THIRD THURSDAY// PRISON OBSERVATORY 593

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THURS NOV 16

NOON

Virtual

This talk reflects on the collaborative construction of a multimodal platform aimed at seeking integral restitutive justice for the victims of prison massacres in Ecuador. In making ethnographic multimodality adequate for accompanying victims and reclaiming justice, the platform – Prison Observatory 593 – brings together families of prisoners killed while incarcerated, human rights lawyers, liberation theology priests, and decolonial scholars. Building on our experience with the Observatory, this talk is an invitation for an interdisciplinary conversation about how the notions of cinematic accompaniment and decolonial reclamation can help us contribute to an abolitionist intervention against the carceral state.

Jorge Núñez

Jorge Núñez holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Davis. He is cofounder of Kaleidos at the University of Cuenca, and codirector of the Ecuadorian Prison Observatory 593. He is also the lead designer of the digital platform EthnoData. Jorge is currently a visiting scholar at SUM – Center for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo. His new research project explores the decolonial potential of Earth observation technologies by collaborating with Indigenous scholars and space experts in the production of satellite visualizations aimed at defending the rights of nature in Ecuador.  

KRISTINA LYONS

Kristina Lyons’ current research is situated at the interfaces of socio-ecological conflicts, feminist science studies, and legal anthropology in Latin America.  Her manuscript, Vital Decomposition: Soil Practitioners and Life Politics (Duke 2020), moves across laboratories, greenhouses, forests, and farms in the capital city of Bogotá, Colombia and the Andean-Amazonian department of Putumayo.  In 2015, Dr. Lyons directed a popular education documentary film project based on farmer-to-farmer alternative agricultural practices called Cultivating a Bien Vivir (Living Well) in the Amazon. Her current work focuses on the memory and mourning of water, geological processes, participatory forms of territorial planning, socionatural disaster, and water-inspired subjecitivities.