Luis Berríos-Negrón

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Germany, Puerto Rico (residence), Puerto Rico (citizenship) °1971
research interests: Global Warming, colonial memory, environmental art
affiliation: UmArts Reserach Centre, Umeå Univeristy
en

I explore the forces and display of colonial memory and of environmental form.


Currently, I am postdoctoral fellow at the UmArts Reserach Centre of Umeå Univeristy (2023-2025). The work is a continuation to a recent research residency with at the national post-hurricane reforestation project in my home island of Puerto Rico (Para La Naturaleza, 2021-22), from a two-part research seminar he conducted at the Research Focus Transdisciplinarity programme in ZHdK (CH) titled Deposing Geoengineering (field sessions in Zurich, Fall 2021 / field session in Västerbotten, Spring 2022), and from my PhD dissertation titled Breathtaking Greenhouse Parastructures (Konstfack Collection 2020).

My qualifications are: PhD in Art Technology & Design from Konstfack / Royal Institute of Technology KTH in Stockholm (2015-20); Master of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2003-06); Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Parsons New School for Design (2000-03). Recent merits are: finalist for Harvard University’s Wheelwright Prize (2021), and Resident Researcher at the art and science research programme hosted by the environmental NGO Para La Naturaleza in Puerto Rico (2021-22).


I am the founder of the Transhemispheric(a) Residency Programme (and its curatorial faction Transhemisférica), of the Anxious Prop art collective, and the Paramodular environmental design group. I am Associate Member of the M.I.T. Council for the Arts, currently based in Umeå and Berlin, with ongoing work in Copenhagen and San Juan.

research

research expositions

  • Methods of Indirection: a trialogue between Patrizia Bach, Howard Eiland, and Luis Berríos-Negrón about Walter Benjamin and translating The Arcades Project (2020) author(s): Luis Berríos-Negrón, Patrizia Bach, Howard Eiland published in: Journal for Artistic Research, Konstfack - University of Arts, Crafts and Design
    Walter Benjamin deemed his Arcades Project [Das Passagen-Werk (Mit Bindestrich und Werk mit Capital W)] “the theatre of all my struggles and all my ideas.” As a vast accumulation of materials, it had become for him a literary laboratory for testing social, critical, and spatial ideas. The co-authors here present an exposition where they look to reactivate that ‘theatre’ to search, test, and draw from each other alternative recursions for their respective practices. Their respective discourses are intersected through a voluntary 'trialogue' that plays between three different roles aiming to diverge from the traditional form of a Q&A. The exchanges gravitate around ‘greenhouse’ as the historiographic display structure to the Arcades, as well as to Global Warming. But, the format also triggers ‘indirections’ urging unforeseen aspects that may further research and revisions of the Arcades. For the authors, such indirections actualise and translate, yet again, other dormant aspects of each others perceptions about Benjamin. Ultimately, joined by the attitude to share and reactivate that ‘theatre-laboratory’ with you—the reader and exposition visitor—the actors look for cues that encourage further procedures of experimentation and reflexion.
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comments

Exposition: IN SITU: Sonic Greenhouse. Composing for the intersections between the sonic and the built (13/01/2018) by Otso Tapio Lähdeoja
Luis Berríos-Negrón 24/03/2019 at 14:59

Comment about 'In Situ'

From a disciplinary and collaborative standpoint, the exposition presents a high level of excellence manifested by its technological output.

Specifically intervening in a greenhouse facility is of relevance. Beyond its role as contribution to research in sound art, it also compliments broadly to environmental art, installation, art display, curatorial practices, architecture, climate studies, history of science and technology, and sustainable architectural practice.

I am concern though that a critical analysis of ‘greenhouse’, itself as ‘medium’, is missing. It is a traditional, 19th century approach to celebrating greenhouse, falling short of addressing contemporary assessments of what this important technology, building, gas, effect, and spatial display, of natural history, and of art, represents today within the toxic logic of global warming.

I do want to absolutely point to the very thoughtful, if elegant aspirations to identify, and even privilege aural over visual experience.

But, in the context of perceptual and environmental studies, by omitting the overarching importance of ‘greenhouse’ in relation to the pervasive invisibility of global warming, the work unfortunately celebrates a still-colonial attitude towards perceptual problems, particularly the ones 'greenhouse' has represented for over 200 years.

As far as its research quality, this is a difficult aspect to evaluate. Is the work produced to create a series of specific aural outcomes in the way an artist traditionally preconceives and deploys the artwork, in this case the ephemera of instruments and triggers created to activate the space and produce a previously unknown aural experience, just as an abstract expressionist drip painter, or a performance artist or musician improvises to deliver a previously unknown outcome? Or was the work produced as a method to question and explore sensorial experiences in ways that would quantifiably and/or qualitatively inform and enrich the practice of sound art, installation, display, etc.?

I suppose these are the questions I would propose to both the authors and their 'readers'.

But, those questions ought not impede the thrust of the work, as I do strongly believe that In Situ merits due attention for the robust commitment and complexity it portrays.