Field Research Grant Recipients Christos Galanis and Kathryn Peters will kick off this years ¡SOLAS Presents! lecture series by presenting their research at the LAII on Wednesday, August 28th at 2pm.
Christos Galanis has just completed his M.F.A. in the University of New Mexico’s Studio Art Department with a specialization in Art & Ecology. As a recipient of the Tinker / Latin American and Iberian Institute Field Research Grant, he spent May and June 2013 in Spain, conducting a research/art project that was primarily realized through a 150-mile memorial walk from the French border to Barcelona. His work focuses on the cultivation and consideration of walking as a vehicle for research, representing an embodied, non-rational form of knowledge production that spans the evolutionary trajectory of our species.
His route re-traced, in reverse, the steps of hundreds of thousands of Republican Spaniards who fled to France on foot for fear of reprisals by the forces of General Franco’s fascist army at the conclusion of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Galanis’ presentation will reveal the many nuances, synchronicities, and contradictions he encountered along the way, through which he will present the argument that the particular knowledge and understanding produced from the walk could only have been undertaken through this particular research method. Further, his project re-affirms the “long walk” as a vehicle for performance art, in the lineage of artists such as Marina Abramovic, Richard Long, and Francis Alÿs.
Kathryn Peters is a dual degree M.A. Latin American Studies/Community and Regional Planning student at the University of New Mexico. Kathryn received a field research grant in 2012 to conduct research in the remote village of Pindoyú, Paraguay.
The community of Pindoyú has historically practiced subsistence agriculture with little interaction with the global economy. However, macro-level policy reform beginning in the 1970s caused international trade, principally agricultural export, to become a priority in the formerly insular Paraguayan countryside. Additionally, a highway located within 5 km of Pindoyú was paved during the mid 1990s, exposing the community to increased migration and trade. Currently, residents of Pindoyú participate in elements of a local, communal economic system while simultaneously playing a role of the global capitalist economy.
Three years after serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Pindoyú, Kathyrn returned to the 500 inhabitant village to conduct research for her master’s thesis. To document the changes in inter-personal relationships and the population’s contemporary economic perspective of the land, Kathryn interviewed families and arranged auto-ethnography activities with 2nd-12th graders. The recorded narratives reveal varying perceptions surrounding these cultural shifts, including forms of both adaptation and resistance.
Kathryn Peters is a dual degree M.A. Latin American Studies/Community and Regional Planning student at the University of New Mexico. Kathryn received a field research grant in 2012 to conduct research in the remote village of Pindoyú, Paraguay.
The community of Pindoyú has historically practiced subsistence agriculture with little interaction with the global economy. However, macro-level policy reform beginning in the 1970s caused international trade, principally agricultural export, to become a priority in the formerly insular Paraguayan countryside. Additionally, a highway located within 5 km of Pindoyú was paved during the mid 1990s, exposing the community to increased migration and trade. Currently, residents of Pindoyú participate in elements of a local, communal economic system while simultaneously playing a role of the global capitalist economy.
Three years after serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Pindoyú, Kathyrn returned to the 500 inhabitant village to conduct research for her master’s thesis. To document the changes in inter-personal relationships and the population’s contemporary economic perspective of the land, Kathryn interviewed families and arranged auto-ethnography activities with 2nd-12th graders. The recorded narratives reveal varying perceptions surrounding these cultural shifts, including forms of both adaptation and resistance.