Cecilia Vicuña and Sarah Lookofsky

<p>Two rivers situate our conversation with two friends, beloved poet/artist Cecilia Vicuña and art historian/curator Sarah Lookofsky. El Río Mapocho begins in the Andes Mountains and runs through the city of Santiago, Chile where Cecilia was born, while the River Akerselva begins in Maridal Lake and flows through waterfalls and former industrial areas of Oslo where Sarah recently moved. They ask: what might we learn to hear if we attend to the interweaving languages of these ancient waters and the many lives, joys, brutalities, and deaths these waters carry, remember, and resist? Cecilia recalls Quechua and Sarah recalls Sami, Indigenous ways of knowing and belonging that have been silenced and dispossessed by modern ideologies that treat rivers as dumping grounds. And yet life persists: “When water disappears, when monstrous diseases are unleashed, something new has to come.”</p> <p>In this wonderfully rich episode, Cecilia and Sarah talk about multispecies connection, histories of contamination and colonialism, quantum co-evolution, listening with fingers, dancing with mussels, speaking with red wing thrushes, and the “explosive commitment to the beauty of being alive.” New arts, sciences, languages, and politics are on the rise.</p> <p>Cecilia Vicuña is a poet, artist, and activist based in Chile and New York. Since the 1960s, Cecilia has engaged with the aesthetics and politics of environmental/social justice by creating precarios and quipus, which take the form of site-specific installations, ephemeral assemblages, films, texts, and participatory performances. Her critical-creative works have been exhibited extensively in museums, biennials, and major art venues.</p> <p>Sarah Lookofsky is an art historian and curator who currently serves as dean of the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO). Previously, Sarah served as associate director of the International Program at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and as faculty member of the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Sarah writes for art publications and curates exhibitions internationally.</p>