The World Around in Focus: Land Online Public Program Broadcast Live on October 22

On Friday, October 22, from 1 to 4 pm ET, the Solomon R. Guggenheim and The World Around present The World Around in Focus: Land. This online public program presents artists, researchers, designers, and architects whose work highlights the agency of infrastructures and landscapes that are shaping lives and depleting resources in territories across the United States today. The event features commissioned films and live conversation about long-term projects and in-process research, artworks and activism that address the complex postcolonial issues of land use in the twenty-first century, and campaigns and designs for a more equitable future.

Stories will be shared about environmental activists focused on indigenous food sovereignty and water equity; filmmakers and artists will interrogate literal and figurative mining that supports the internet and digital technology; and designers will engage in dialogue at the intersection of policy, legislation, community, ancestry, and spatial justice.

The subjects of the commissioned films are:

• Holly Jean Buck, author and environmental and social scientist
• Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas, artists
• Simon Denny, artist
• Elizabeth Hoover, author and associate professor of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley
• Renee Kemp-Rotan, urban designer and initiator of Africatown International Design Idea Competition
• Joseph Kunkel, executive director of Sustainable Native Communities Design Lab at MASS Design Group

The films include commentary and contributions from Unknown Fields, a nomadic design research studio; Jaida Gray Eagle, Oglala Lakota artist and photojournalist; Elsa Hoover, architectural designer and writer; Major Joe Womack, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Reserve (ret.), environmental activist and community leader in Africatown, US; and Juan Mancias, tribal chairman of Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas.

This program is free and will be broadcast live on the museum’s YouTube channel with a Q and A to follow with the films’ subjects. All are welcome to RSVP for updates and to receive a tune-in reminder at guggenheim.org.

This program is funded in part by the Elaine Terner Cooper Education Fund.

In 2021, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum welcomed The World Around—an itinerant nonprofit organization dedicated to telling contemporary architecture’s most critical and inspiring stories—for a yearlong residency. Combining the Guggenheim’s contribution to architectural history through its constellation of iconic museums and The World Around’s agile and interdisciplinary approach to architecture’s future, the residency is a collaborative programming partnership that will focus on design’s profound role in social, environmental, and spatial justice.

The World Around looks beyond buildings to investigate the often-invisible forces that shape our lives, homes, cities, and landscapes. From discussing urgent issues of the climate crisis with anthropologists and artists to examining global vernacular construction, or highlighting the racial inequalities manifest in the built environment, this residency explores the many different spheres—real, imaginary, and symbolic—of contemporary architectural practice today and champions its most significant practitioners to a broad public.

Using a range of formats, including public programs, commissioned films, curated conversations, social media takeovers and hybrid online events and experiences, The World Around invites ongoing exploration of architecture’s “now, near, and next.”