Speaking into Silences - Incite at Columbia University
Speaking into Silences
- Funding Program Assembling Voices
- Timeframe 2022–2023
- Location Mayagüez, Puerto Rico
- Assembling Voices Fellow Ricia Anne Chansky
- Partner Organization Oral History Lab @UPRM
Speaking into Silences organized four mass-listening events across the Puerto Rican archipelago: on the west coast, in the mountainous interior, in an underserved neighborhood in San Juan, and on an island municipio. These events centered stories of surviving simultaneous stratified disasters—including hurricanes, earthquakes, political upheaval, economic depression, and the Covid-19 pandemic—within a context of colonial practices and institutionalized racism.
Community partners were empowered with funding, equipment, and training to record their own narratives. Support from Assembling Voices went toward organizing a day of mass-listening, activism, music, and food at community centers.
About the Team
-
Ricia Anne ChanskyRicia Anne Chansky, Ph.D. is a professor in the English Department at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and the Director of the Oral History Lab @UPRM. Her work is focused on decolonial storytelling projects as a means of amplifying the voices of disaster survivors for the purpose of mitigating the climate crisis within the Puerto Rican archipelago and around the world.
More Projects
-
go to Rebellious Neighborhoods
Rebellious NeighborhoodsSerbia is experiencing growing democratic erosion. In response, the Ministry of Space Collective has launched Rebellious Neighborhoods, an initiative that reclaims urban space, amplifies community struggles, and rebuilds civic participation from the ground up. Part of the Global Change Program
-
go to Radical Arab Poetics
Radical Arab PoeticsGathering queer and feminist Arab artists for a sonic rebellion that bridges underground music, poetry, and protest across the SWANA region. Part of the Left Field Fund
-
go to Field Notes from a Preservation Station
Field Notes from a Preservation StationField Notes from a Preservation Station is a Chicago-based initiative that treats food preservation as a public health imperative. This project addresses two interconnected challenges: the loss of traditional food knowledge and ongoing food insecurity. Part of Assembling Voices
-
go to Art in the Midst of Cultural and Ecological Crisis
Art in the Midst of Cultural and Ecological CrisisExamining the work of artists responding to ecological crisis and cultural erasure. Part of the Breakdown/ (Re)generation Project