In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Mabel O. Wilson - architect, historian, and professor at Columbia University, director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies - speaks about Thinking from Black: A Lexicon, published by FSG Editions this September.
Thinking from Black – a product of the Practicing Refusal Collective, a forum of artists and scholars dedicated to initiating dialogues on blackness, anti-black violence and black futurity in the twenty-first century brings together artists, scholars, poets, architects and activists to build a vibrant, experimental vocabulary for black life, culture and collective imagination.
Through cross-referenced and eclectic entries, the book argues for “thinking from Black” as a creative, plural, and liberatory practice rather than a fixed identity—one that refuses deficit-based frameworks and makes room for contradiction, tension, and possibility.
Mabel’s work includes books, exhibitions, memorials. You can connect to her via her work, and also LinkedIn and Instagram. The book is linked above. The Practicing Refusal Collective is here.
+
Music credits: Bruno Gillick
Image credits: Image 1: © J. Meejin Yoon: Detail of Memorial to Enslaved Laborers (2020), University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.
+
If you want and can, please support the A is for Architecture Podcast on Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee.