The Prison Industrial Complex and Beyond

The Prison Industrial Complex and Beyond brings together writer and performer Liza Jessie Peterson, architect and activist Raphael Sperry, and moderator Elias Beltran for a critical dialogue on incarceration, justice, and the built environment. The conversation explores how architecture, performance, and advocacy intersect within systems of control—and how creative and civic action can envision alternatives to mass incarceration. Through their combined perspectives, the speakers challenge audiences to consider how space, policy, and imagination might be mobilized toward repair, dignity, and social transformation.

Abstract

And/Or Online Dialogues.The term ‘binary opposites’ is an important concept in linguistics, sociology and philosophy, referring to pairs of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning. Common examples that we use in everyday speech and thought include ‘good/bad,’ ‘inside/outside,’ ‘male/female,’ ‘presence/absence’ and so on. Architecture and our related disciplines of landscape and urbanism depend heavily on binary oppositions (‘inside/outside,’ ‘man-made/natural,’ ‘private/public,’ ‘digital/real’) but the adversarial tension set up between what we perceive as opposites often obscures a deeper and more complex understanding of the world.

Context

The term ‘binary opposites’ is an important concept in linguistics, sociology and philosophy, referring to pairs of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning. Common examples that we use in everyday speech and thought include ‘good/bad,’ ‘inside/outside,’ ‘male/female,’ ‘presence/absence’ and so on. Architecture and our related disciplines of landscape and urbanism depend heavily on binary oppositions (‘inside/outside,’ ‘man-made/natural,’ ‘private/public,’ ‘digital/real’) but the adversarial tension set up between what we perceive as opposites often obscures a deeper and more complex understanding of the world.

In this new online series, this lecture was curated by Martin Stigsgaard and argue that the traditional format of a single lecturer speaking to an audience sets up a binary opposite all of its own — speaker/listener, which simply reinforces the power structure between those who ‘possess’ knowledge and those who ‘consume’ it. In its place, the ‘And/Or Online Dialogues’ will present two speakers in conversation with each other, moderated by a third.

Credits

Architecture Filed Lab: Lecture Series

Collaborators: In the series other lectures curated by Viren Brahmbhatt, Ali C. Höcek

Location: Spitzer School of Architecture 

Year: 2021 

Contact: info@studiostigsgaard.com