IMPORTANT
TODAY Indigenous Technologies: From Earthenware to Drones
w/ Rolando Vargas
Wednesday, January 24, 2024 · 12 - 1 PM
Virtual
As drug smugglers are swapping drug trafficking for the highly prized and lucrative Cocobolo lumber, micro-deforestation attacks in the Darién tropical rain forest have increased exponentially endangering Indigenous people’s territories and cultures. Join Rolando Vargas as he discussed the forms of Indigenous knowledge production, from earthenware, to drones and other digital mobile technologies that challenge the ongoing attempts to dispossess Indigenous people of their land.
Bio:
Rolando Vargas is a media artist and scholar working with installation and digital media. He has a BFA from Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia; received an MFA at UMBC as a Fulbright fellow; and has a Ph.D. in Film and Digital media from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Rolando’s research «Kuna Indigenous Media and Knowledge in the Darién Tropical Rain Forest» focused on the politics of traversal and terrain, mapping and survival, and the geographies of collective labor as modes of indigenous resistance. Vargas has presented his work at Transmediale, the Kassel Documentary Film Festival, SESC Videobrasil, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Kunstverein Düsseldof, EMAF, Ficvaldivia, and other international venues. He is currently a Mellon Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia.