The El Alto sessions represent a continuation of the themes developed by Maliq within the Urban Institute on Urban Inhabitation and the Anthropocene and our workshop on "The Tangles Amongst Us: An Interweaving of Urbanities, Ontologies and Times" in January 2024.
The sessions are funded by a grant from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) through its programme on Humanity's Urban Future, which aims to support research exploring how we can learn from the urban past and what this means for future imaginations.
The El Alto sessions involve a series of different activities. Day One provides a space where participants bring various materials, objects, media to think through what constitutes the sense of the 鈥減opular鈥 today. A leading question is: how can we as participants in a single space and day demonstrate a sensibility of the popular鈥攚ith our different backgrounds, mother tongues, professional specialisations, and sensibilities? There will be different exhibition sessions, with the aim of building a living archive of texts, images, videos, maps, notes, sound recordings, and artefacts. Day Two involves field visits in El Alto, including viewing the multi-storied colourful cholets that emerged as an architectural expression of urban indigeneity. Day Three is dedicated to an academic conference hosted at the Universidad Mayor de San Andr茅s with a focus on urban transitions, popular economies and capitalism. The last day will be to plan for future activities and explore future collaborations.
Check out the full programme here