rights, developing programs to reduce plastic pollution reaching marineecosystems, and protocols for farmers to reduce their impact on local freshwater ecosystems. Inspired by the “You Stink” movement in the summer of 2015, I moved to Lebanon eager to work on creativegrassroot approaches to dealing with environmental issues that more obviously permeate our daily lives. Here, I devised a framework for how academia can more responsible help communities affected by the waste crisis, founded a community driven water quality monitoring and remediation program called Test-the-Water, and an ethical and regenerative eco tourism organization called Daskara. I head the founding committee of the Environment Academy which works with frontline communities to drivecollective action on biodiversity collapse, poor water quality, air pollution, and solid wastemismanagement. I’m the Development Manager at the American University of Beirut - NatureConservation Center where I’ve collaboratively developed over 15 projects that rethink the scientificparadigm by co-creating evidence and solutions with and for communities intimately facing environmental crises.
Kyong Park
Kyong Park is involved in a wide range of works on Public Culture, including research, documentation, and representations focused on the urban landscapes that delineate the economic, political and cultural borders and territories of the contemporary social geography. Working in visual arts, architecture, theory and curatorial practices, Park incorporates text, photography, video, installation and new media into his works, a practice that is rooted in research, participation and activism in public spaces. For Park, art is a process of inquiry, examination and articulation of cultures, and a visual language of communication rather than a commodity of productions. His first project was the founding of StoreFront for Art and Architecture in New York, an internationally respected exhibition space that he directed from 1982-1998. He then founded International Center for Urban Ecology in Detroit, producing workshops, urban initiatives and videos, in collaboration with activists, community organizations and universities [1998-2001]. They include: "Detroit Making It Better For You," a narrative video on a fictional conspiracy to destroy the city [2000]; and "24260: The Fugitive House," a vacant house that 'escaped' Detroit to travel ten cities in Europe [2001-2008]. Since then, he has traveled and worked in various cities in Europe, developing a nomadic practice on urban investigation. The results were: “The Slide," a proposal to build a transparent tube that people can slide through in an empty high-rise building in Halle Neustadt, and "BAR/GDR/FRG," a 3-channel video on the three different ideological cities within Dresden, both projects in Germany [2003]. He was also a co-curator and artist for Shrinking Cities in Berlin [2002-2004], and the founding director of Centrala Foundation for Future Cities in Rotterdam in The Netherlands [2005]. There, he co-produced "Lost Highway Expedition," an expedition through nine major cities of ex-Yugoslavia and Albania in 25 days, in which several hundred people participated [2006]. His current project is "New Silk Roads," a series of expeditions between Istanbul and Tokyo, focusing on the relational conditions of Asian cities within the geography of globalization, which was presented in a solo exhibition at Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y León in 2009-2010, along with the publication of a monograph on this project with Actar in Barcelona expected in 2011. He was also the Artistic Director/Curator of Anyang Public Art Project 2010 in Korea, where he curated 30 projects and commissioned 23 international artists, including Suzanne Lacy, Marjetica Potrc, Rick Lowe, Raumlabor, Lot-ek, Mass Studies, Chan-Kyong Park . Kyong Park was also a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University (1996/97), a curator of Kwangju Biennale in Korea (1997), a Visiting Chair of Urbanism at the University of Detroit Mercy, School of Architecture (2000-2001), and the editor of “Urban Ecology: Detroit and Beyond,” a book on his projects, with contributions from 32 architects, artists and critics [2005].
Arleene Correa Valencia
(b. 1993) is a Mexican painter and community oriented artist. After spending the first three years of life in her native Mexico she migrated to theUnited States and currently lives and works in Napa, California. She is a recipient of Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals and holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degreefrom California College of the Arts in San Francisco.