Weekly notes Friday March 27, 2026

Things to read, to watch, resources and more

Mar 27, 2026

Here’s a bunch of things I found this week. This is my way of tracking things now - sharing them here.

To Read

Perimeter Books @perimeterbooks

Walking as Embodied Worldmaking: Bodies, Borders, Knowledgescapes (Set Margins, Eindhoven)

A nice day for it. Walking as Embodied Worldmaking: Bodies, Borders, Knowledgescapes (Set Margins, Eindhoven). /// Link to store in bio. /// Edited by Lea Maria Spahn

Walking is as much a cultural practice as it is an embodied experience. The contributions in this book highlight the interrelations between bodies, knowledges, places, affects, and other materialities through phenomenological, artistic, and methodological lenses. Walking is explored as a relational practice situated in specific landscapes – it connects different cultural practices, holds material-semiotic performativity, and always involves an interweaving of (geo)political territories and borders. This book brings together written and visual contributions from social scientists and artists, offering a vibrant and multifaceted perspective on the phenomenon of walking.

Introduction and text by Lea Maria Spahn. Contributions by Ana Anaa, Antonín Brinda, Dorothea Hamilton, Otto Kauppinen, Marie Kammler, Astrid Lembcke-Thiel, Hana Magdoňová, Maja Maksimović, Darija Medić & Mirjana Utvić, Susanne Nemmerz, Eva Clara Tenzler, Shira Wachsmann, Mariele Weber, inka°witz, Regula Pöhl, Daniela Villiger. #perimeterbooks @setmargins

To Read

From Lars Muller Publishers @larsmullerpublishers

these books explore water as a vital resource and a shared responsibility. From melting ice and engineered dams to polluted rivers and fragile ecosystems, they reveal how water connects ecology, politics and human life across a changing world.

“100 Words for Water: A Projective Ecosocial Vocabulary” by Eva Franch i Gilabert, Mireia Luzárraga & Alejandro Muiño (eds.)

Who Owns the Water?” by Lars Müller, Klaus Lanz, Christian Rentsch & René Schwarzenbach (eds.) – English & German editions

“Hydroelectric Sublime” by Beatrice Gorelli & Keiichi Kitayama (eds.)

“The Colors of Growth: China’s Huai River” by Andreas Seibert

“Waters in Between” by Lukas Felzmann

“Antarctic Resolution” by Giulia Foscari / UNLESS (eds.)

To Read

New issue of Ceramics in America is online: https://chipstone.org/issue.php/60/Ceramics-in-America-2025

To Read

https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/

From the link above: David Foster Wallace‘s 2005 commencement speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College is a timeless trove of wisdom — right up there with Hunter Thompson on finding your purpose. The speech was made into a thin book titled This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life.

Someone on social media mentioned this, I went looking and it’s a good one to read.

People to read and learn from/with:

Shannon Mattern and Curry J. Hackett delivered a brilliant presentation ( VISITING LECTURE | SHANNON MATTERN AND CURRY HACKETT: MAKING SENSE — SEVEN MOVEMENTS

) this week at The Cooper Union, which I joined via zoom.

Description from lecture link https://cooper.edu/events-and-exhibitions/events/visiting-lecture-shannon-mattern-and-curry-hackett-making-sense-seven :

In this talk Shannon Mattern (

https://wordsinspace.net/

) and Curry Hackett (https://www.wayside.studio/draw ) on their own research and practice to explore a variety of methods for making knowledge material — spatial, experiential, sense-able, manipulable, inhabitable, navigable. Through a call-and-response structure, they’ll examine how actions from cooking and collaging to furniture making to syllabus design help us to make sense of a disordered world.

https://syllabusproject.org/library-field/ - mapping a field.

If you haven’t followed Shannon’s writing on Places Journal here is one place to start:

https://placesjournal.org/article/social-history-of-the-cardboard-box/

Resources

From @centropr

Announcing the Archives of Puerto Rican Slavery Map by Black Puerto Rican Futures

Whether you’re hoping to trace your ancestry, writing a book, or researching the deep history and legacies of Afro-Puerto Ricans, this map is an essential digital tool that expands access to primary sources related to the lives of enslaved and emancipated people in Puerto Rico. Drawing on knowledge developed over years of related research, this living tool brings together information about accessing collections related to the people subjected to slavery and its afterlives in Puerto Rico.

Black Puerto Rican Futures is a three-year initiative that reclaims and restores Black Puerto Rican history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Comment 🗺️on their IG and they’ll send you the link to the Archives of Puerto Rican Slavery Map and to learn more about the Black Puerto Rican Futures Initiative

Resources

I will probably post about this resource more than once. But you should not put off checking it out:

https://blackcraftspeople.org/

I have syllabi on my mind after Shannon Mattern and Curry J. Hackett’s presentation at The Cooper Union. Here is one to add to your lists: https://blackcraftspeople.org/bcda-syllabus/

Resources

This needs to be updated and remains useful, too. Put together by Aram Han Sifuentes, L. Vinebaum, Ishita Sharp and me in 2015. https://www.criticalcraftforum.com/unsettling-coloniality-a-critical-and-radical-fibertextile-bibliography

Resources

From @unsettling_mormonism

To read: Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future

Sharing tips for how to do your unsettling ancestry work.

— If you have some suggestions for how to do unsettling ancestral history work,

— or a suggested reading to help folks understand settler colonialism when reading settler-colonial histories

— leave a comment on their IG

RESOURCE TO SHARE

To Visit

Very curious about this place. Anyone been?

theworldofinteriors

Welcome to north London’s Seed Archives (@seedarchives), a relaxed collection of art, design and books on African and Caribbean heritage, courtesy of photographer Christian Cassiel (@christiancassiel).

Conference

@centrefortextileresearch

https://eventsignup.ku.dk/landscapesoftextileproduction/conference?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio

Ancient Landscapes of Textile Production - Interdisciplinary Perspectives

27-29 May 2026 University of Copenhagen

The conference is organised by the Independent Reserach Fund Denmark (DFF) project

Textile Resources in Viking Age Landscapes team

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/3/23/peabody-new-data-release/

MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS

Harvard Peabody Museum Still Holds 46 Percent of Native American Ancestors, New Data Shows

By Shalini N. Ramchune, Crimson Staff Writer

To Read and Watch

The Lamentations of a Rocking Chair

From the Animation Obsessive’s Substack post: In 1982, Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki were in the United States. They’d come to work with Hollywood on an animated Little Nemo feature. The experience was a frustrating one.

But something good came of it. While in Los Angeles, Takahata went to a screening of The Adolescent (1979), a live-action movie from France. It was touring American theaters as a double bill with an animated short from Canada. Takahata didn’t realize that the short had already won an Oscar earlier in 1982.¹

Its title was Crac (1981). Takahata was floored — “completely captivated,” he later said. He had to watch it again, pulling colleagues along.