El Respiro / Respire: A Geochoreography by Carolina Caycedo

ADMISSION & CAMPUS ACCESS:
Admission is free. Reservations are required. Campus access is limited to registered guests and USC students, staff, and faculty with current USC ID.

RSVP beginning Monday, February 3, at 10 a.m.

DESCRIPTION:
“Respire” signals the recovery of hope, courage, or strength after a time of difficulty.

El Respiro / Respire is a participatory geochoreography performance developed by Los Angeles–based multidisciplinary Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo, who will lead up to 150 participants in spelling Transición Justa Ahora and Just Transition Now with their bodies. To increase awareness about community-led efforts to transition away from fossil fuels, the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for USC students and the public to create works of art with leaders at the intersection of art, science, and environmental justice will be preceded by a conversation with Caycedo and experts from Latin America and Los Angeles about just energy transition.

This event will serve as part of the closing of Caycedo’s corresponding Getty/PST ART: Art & Science Collide exhibition, We Place Life at the Center / Situamos La Vida en El Centro, at East Los Angeles College’s Vincent Price Art Museum.

Schedule (Subject to Change):

10 a.m.: Panel and Q&A
Friends of the USC Libraries Lecture Hall, Doheny Memorial Library 240

An enlightening and inspiring panel about just transition, defined by the International Labor Association as “greening the economy in a way that is as fair and inclusive as possible to everyone concerned, creating decent work opportunities and leaving no one behind,” will feature:

> Carolina Caycedo, Artist
> Camila Marambio, Curator, Storyteller, and Somatic Care Worker
> Barbara Santos, Artist and Researcher
> Allison Agsten (Moderator), Curator at the USC Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability

12 p.m.: Participatory Geochoreography Performance
McCarthy Quad
Led by Caycedo, participants will use their bodies to create the words Transición Justa Ahora and Just Transition Now which will then be photographed from above by drone. As the images are prepared for posting on social media, the artist and participants will review and reflect upon the piece and process, and create captions for use when re-sharing the images to amplify the message.

Bios:

Carolina Caycedo is a Los Angeles–based multidisciplinary Colombian artist and alum of the USC Roski School of Art and Design. Her immense geographic photographs, lively artist’s books, hanging sculptures, performances, films, and installations are not merely art objects but gateways into larger discussions about how we treat each other and the world around us. Through her studio practice and fieldwork with communities impacted by large-scale infrastructure and other extraction projects, she invites viewers to consider the unsustainable pace of growth under capitalism and how we might embrace resistance and solidarity. Process and participation are central to Caycedo’s practice, as she contributes to the reconstruction of environmental and historical memory as a fundamental space for climate and social justice. Caycedo was shortlisted for the 2023 Artes Mundi Prize in Wales, was a 2023 United States Artists Fellow, and is the 2023–24 Artist in Residence at the Getty Research Institute and 2023–24 Soros Foundation Arts Fellow.

Allison Agsten is the inaugural director of USC Annenberg’s Center for Climate Journalism and Communication, where she develops the Center’s strategic priorities and guides program and partnership development. Previously, she has worked in journalism, communications, and public engagement capacities, including as a producer at CNN, director of communications at LACMA, and curator of public engagement at the Hammer Museum. In addition to her appointment at the Annenberg School, Agsten serves as the first curator at the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies. In that position, she organizes exhibitions and other arts programs focusing on climate change. Agsten holds a BA from UCLA and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Camila Marambio is a transdisciplinary curator, storyteller, and private investigator whose writing, research, and performances traverse the fields of environmental humanities, decolonial nature conservation, contemporary art, and performativity to support the livelihoods of local communities, water, and lands. In 2010, Marambio founded Ensayos in partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society of Chile. The collective research practice brings together artists, scientists, and activists to conceptualize long-term, process-based projects focused on eco-cultural conservation work in Tierra del Fuego and other archipelagos. Since 2011, Marambio has been experimenting with performance, creating solo and collaborative pieces dealing mostly with human and non-human health. Marambio is co-author of Slow Down Fast, A Toda Raja with Cecilia Vicuña and the forthcoming Cancer Ecologies: A Queer Femme Proposition. Other current projects include advancing peatland protection through the staging of a global accord and practicing Delicious Movement.

Barbara Santos is a visual artist and independent researcher. Her work focuses on making transformation processes visible using the conjunction between art and technology under the guidance of ancestral knowledge in the Amazon. She has significant experience in the jungles since 2005 in the Vaupés and Putumayo regions (Colombian Amazon) and is the author of the book La curación como tecnología (Healing as Technology). Her long-term collective projects are interwoven with the intention of questioning traditional structures and contemporary art formats through the strengthening of aesthetic ruptures that can come from the encounters of complex cultures. 

Presented by USC Visions and Voices. Organized by Allison Agsten (Communication and Journalism), Jessica Dutton (USC Wrigley Institute), and Marcela Riddick (USC Wrigley Institute). Co-sponsored by the Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability and La CASA. 

Art courtesy of Carolina Caycedo.