This episode explores historic and contemporary failures of infrastructure, racial capitalism, and climate change and how these current dysfunctions are intertwined. Our guests discuss ideas of spatial justice, St. Louis’s ongoing engagement with confronting its past, and how to work across disciplines to envision possible futures.
Torkwase Dyson describes herself as a painter working across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. Dyson’s abstract works are visual and material systems used to construct fusions of surface tension, movement, scale, real and finite space. With an emphasis on the ways Black and brown bodies perceive and negotiate space as information, Dyson looks to spatial liberation strategies from historical and contemporary perspectives, seeking to uncover new understandings of the potential for more livable geographies.
Geoff Ward is Professor of African and African-American Studies and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE2) at Washington University in St. Louis. His scholarship examines histories of racist violence, their legacies, and implications for repair.
Radio Resistance assembles the voices of intersecting local and global agents of change. Artists featured in the exhibition Stories of Resistance are paired with figures from the past, present, and future of St. Louis, coming together to transmit messages of dissent. A selection from their discussion can be found on St. Louis on the Air, the noontime talk program hosted by Sarah Fenske on St. Louis Public Radio, with the full episode also available in a listening station at CAM, and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.
Radio Resistance is co-produced by Michelle Dezember, Director of Learning and Engagement, Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Chief Curator, and Misa Jeffereis, Assistant Curator. Sound design and editing by Sean Pierce.