Tune in at 12pm on Monday, February 8 as UCLA DMA Professor and Chair Rebeca Méndez takes us to the Arctic. In the work Rebeca Méndez made in Svalbard and Iceland, the fragile nature of human life on Earth is exemplified. The tenuous human figure in her video installation series Recurrence Relation raises the question of the frontiers and places we might want to explore before returning to a familiar locale with rich memories. In Arctic Coal, not only does Rebeca Méndez shed light on the margins of the habitable (in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago at 80º north) but she also explores the forces that shaped this remote group of islands: Norwegian and Russian powers went to great lengths in order to extract coal. In the brand book she made for Woven, an L.A. rug design studio, the idea of "rug as place" strongly resonates with the idea of placemaking and ultimately raises the question of how, as nomads, we can make a new place our home. Join us this Monday February 8 2021 at 12pm for a conversation centered on the Arctic, book design, fieldwork and migrations.

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