 Thank you so much for joining today. I, you know, when I think about an architect who is not just expanding practice, because it's such an easy term these days, but really kind of very precisely connecting a certain number of dots in particular, I think, architecture, art, and performance, and you've been kind of redefining that relationship through your work. I think about your book, Dark Space, which was really so interesting, but also most recently your performance lecture, which we invented the format of the lecture at GISA, called Working on Water and kind of dematerializing architecture through performance. And so wanted to hear a little bit more about that focus that you're bringing to your work and what kind of doors you feel you're opening through these lenses coming together and how you've brought that to your teaching and kind of engaging. It's not so simple to kind of invite students to say, hey, architecture is not just about building. And of course it engages issues, but there are ways to engage those issues through means that are different. And so I wanted you to expand a little bit on that nexus that you're kind of pushing and I think pioneering in new ways. Yeah, well, sure. And thanks for having me, Amal. I mean, I think that, you know, with the book Dark Space, what I was interested in, and I think this is maybe kind of overall our issues of representation, but particularly with that book was bringing in some of the stories into the architectural canon, which had been excluded or left out. So for example, stories about Paul Revere Williams, who was one of the first registered African American architects and who had a very extensive practice in Southern California, which ran for a number of years and was posthumously awarded the AIA Gold Medal just a few years ago, but virtually had not been written about in the history books, or included in books about housing. And he designed several housing projects. He was actually part of the LA modernist, mid-century modernist scene with Schindler and those guys. So that book was about bringing other things to the canon. More recently, I think what I am interested in is, I won't call it decolonizing the canon, but doing perhaps what Edward Said calls a kind of contrapuntal reading of the canon. And for Said, I think it was in culture and imperialism. He writes about the great English novel and when one sort of digs into it, one or you see references to India and Jane Eyre, that was possible because of British imperialism, which extracted resources, extracted labor, which then made a certain kind of lifestyle possible for the characters like Rochester or what have you in Jane Eyre. So I'm interested in terms of architecture and my most recent work in doing a contrapuntal reading of architecture. So when we read about Lord Corbusier's affair with Josephine Baker, and then also read about Corbusier visiting brothels in Turkey or in Algeria and then making sketches of women nude sketches. And then writing later that he learned about the plasticity of structure from those drawings and we look at his anthropomorphic shapes in Villa Savoie or Villa Stein de Manzi, you know, historically we were taught, oh, this is in reference to his purest paintings, but actually it goes much, much deeper than that. And so it was not just an aestheticization in terms of Baker's body, but it was always the kind of presence of an other thing there that had perhaps not been exposed. And I think that's what's going on in art, in contemporary art these days. And so bringing performance as a, as a other means of representation into my work in order to expose, let's say the dark presence that's always been present in modern architecture is kind of what I'm interested in right now. And it's interesting, because I've heard you mention, and I think we all feel at times that architecture comes a little late to the game, or that certain explorations happen in literature and art before they are really brought into architecture. And I do think that that's why your work is so interesting right now, because you've articulated, like you really situated in architecture that, you know, you're opening it up. And in that sense, I was curious, you know, one of the aspects that was so powerful in the performance of working on water is the collaboration. I think you've mentioned that more and more you're collaborating, not just, you know, we use collaboration again very easily and, you know, as architects, but you're really collaborating with artists, with visual artists, and to think about what collaboration means for you in terms of your practice today, hybridizing or opening up architecture through engaging other creative practices. Well, I think that, you know, for me, it actually goes back to my education at Columbia. I was a student at what we called it Columbia, not yet GSAP in the late 80s, early 90s. And within the curriculum, within the readings, I remember in first year having to read Roland Barthes and Cameron Lucida and the work of art and the age of mechanical reproduction. So, so curriculum wise, there was always sort of, let's say, discourses besides architecture, if you will, in terms of where the brackets were, the brackets were open to bring in literature, to bring in, to bring in art, and, and then early on in my practice in terms of some of the mentors that I've had, you know, I worked for Stephen Hall for a couple of years, and Stephen would always tell us, every Saturday, go out and see some art, so he would close the office for two or three hours to go out and see art and galleries. And so that interest in art has kind of always been there. And I think, you know, now is really becoming more prevalent in terms of meeting artists, working with artists, artists wanting also to collaborate with architects. So it's not just been a one way, but a kind of two way street. And artists actually being, at least the artists that I've been working with, really being interested in thinking about space and thinking about architecture in terms of, in terms of their work. So people from Tarkwasi Dyson to Jonathan Gazales to Adam Pendleton, you know, have really made for some fruitful collaborations thus far. And, you know, when you mentioned go see art every Saturday morning, I was thinking, well, this is where New York makes a difference, right? I mean, that where, you know, it's still all there in a way and kind of intersecting. But you've also expanded and, you know, you work with Mabel as part of the Global Africa Lab. And you've looked at Johannesburg and, you know, made those kinds of relational sort of thinking. And I was curious about some of the recent projects of the lab or how you've brought, you know, some of these conversations to a different context, which is maybe similar in many ways and different in others and kind of thing. Yes. When we started Global Africa Lab gal, as we call it, I think I'd first taken a couple of trips to to Southern Africa, maybe a couple of years before we started gal. And those were studio trips, part of our Kenny program, studio trips with students. And actually, I think those studios were actually based around South African artists. And then when we started gal, we were interested in, I guess, a few things, one in which one was the ways in which, at that time, new technologies, digital technologies were being used elsewhere, you know, in the global south and the innovative ways in which they were using mobile phones and technologies, ways that now in the in New York, we're just now swiping our phones to, you know, to get onto the to the subway system, but using phones for those kinds of things have been going on elsewhere in the world for a long time and using data. But also the kinds of conversations which were happening and this was now gal started, I think, in 2012. So almost eight years ago, the kinds of conversations which were going on, which I think were at the forefront in terms of architectural discourse in relationship to critical studies in terms of colonialism, technology, and looking at the African diaspora. And so gal is a sort of platform that has allowed us to do that, not only in terms of looking at situations and during research projects on the continent, but within the diaspora. But one thing that we've sort of made, tried to make certain of it in terms of the continent, is that we're not just kind of looking at sites of crisis. But we're really sort of thinking about gal as investigating conditions of agency. And so whether or not it's the ways in which technology was being used in new ways. And we actually have an ongoing project which is dealing with intellectual mobility, which deals with technology and mobility in the western Cape. But we've also studied with students in Cape Verde, for example, looking at issues of climate and climate change. Cape Verde being a Ten Island archipelago off the west coast of Africa. That was a site for colonialism by the Portuguese. Now is a site that's really being impacted by climate change in terms of not necessarily the abundance of water and sea level rise, but actually the paucity of water and drought. So that network within diaspora has allowed us to kind of look at a variety of things. Now sort of shifting perhaps a little bit more to kind of considering the environment, including the studio that I'm doing this semester, which is a second version of the space of water studio that we did in Cape Verde, but this time based in Cape Town. Mario, just to end, I know you're part of the MoMA upcoming show Reconstructions, Blackness and Architecture in America. And I wondered if you would share a few like a teaser or, you know, something about the show. Very excited to see it. And it's a very long overdue, obviously, and just wanted to hear anything you might want to share with us about it. Yeah, sure. This is the fourth in MoMA's series on, I think it's called Current Issues or Something in Architecture. The previous one or the last one was about housing, I believe. And this one, which is a group show of 10 architects, a little bit more than in the past, who are looking at different American cities and I would say issues of spatial justice, if you will, being architects, issues of spatial justice within these cities, ranging from issues that actually overlap with climate change to civil rights. I happened to be working in Nashville, Tennessee, which is where the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was formed in the 1960s. But I'm really interested in the ways in which, let's say, Black bodies have had to move through space, negotiated space, thereby sort of giving new forms to spacemaking, if you will, as a kind of choreography, sometimes improvisational, sometimes reaction in terms of making space, and what can come out of that or what has come out of that in terms of translating those things into architecture. Really a great pleasure and I'm really both, I know G-SAP, we're so lucky to have you be thinking about those issues and kind of exploring and opening up architecture in ways that it needs to be and it's always inspiring to see your work and then the response of the students to that, to these provocative and crucial questions. So thank you and again, fall is around the corner and this moment we are in certainly while being a time of crisis, I think, is also a time of opportunity to imagine change, right? Yes, yeah. All right, thank you so much Mario. Okay, thanks a lot, I'm all. Okay, bye. Okay, bye-bye.