Loudreading - e-flux

Contributors Nathalie Frankowski, Cruz Garcia, e-flux Architecture, Luis Othoniel Rosa, Marakianí Olivieri, Jason Fitzroy Jeffers, Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, Nadia Huggins, Dorraine Duncan, Jhordan Channer, and more…

Under the colonial construction of time, the Caribbean is now 532 years into loudreading planetary futures. Here, radical struggles for emancipation, solidarity, and worldmaking subsist despite the planetary scale destruction and repression born out of its tropical plantations. From this mountain range/archipelago, the imperial blueprint of capitalist spoliation has spread across the rest of the planet in the form of military occupations, colonial debt, and planned precarity, and in the technologies of racialization, surveillance, incarceration, and policing.

Loudreading is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture, WAI Architecture Think Tank, and Loudreaders Trade School supported by the Mellon Foundation, re:arc institute, the Graham Foundation, Producer Hub, Iowa State University, GSA Johannesburg, Universidad de Puerto Rico–Rio Piedras, and the inaugural ACSA Fellowship to Advance Equity in Architecture.

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8 essays

Worldmakers Close In!

Post-Novis

Borders are like burials. They enclose the land and the people and the more-than-human beings who inhabit it. Borders inhume possibility by limiting interactions between complex ecologies, disregarding the ever-changing dreams of the commons and disrupting the “movements and migrations” of bodies in transit.

Propaganda and Infrastructure of Brand Jamaica

Dorraine Duncan and Jhordan Channer

Infrastructure cannot be separated from the long history of Western imperialism that is manifested in Caribbean spaces through intense dependency.

Black Sand

Nadia Huggins

Sand is a material that I have often overlooked. At the same time, I can be overwhelmed by the immensity of it, and the idea that each tiny grain, once amassed in large quantities, determines how coastlines form and evolve over time.

Excerpts from Algarabía

Roque Raquel Salas Rivera

Algarabía: The Song of Cenex, Natural Son of the Isle of Alarabíyaa (Graywolf Press, 2025) is an epic poem that follows the journey of Cenex, a trans being that retrospectively narrates his life while navigating the stories told on his behalf.

Uncovering and Celebrating Hidden Histories

Jason Fitzroy Jeffers

History is certainly not the sole province of cinema, but, as an art form, it is tremendously powerful in allowing people to see other possibilities, other histories, other futures, other perspectives—even within oneself, inside one’s own community.

Architectural Beauty and Justice for Vieques

Marakianí Olivieri

Given that architecture is responsible for creating spaces and experiences for society, privileging visual gratification based on an aesthetic concept of beauty doesn’t only thwart and limit the potential appreciation of these spaces, it also signifies an absence of truth and purpose as much for the architect as for the communities they serve.

An Architecture of Unruliness

Luis Othoniel Rosa

The voice of the Loudreader does not explain because explaining is a form of ruling. She just tells stories of breakaways, of collectives that defeated loneliness, of worldmakers of the past that conjure other futures. “This world is a bubble” she reads, “put a knife to it.”

Editorial

Nathalie Frankowski, Cruz Garcia, and e-flux Architecture

Subject

Architecture, Global South, Caribbean, Extractivism

Contributors

Nathalie Frankowski, Cruz Garcia, and e-flux Architecture Editorial
Luis Othoniel Rosa An Architecture of Unruliness
Marakianí Olivieri Architectural Beauty and Justice for Vieques
Jason Fitzroy Jeffers Uncovering and Celebrating Hidden Histories
Roque Raquel Salas Rivera Excerpts from Algarabía
Nadia Huggins Black Sand
Dorraine Duncan and Jhordan Channer Propaganda and Infrastructure of Brand Jamaica
Post-Novis Worldmakers Close In!

Category

Subject