Year
2017
Type
Independent project
Awards
Finalist, WIRED Japan Creative Hack Awards 2017
Tools
Watercolor, xacto, tracing paper, spreadsheet, graphs, Google Maps, glue, scissors, markers, Illustrator, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Premiere, InDesign
Location
Graduate Media Design Practices Studio (Pasadena, CA)
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How can a sense of community be cultivated on the freeways of Los Angeles?
As a New Yorker, the streets of Los Angeles seemed extremely unwalkable. Most of the action in L.A. happens on the freeways – traffic corridors Angelenos use on a daily basis to get from point A to point B. In doing so, they pass by many people, just as we might in the subways or streets of New York, but the freeway is not designed to facilitate any kind of social interaction.
Taking inspiration from the fact that traffic jams put our vehicles in close proximity for an extended amount of time, Autopia is a design fiction graphic novel where a technological intervention allows drivers to form a sense of community on the freeways of L.A.
How can autonomous car technologies be used to create a network of explicit human communication? How might better communication lead to developing a sense of community, and even encourage bouts of teamwork, during stressful road conditions? Autopia reimagines the autonomous vehicle as a technology not just designed for road efficiency, but for individual expression as well as kinship.
Year
2020
Type
Independent project
Collaborators
E Tonatiuh Trejo and neighbors
Tools
Walking, research, prototypes, InDesign, Illustrator, risography
Selected press Interview with Código Postal
Location
Colonia Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City
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Carta de Navegación: Colonia Cuauhtémoc (Navigational Chart of the Cuauhtémoc neighborhood) mapped a network of resistance, collective care and solidarity that emerged during the pandemic. Cuauhtémoc, located in the heart of Mexico City, is a neighborhood where major banks and five star hotels coexist with street vendors, family-owned businesses and other small, independent practices: the dynamic shifted significantly when tens and thousands of office workers were forced to work from home and the local economy crashed. Understanding maps as an instrument that could connect people, the objectives of the project included:
a) Broadcasting the rich culture of this often overlooked neighborhood, revealing everyday corridors of activity (markets, street vending), things of interest (anti-monuments, small storefronts) and enclaves (a block dedicated to piñatas, a street full of Russian art).
b) Positioning local businesses as portals; map points where anyone can grab a free copy of the map and connect themselves to a larger landscape of mutual aid and support.
The project was a collaborative effort between two neighbors, Reina Imagawa (designer, architect, facilitator and founder of Gato Gordo, a storefront located in a 1940’s Luis Barragán building) and E Tonatiuh Trejo (editor and founder of Esto es Un Libro, an independent publishing practice, and Biblioteca de Anomalías, a hidden library, both located within a few blocks from Mario Pani’s ex Hotel Plaza). The project was inspired by a map that they both remember seeing in Clandestina, a boutique located in Havana, Cuba, and was developed over the course of a few months via walking, prototyping and deepening relationships with local businesses.
Every aspect of the map was designed with the neighborhood in mind: 1) it is two-sided, one side featuring a mapping of all of the spots and the other using opacity to show different layers of history, 2) it includes a QR code that is linked to a Spotify playlist, featuring songs selected by Tonah and Reina to compliment one’s experience of walking around in the neighborhood, 3) its iconography was inspired by the styles of modernist Mexican architects who did many experiments in this neighborhood, 4) its title, a navigational chart, was based on the observation that all of the streets are named after rivers, and 5) it was printed in risography by Can Can Press, a nearby studio.
Almost a year later, some of our reflections on this project include:
How has our neighborhood changed since? Are all of the map points still active, running and/or accessible? What is the relevance of this map now, one year later?
What information did the map not show? What are the other layers or map points that could have been valuable, and for whom?
We ended up having mainly two kinds of conversations: with the vendors, business owners and neighbors as we designed the map, and with neighbors and passerby as we distributed the map. But we know that other conversations also happened around the map, for example between employees and store owners and sometimes the owners did not 100% feel comfortable putting the maps in the stores. What made them feel that way? What are the conversations we did not have access to and what does that say about this project?
Years
2015 - present
Type
Various
Tools
Various
/
MAPPING (The Unknown City) is a collection of architectural drawings, cartography and visual representations of space that span various media and methodologies. The work tends to break away from conventional systems of geographical notations, particularly the Cartesian grid, and experiments with layering, emphasis, text, codified notations, and poetic notations of space. Some maps have used spatial analysis tools such as GIS to reveal and connect disparate urban phenomena such as the geographical repercussions of mass incarceration.
What role do you play, or actively discard, in the pursuit of the unknown city? Where does the mapping begin and where does it end?
Year
2017
Type
Graduate studio
Tools
1/8" clear acrylic, lasercutter, transparency paper, epoxy, wood dowels, acrylic paint, bristol
Location
Graduate Media Design Practices Studio (Pasadena, CA)
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hanami 168: eternal spring is a speculative design fiction that engages with the time-sense of cherry blossoms. The story illustrates a world where your sense of time is bound to the birth and death of cherry blossoms, and you can never stay somewhere long enough to watch them finish blooming.
The book shown here is a physical manifestation of the story of hanami. Similar to how the poets in the story find themselves in an eternal loop of spring, the book is designed with no beginning or end and refuses to be read in a sequential manner. The reader is forever stuck in limbo.
Once you close and re-open the apparatus, it is impossible to pick up where you left off since the index cards will float to whichever side they please.
Year
2018
Type
Graduate studio (thesis)
Supporting media
desde la perspectiva de (magazine), learning from the museum (field reflections)
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Playing in the museum (a prelude to serious ideas) is my written portion of the graduate thesis work that outlined the process of collaborating with the guards of Museo Tamayo from August -December, 2018.
Playing in the museum challenged the popular perception of guards as passive and non-creative bystanders, and critiqued the existing relations of power that suppressed their spatial agency. Contrary to the tradition of institutional critique, the four decade long movement in art history through which institutional actors such as artists have questioned the power and politics of museums, this project was interested in identifying methods that can enable non-institutional actors –– such as the museum guards, who are unequipped with privilege and access to, or the foundation for, administrating creative practices –– to invert the museum on its head.
Play became a critical tool in initiating a collaborative practice with non-institutional actors in spaces of institutional power, both protecting as well as advancing the perspectives of the non-institutional actors into higher levels of public exposure and discussion. It also made legible the existing dynamics of power, control, hierarchy and agency and invited the entire museum to reconsider the socio-spatial value of the guards and launch a dialogue towards larger scale projects.
Year
2018
Type
Graduate studio
Tools
Nas lyrics (Illmatic; God’s Son), markers, cut-outs of past writing assignments from class, glue stick, scissors, 4 pieces of Strathmore sketch paper, InDesign, Photoshop
Location
Graduate Media Design Practices Studio (Pasadena, CA)
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Making with Nas is a response to the idea of "notating oneself" that we explored in a 6-week class with Tisa Bryant that built on the texts of John Keene's Annotations, Lyn Hejinian's My Life, Gail Scott's My Paris and Vertamae Grosvenor's Vibration Cooking. We explored ideas of self-notation and processes of introspection. We observed how a body of text can communicate different things depending on how it shows, informs, annotates, obscures, or re-establishes one's identity.
I find out more about myself through making than thinking. Instead of starting to write as a way to practice self-notation, I started to make a word-image collage while listening to Nas. The result of this 3-hour activity is a visual conversation that allowed me to discover loose and entertaining overlaps between the production process (flow?) of design and hip hop.
Year
2018
Type
Independent design research
Supporting media
juego es poder, parte I: ciudad de méxico (short film)
Tools
Fuji Quicksnap 400 disposable cameras, iPhone 7, Instax Mini 8, Canson Mixed Media sketchbook, removable double-sided tape, scotch tape, markers, scanner, InDesign
Location
Mexico City, Mexico
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[side B] is a lookbook that provides an account of how cameras were used in the design research project Juego es Poder that took place in Mexico City.
Cameras were not only used as a tool to make people deliberately orient themselves to space but also as devices for play, prompts for co-design activities that asked skaters to use the camera as proxy of a skateboard, and opportunities for experimenting with different modes of play such as through fictional games that were largely concerned with improvising strategies around perspective and positionality.
Photos from instant cameras were usually given to participants in the activities as a way to create a small channel of communication/exchange.
Year
2015
Type
Independent project
Tools
found sewing machine, fabric, custom fabric, screen printing, embroidery, handmade jewelry, Photoshop, InDesign
Location
New York, NY
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Can you dress cool enough to assimilate and be accepted, while defining a new cool that’s based on your standard (separate from what’s geographically, socially or culturally expected of you)?
Befriended + Betrayed is a project that questions the role that fashion plays in the construction of collective identity of youth. Situated in East Harlem, New York, the project was a response in the rise of cases of targeted policing against Black and Latino youth in hoodies and ski masks in the neighborhood.
The clothing line was conceived in my apartment on 1st Avenue and 115th Street with a rather broken sewing machine and no prior experience of making clothing. Most of the fabrics were sourced from a hole-in-the-wall spot in the Fashion District in Hell’s Kitchen, each of the designs were inspired by conversations with youth, and the lookbook features everyday facades of East Harlem such as murals by the amazing De La Vega.
Sometimes I would sew alone in the late hours of the night, and sometimes I would sew while I had different neighborhood friends over and it felt like I was sewing in the stories into each of the garments. If only these pieces could tell you what they’ve heard…
Year
2018
Duration
13m 21s
Type
Independent design research
Role
Direction, documentation + editing
Supporting media
juego reconstructivo (“reconstructive play”, open-ended sculpture for play); juego es poder (larger research project); [side B] (lookbook)
Tools
Sony VX-1000, iPhone7, Canon T6, Adobe Premiere
Location
Mexico City, Mexico
Year
2018
Duration
16m 03s
Type
Independent design research
Role
Direction, documentation + editing
Tools
iPhone7, Adobe Premiere
Location
Tokyo and Kanagawa, Japan
Year
2018
Duration
0m 50s
Type
Instagram video for Skatelab event
Role
Editing
Supporting media
Skatelab (larger research project)
Tools
Gathered YouTube footage, Adobe Premiere
Location
Mexico City, Mexico
Year
2018
Duration
3m 53s
Type
Workshop
Role
Workshop facilitation, documentation + editing
Client
Architectural Association/AA Mexico Visiting School
Tools
Canon T6, iPhone7, Adobe Premiere
Location
Oaxaca, Mexico
Year
2018
Duration
2m 04s
Type
Experimental speculative geographies
Role
Direction, documentation + editing
Tools
Canon T6, laser, Google Maps, Google Streetview, Adobe Premiere
Location
Central de Abastos (Mexico City, Mexico)
Year
2017
Duration
2m 35s
Type
Independent project
Role
Direction, documentation + editing
Tools
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100, Adobe AfterEffects, Adobe Premiere, voice-overs, freestyles, poetry
Location
Burbank, CA