In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month—and marking the first Latin American Artistic Director of the Chicago Architecture Biennial—this panel gathers leading voices from across the region to reflect on the architectural ideas and cultural forces shaping practice today. Moderated by Isabella Moretti and Santiago Bogani, the conversation highlights a generation of architects who are redefining the field through experimentation, cultural continuity, and social engagement.

Through the lens of their current projects and concepts, participants will open a collective dialogue about contemporary architecture in Latin America: its diverse contexts, shared urgencies, and imaginative approaches. Together, they will consider how architectural practice in the Global South is producing powerful ideas for the present and bold visions for the future.

SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change is the sixth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial and marks the celebration of its tenth anniversary.

Led by Artistic Director Florencia Rodriguez, SHIFT signals the opportunity and need to change direction—an invitation to think with others and to set new grounds for the interpretation and design of our built environments. This edition explores how architecture engages with the profound cultural, social, and environmental transformations shaping our world today and explores the possibility of envisioning alternate paths forward. Featuring over 100 projects by architects, artists, and designers from 30 countries, SHIFT convenes voices from around the world, in a citywide constellation of exhibitions and public programs. Together, they address urgent questions shaping the spaces we inhabit, such as housing, ecology, and material innovation, to demonstrate architecture’s role in shaping our collective future.

The Graham Foundation is an official site for SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change.

Please note: The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please call ahead to make arrangements. The second-floor galleries and the third-floor ballroom, where events are held, are only accessible by stairs. Please contact us at 312.787.4071 or info@grahamfoundation.org to make arrangements.

For more information on the exhibition, SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change , click here.

As part of SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change—the sixth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial—this panel brings together Biennial participants and critics for a fast-paced, collective exploration of how architecture can respond to a world in flux. Moderated by Artistic Director Florencia Rodriguez with co-curators Igo Kommers  Wender and Chana Haouzi, the program features architects from across the Biennial’s thematic capsules—Inhabit, Outhabit; Ecologies; The Ordinary-EXTRA; and Melting Solids.

In a dynamic format, each participant will respond to the central question of SHIFT—how does your work address change? Their provocations will spark a larger conversation on housing, ecologies, and the beauty of the everyday, offering insight into how architects are rethinking fundamentals and experimenting with new possibilities for practice. The session closes with reflections from architectural critics, underscoring the vital role of criticism in shaping public discourse and reaffirming architecture’s capacity to imagine better futures.

SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change is the sixth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial and marks the celebration of its tenth anniversary.

Led by Artistic Director Florencia Rodriguez, SHIFT signals the opportunity and need to change direction—an invitation to think with others and to set new grounds for the interpretation and design of our built environments. This edition explores how architecture engages with the profound cultural, social, and environmental transformations shaping our world today and explores the possibility of envisioning alternate paths forward. Featuring over 100 projects by architects, artists, and designers from 30 countries, SHIFT convenes voices from around the world, in a citywide constellation of exhibitions and public programs. Together, they address urgent questions shaping the spaces we inhabit, such as housing, ecology, and material innovation, to demonstrate architecture’s role in shaping our collective future.

Please note: The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please call ahead to make arrangements. The second-floor galleries and the third-floor ballroom, where events are held, are only accessible by stairs. Please contact us at 312.787.4071 or info@grahamfoundation.org to make arrangements.

For more information on the exhibition, SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change , click here.

PAST EVENTS

Ikue Mori presents new electronic music inspired by Lafcadio Hearn’s writings on Japanese folktales—particularly the ghost-story genre known as kaidan. In this solo performance, she reimagines supernatural narratives collected by Hearn a century ago in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture, creating an evocative work of melody, texture, and taiko drumming patterns.

Ikue Mori (b.1953, Tokyo) started her career in 1977 as Ikue Ile, transplanted from Japan to Manhattan’s East Village, where she played drums in the No Wave band DNA with guitarist Arto Lindsay. An autodidact, she took to percussion immediately, developing a distinctive personal style that helped set the band apart.

Mori soon went on to become a key member of the downtown New York improvised music scene, using drum machines and samplers. She began an ongoing collaboration with saxophonist John Zorn and has appeared on many of his recordings, including early classics such as Locus Solus and Godard/Spillane.

Bridging the worlds of improvised music, experimental music, and rock, Mori has developed a singular approach to freely improvised laptop music, working with musicians across the improvising spectrum, including harpist Zeena Parkins in the duo Phantom Orchard and with Zorn and singer Mike Patton as Hemophiliac, and performing and recording with pianist Craig Taborn, saxophonist Ken Vandermark, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, trumpeters Dave Douglas and Butch Morris, and guitarists Fred Frith and Thurston Moore. She often records on Tzadik and has designed the covers for many of the label’s albums.

Commissioners of her work include the Tate Modern, the Montalvo Arts Center, SWR German radio program, Relâche, the Mary Flagler Charitable Trust, and the Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates. Mori was a 2022 MacArthur Fellow and has received numerous other honors, including the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists (2006), a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship (2000), and a Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction (1999). In 2005 she participated in the Ucross Foundation Residency Program. She has led workshops and lectures at Dartmouth College, Mills College, New England Conservatory, Stanford University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Gothenburg.

Lampo, established in 1997, supports artists working in new music, experimental sound, and other interdisciplinary practices. The Chicago-based organization's core activity has been and remains its performance series. Rather than making programming decisions around tour schedules, Lampo invites selected artists to create and perform new work, and then the organization provides the space, resources, and curatorial support to help them fulfill their vision. Lampo also organizes artist talks, lectures, screenings, and workshops, and publishes written and recorded documents related to its series.

Weston Olencki and Jennifer Torrence perform BATTERY, Olencki’s new long-form work for massed marching percussion. The setup assembles the component parts of a traditional drumline, including a large collection of snares, tenors, and bass drums, two pairs of feedback-induced crash cymbals, and an array of robotic woodblocks.

BATTERY draws upon both musicians’ early experiences and education within the ubiquitous American marching band. BATTERY imagines an alternative drum culture pushed to its algorithmic limits, using electromechanical attachments, intertwined feedback loops, and multichannel synthesis to reanimate source material from the rudiments, virtuosity, and athletic bravado of the drumline, forging new connections between musicians, listeners, and the instruments themselves.

Artist Talk — Friday, March 21, 6 p.m.
Lampo Annex, Monadnock Building, 53 W. Jackson Blvd. #1656
RSVP required, CLICK HERE
Weston Olencki reads from their new essay, for instruments, published by Lampo. Throughout, Olencki illuminates a distinctive practice—one that treats instruments not merely as tools for making music, but as repositories of cultural memory and historical meaning. Jennifer Torrence joins the discussion on BATTERY, detailing its ambivalent relationship with virtuosity, autobiographical source materials, and the imperial vestiges of marching music.

Weston Olencki (b.1992; Spartanburg, SC) is a musician, composer, and sound artist based in Berlin. Their recent music deals with the nonlinear relationships between experimental sound, geography, historicity, and (mostly American) musical traditions. They have presented work at the Borealis Festival, Issue Project Room, REDCAT, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Ghent Jazz Festival, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Black Mountain College, Musica Nova Helsinki, the American Academy in Rome, Roulette Intermedium, and Frequency Festival, among other festivals and venues. Residencies include CalArts, Columbia University, Harvard University, New York University, Northwestern University, Princeton University, Stanford University, and the University of Huddersfield. In 2016, they were awarded the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis by the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt. Olencki is an active member of RAGE Thormbones, Apparat, and the Harmonic Space Orchestra, and performs regularly as a soloist and ensemble member on low brass instruments, winds, banjo, organs, and various electronic media. Olencki last performed for Lampo in March 2023, when they premiered It lays in heaven the topmost stone.

Jennifer Torrence (b.1986; Dalton, GA) is a percussionist and performer, curator, and artistic researcher based in Oslo. Much of her work is built upon extended collaborative processes with composers and artists from various experimental practices. Collaborators include Øyvind Torvund, Clara Iannotta, Kari Watson, Jo David Lysne, Jessie Marino, Sara Glojnaric, Ase Brunborg Lie, Martin Hirsti-Kvam, Kelley Sheehan, Fredrik Storsveen, Janne-Camilla Lyster, Sam Salem, Weston Olencki, and Natali Abrahamsen Garner. She has also worked with the Alpaca Ensemble, Aksiom, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and Norwegian Radio Orchestra. In addition to solo and collaborative projects, she is a member of the Norwegian trio, Pinquins. Torrence is an associate professor of percussion at the Norwegian Academy of Music, a percussion tutor at the Darmstadt Summer Course, a former curator at nyMusikk, a former artistic research fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music, and a past Fulbright scholar. She also studied at Oberlin Conservatory, University of California San Diego, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

Lampo, established in 1997, supports artists working in new music, experimental sound, and other interdisciplinary practices. The Chicago-based organization's core activity has been and remains its performance series. Rather than making programming decisions around tour schedules, Lampo invites selected artists to create and perform new work, and then the organization provides the space, resources, and curatorial support to help them fulfill their vision. Lampo also organizes artist talks, lectures, screenings, and workshops, and publishes written and recorded documents related to its series.

Please note that registration for Lampo programs is required, but does not guarantee entry.  Capacity for this performance is limited. Doors open 30 minutes prior to the performance and seats are available on a first-come, first-serve basis for those registered in advance. Due to the popularity of the Lampo programs, performances quickly reach capacity. No late seating is permitted. This performance series includes high-volume sounds in close proximity to the audience, ear protection is available upon request.

This event received additional support from the American-Scandinavian Foundation and equipment provided by the Woodruff High School Marching Cadets in Woodruff, SC.

March 20: Dia Beacon (3 Beekman Street, Beacon, New York) | (INVITE ONLY)
March 21 at Dia Chelsea (537 West 22nd Street, New York, New York) | 5–7:45 p.m.; free, open to the public (SOLD OUT)

Swamp Summit: Dirt and Water is a program that examines the relationship between natural and built environments at the boundary where water meets land. Using the unstable grounds of the swamp as a conceptual underpinning, this two-day summit gathers artists, architects, writers, curators, researchers, anthropologists, ecologists, poets, and other practitioners to discuss the material politics of water from different geographies—from the Gulf of Mexico to the Mekong River. Through their unique approaches of spatial research and art-making, participants address pressing issues relating to legacies of art and ecology, as well as the impact of industry and human-induced environmental disasters on historically excluded communities. Through shared thematic ties, Swamp Summit: Dirt and Water brings a diverse range of voices together to share ideas and build common ground.

The public program at Dia Chelsea on March 21 includes a reading by Mayan poet and water rights activist Pedro Uc; a keynote talk by linguist Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil; a conversation between Uc and Aguilar Gil, moderated by artist Abraham Cruzvillegas; a reading from Season of the Swamp (Gray Wolf Press, 2024), set in the fictionalized murky soil of 1850s New Orleans, by novelist Yuri Herrera; artists Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan speak with artist Sky Hopinka about sensory and visual ethnographies; and artist collective Cooking Sections conclude the day with a lecture-performance on wetlands.

Swamp Summit: Dirt and Water is organized by Storefront for Art and Architecture, Dia Art Foundation, and the Graham Foundation. The program coincides with the conclusion of Swamplands, Storefront’s year-long research and program series including four exhibitions featuring newly commissioned work from artists Imani Jacqueline Brown, Jingru (Cyan) Chen and Chen Zhan, Gala Porras-Kim, and Fred Schmidt-Arenales. A forthcoming exhibition at the Graham Foundation presents all four projects together in addition to a new commission by Jerónimo Reyes-Retana and opens April 17, 2025.

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