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Dalida María Benfield, Ph.D. (Panamá/US) is an artist, filmmaker, writer, curator, and educator. She is the cofounder and Research and Program Director of the Center for Arts, Design and Social Research (CAD+SR), a non-profit international research center. Her work engages and produces decolonial feminisms, media, networks, and aesthetics, and she is a longtime organizer of autonomous cultural and educational platforms. Her most recent activities include organizing the CAD+SR artist/researcher residencies “Commonplaces and Entanglements (after Edouard Glissant)” in Spoleto, Italy; exhibiting in “Stateless Mind,” Sörte Firkant and Lanterna Magica, Copenhagen; and co-editing a special issue of the feminist journal, Frontiers, on “‘World-Traveling’ and World-Making with Decolonial Feminisms and Women of Color.”
She is also the co-founder of the Institute of (im)Possible Subjects, a transnational feminist collective of writers, researchers, and artists who curated a year-long series of public interventions, “Migratory Times,” (2016-2017) with exhibitions, workshops, and events in the US, the Phillipines, S. Korea, Denmark, Colombia, and an ongoing online platform. Other recent pedagogical engagements include: Co-Chair and Graduate Faculty of the Visual Arts Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts (2013 – present); Visiting Artist at the Institut de Beaux Arts de Besançon, France (2018); Visiting Artist at the Royal Art Academy, Copenhagen (2018); Visiting Scholar at Microsoft Research New England (2017); Visiting Professor at futuremaking.space at Aarhus University, Denmark (2016-2017); and Faculty Associate and Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University (2011-2015).
Before pursuing her Ph.D., she was a Professor and Chair of the Department of Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1997-2004). Her M.F.A. is from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Ph.D. in Comparative Ethnic Studies with Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of California-Berkeley.
The book mentioned in the interview is by Yuk Hui, The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics.
[…] Dalida Maria Benfield […]
[…] Dalida Maria Benfield was interviewed in October from Helsinki, Finland where she has been frequently traveling and working alongside her partner who works at Aalto University. Together they co-founded the Center for Arts, Design and Social Research and have created an outpost for the project in Helsinki. Benfield is also busy on a series of projects, many of which are connected to the Center. She considers pedagogy and research part of her practice and has always included these avenues in her work. One project which she created after her MFA studies concluded found Benfield working with the Community Television Network, a grassroots activist project. Benfield worked with Latinx youth to produce weekly cable access TV news programs and experimental video artwork. To hear more about this work, other projects and the Center for Arts, Design and Social Research, listen to the complete interview. […]