Year
2018 - 2019
Type
Residency
Awards
Honoree, Built Environment, Core77 Design Awards 2019
Partners
Anónima (design), Distrito Industrial (construction), SK8scapes (supervision)
Collaborators
Ucanskate, Monkey Skateboards, Beat, Benzaa, Lúdica, Mujeres en Patineta, Fernando Aguinaco, Ximena Rios-Zertuche, Adlai, F*ck La Migra, Laboratorio para la Ciudad
Artists
Hesner Sánchez, T.H.O.T.H, Mike Maese
Public programs
Check out all of the events hosted in Skatelab here
Selected Press
Vans México, Canal 40, La Casa de Skateboarding
Selected Videos
Pepe Baeza Guereña, Monkey Skateboards, SK8scapes
Location
Museo Tamayo (Mexico City, Mexico)
Supported by
Taller Tamayo, Fundación Olga y Rufino Tamayo, Central de Muros, ArtCenter College of Design
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Skatelab (Laboratorio de skate) was a project that temporarily appropriated an unused pavillion in the back of Museo Tamayo, a contemporary art museum located in Mexico City, creating a space dedicated to exploring the contemporary culture of skateboarding in Mexico City. It was a design research project launched under a design residency in the museum, and explored questions around skateboarding, hierarchy and agency.
Working closely with local skateboarders as well as architects and designers, the project developed interventions, performances and public programs to create new models of social participation within existing systems of power. The goal was two-fold:
(1) Investigate how large scale urban design initiatives such as the construction of government-funded skateparks, which create scripted and programmed play spaces, effectively deprive skaters of their ability to exercise their spatial and creative agency in public spaces (the streets, the sidewalk, plazas, parks and unused, abandoned and/or forgotten spaces).
(2) Use design to realign hierarchy and agency in spaces of institutional power and create avenues for non-institutional actors to enter.
Skatelab was designed to be adapted towards experimentation, expansion and appropriation, and the space was equipped with only a few permanent elements while the rest consisted of temporary objects and things that could be appropriated for skating. Primarily interested in highlighting the role of skateboarders as valuable design collaborators, the work continuously cast a critical gaze towards existing models of participatory design practices and eagerly developed programs that positioned skateboarders as movement producers, creative directors, unique storytellers and experienced cultural instigators.
The museum produced rules, policies, and signages in reaction to skateboarding entering an institutional space.
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Skatelab is grateful to all of the skaters, the artists, and the many photographers and videographers who have documented this experience; Hesner Sánchez, Martín Núñez, Erik Carranza and Oyuki Matsumoto who served as mentors; Caleb Gutiérrez who supported the crucial maintenance of the ramps; and the strong support from the education department of Museo Tamayo including Manuel Alcalá, Brenda Garcia and Eva Cardenas to name a few.
See the full range of collaborative events produced through Skatelab here.
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Plans: Anónima / Photos: Reina Imagawa, Hesner Sánchez, Ernesto Rosas, Miguel Rojas Rea, and Baruch Berrera / Sketches + flyers: Reina Imagawa + collaborators for flyers for Mercado Skate, Best Spot + Truco, Mujeres en Patineta
Year
2018
Type
Graduate studio (thesis)
Tools
Instructions for play, envelopes, alphabet stamps, MDF, wood stain, sawhorse
Location
Graduate Media Design Studio (Pasadena, CA)
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Play has the power to transform existing social relations and invert hierarchy, control and power, and design can potentially create playful avenues for non-institutional actors to negotiate greater spatial agency in institutional spaces.
Viewing Privileges is a project that was interested in making the Media Design Practices studio space into a testing ground for a playful activity. A series of instructions were designed, organized, and enclosed in individual envelopes, and people in the graduate studio took one of these envelopes depending on their rank of seniority (from youngest to oldest: dev, concept, thesis, advisor, faculty, coordinator, director, and chair).
The instructions were specifically designed in a way so that they challenge and invert the system of seniority, a hierarchical system embedded in the studio that privileged the spatial agency of older actors than those who are younger. The instructions organized each of the actors to move in a way that allowed dev students to have the best access to the works, or the most viewing privilege, and the department chair to have the least.
Each set of instructions had 2 variables: time (e.g., how much time you will be distracted away from the show by having to do something else) and movement (instructions related to how you should move, or not move). Combined, it made it incredibly hard for people to move freely: for instance, the department chair had to stand 10 feet away from all dev students to allow them to have the best viewing experience.
People who were not dev students needed to get their authorization in the form of a signature to negotiate any alterations to their instructions, and the dev students were instructed not to pass on this tool of power - the pencil - to other members of the studio.
This activity played out some insights I observed earlier in Museo Tamayo when attending the premiere of Germán Venegas show, when I realized how much viewing privilege and freedom I had over the museum guards during the premiere (they had to watch us watch the show).
Year
2018
Type
Independent design research
Partners
Exhibited as part of “De todos para todos: Diseño y espacio público en la Ciudad de México” at MUCA (Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte) in UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico)
Design: Reina Imagawa
Construction: Reina Imagawa and Mangle Taller de Construcción y Arquitectura.
Supporting media
juego es poder (larger project)
Tools
Metal, soldering, handsaw, polish, paint, spraygun
Location
Plaza de los pinos, Facultad de Arquitectura, UNAM (Mexico City, Mexico)
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Juego Reconstructivo was on public display for 10 days in the Plaza de los Pinos in Facultad de Arquitectura in UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), Mexico City’s largest public research university.
Inspired by landscape architect and sculptor Isamu Noguchi’s largely unrealized yet provocative playscapes, this open-ended and abstract sculpture provoked passerby and visitors to create their own definition of play. The interactive sculpture was perceived as many things: an apparatus, objet d’art, device, equipment, and an invasion.
Students and the public expressed curiosity almost immediately upon encountering the sculpture. Its playful potential was amplified by the placement of a basket that was stacked to the brim with balls of all shapes, textures and sizes. Many types of games and play were invented on the spot, lasting anywhere between 5 seconds to 50 minutes. A number of participants were interviewed and they shared their stories, thoughts and the games they had devised.
Year
2018
Type
Rapid prototyping + exhibition
Collaborators
David Chan, Justeen Lee, and Hyejin Lim
Tools
”REQUIRED” - Light sensor, goggly eyes, pink zipties, mini clothespins, projector, car side mirrors (3), extra large rubber bands and a white inflatable ball
In addition, we used Arduino Uno, servo motors, light bulb, yarn, tables and wire rack, masking tape, cardboard, markers, empty cereal box, butcher paper and string
Location
Graduate Media Design Studio (Pasadena, CA)
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How can sharing an awkward experience with someone inverse the negative feelings (such as embarrassment and discomfort) associated with awkwardness? During Confab, a tradition of collaborative rapid making in Graduate Media Design Practices, my group was interested in the idea of celebrating awkwardness using various media and methodologies. What started with a joking-around, "let's make people do awkward things with each other" quickly turned into a series of rather thoughtful design experiments that took risks.
We carefully structured a sequence of exercises that increased in awkwardness as two people got together in pairs and cleared each one. During “human furniture” pairs will take randomly chosen awkward poses and engage in a 45-second conversation while holding their respective poses. Followed by “the tunnel” where your eyes are dead-locked with David’s, who has the most killer poker face on earth and your laughs echo emptily in the box while your other buddy tries to peer in with mirrors. The worst is the end, where Justeen ties your elbows and wrists together and you have to get really close to your partner to be able to go through a double light-sensor powered obstacle.
There was a “calculated” sequence that would turn the feeling of awkwardness into a catharsis through sticking through it together, but the outcomes of the awkward activities were way beyond our designerly expectations.
Sometimes you can only design half of the surprise and the other half comes back to surprise you.
Year
2018
Type
Residency
Tools
Lasercut MDF, rice, sugar, nuts and bolts, bells, pasta, spraypaint
Location
The coat check in Museo Tamayo (Mexico City, Mexico)
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coatcheckplay was a 2-month exploration and 1-week deployment of ideas that evolved around using play as a way of creating new types of cultural practices in the museum. In the case of the final prototype, the focus was around a moment of intimate exchange that happens between visitors and the museum - the coat check.
Wooden cubes made from sheets of lasercut MDF contained things such as rice, sugar, nuts and bolts, squiggly pasta, and bells. They produced different kinds of sounds when shaken.
The simple intervention created a series of new interactions between the visitors and the coat check staff, and some small games were invented in the coat check during times when there were no visitors.
The project is especially grateful for the coat check staff for generously willing to participate + play, and for helping collect documentation.