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Future Memory

Monument Lab

Welcome to Monument Lab's Future Memory, a public art and history podcast. Each episode, hosts Paul Farber and Li Sumpter explore stories and critical conversations around the past, present, and future of monuments. We speak to the artists, activists, and historians on the frontlines, building the next generation of public spaces through stories of social justice and equity. Here are the monumental people, places, and ideas of our time.

Plot of Land is a podcast mini-series by Monument Lab that explores how land ownership and housing in the United States have been shaped by power, public memory, and privatization.

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20 episodes
Avg 50 min
English

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#46
Jun 22, 2023 · 42 min
Stewarding Sound and Ancestral Memory with Nathan Young
Episode 46 of Future Memory features artist, scholar, and composer, Nathan Young. Young is a member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians and a direct descendant of the Pawnee Nation and Kiowa Tribe, currently living in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. His work incorporates sound, video, documentary, animation, installation, socially-engaged art, and experimental and improvised music. Young is also a founding member of the artist collective, Postcommodity. He holds an MFA in Music/Sound from Bard College's Milto
#45
Jun 15, 2023 · 50 min
MING MEDIA is the Message with Jon Kaufman and El Sawyer
Future Memory welcomes El Sawyer and Jon Kaufman of MING Media. MING stands for Media In Neighborhoods Group – words that speak to WHERE Jon and El have been focusing their documentary work and the community-centered stories they’re known for telling. It’s been almost 10 years since the debut of Pull of Gravity, their first film and breakout project that shaped their future path in collaborative filmmaking. Pull of Gravity offers a rarely seen perspective on the prison system and those it impact
#44
Jun 8, 2023 · 48 min
Teaching Truth with Jesse Hagopian
In this episode co-host Li Sumpter receives a history lesson from Jesse Hagopian, Seattle-based educator, activist, and die-hard advocate for antiracist education. He shares childhood memories that impacted his view of himself, his future path, and his role in the Black Freedom Struggle – a fight that has deep roots in Seattle and the very high school Jesse attended as a youth. He is a true master of the art and science of education guided by great icons of critical pedagogy like bell hooks and
#43
May 4, 2023 · 1 hr 10 min
Plot of Land - Ep. 10: We Have to be Creative as Hell
Concluding the Plot of Land series, we look at the work being done across the United States to repair our relationship with the land, from the Tongva conservancy in Los Angeles to the Sea Islands of South Carolina. What will it take to imagine a radically different future? With the stakes rising along with the temperature, what is the scale of change we need to shift power and build a more just world?
#42
Apr 27, 2023 · 1 hr 9 min
Plot of Land - Ep. 9: Rotten Eggs & Gasoline
We return to Louisiana and the Joneses, where in recent decades family members have moved away for work and to escape the increasingly toxic air and water leaking from the neighboring chemical plants of Cancer Alley. As stronger hurricanes and vanishing wetlands reconfigure Louisiana’s topography, new industries continue old patterns of environmental harm. What will this mean for the future of Jonesland? What can their story on the front-lines of climate change teach us as the nation faces the d
#41
Apr 27, 2023 · 1 hr 7 min
Plot of Land - Ep. 8: 66 Acres Down by the River
We learn the incredible story of Sedonia Dennis, a woman once enslaved in Louisiana, who came to own a piece of the plantation that had once claimed ownership of her family. And we explore how, over time, the plantation economy gave way to the petrochemical industry. Join us as we spend time with Sedonia Dennis’s descendant, Jazzy Miller who is documenting her family’s fight to exist at the intersection of each of these forms of extraction.
#40
Apr 20, 2023 · 1 hr 21 min
Plot of Land - Ep. 7: The Sad Part Is That It Was Successful
We’re looking at what happened after subsidized affordable housing programs expired in the 2000s on New York’s Roosevelt Island. Some residents managed to buy in, build equity and stability. Others experienced precarious tenancy or displacement while an ongoing influx of wealthier residents is changing the face of the island. We ask the question, can Roosevelt Island’s past guide state and federal investments in multi-racial, multi-income neighborhoods for the future?
#39
Apr 20, 2023 · 1 hr 5 min
Plot of Land - Ep. 6: Tucked Between Those Two Boroughs
New York’s Roosevelt Island was imagined as an idyllic, multi-racial, multi-income community, developed as part of the social housing movement in the 60s and 70s. But by the 1980s, socially-minded investments in housing were overtaken by neoliberal policy. We talk to current-day and displaced residents to see how this change affected them, while looking back from the point of divergence to find the decisions that created and dismantled housing as a human right.
#38
Apr 13, 2023 · 1 hr 20 min
Plot of Land - Ep. 5: We’re Out Here at our Homeland
At one point Oklahoma had 50 Black townships and 1.5 million acres of Black-owned farmland. Today only 13 Black towns survive and the majority of Black farmers have retired or lost their land, discouraged–and broke–from an industry plagued by racist lending practices. What can Boley’s rise and more recent decline teach us about how biased policies have shaped who gets to own what land?
#37
Apr 13, 2023 · 53 min
Plot of Land - Ep. 4: This Arc of Very Fertile Land
We spend time in Oklahoma with the Bradford family whose fourth-generation cattle ranching operation, G-Line Ranch, is facing the same struggles and discrimination as many Black farmers and ranchers across the country. G-Line Ranch sits just outside Boley, once the largest and wealthiest Black town in Oklahoma. Boley was founded by Creek Freedmen and African Americans escaping Jim Crow violence and disenfranchisement. Join us as we trace this history, its legacies, and the future Boleyites are c
#36
Apr 6, 2023 · 44 min
Plot of Land - Ep. 3: Just Oil Wells on These City Streets
What happens when the place we call home, the communities we form around it, and our sense of safety, is at the mercy of forces far outside of our control? We visit Long Beach, in Los Angeles, where oil and gas pipelines have jeopardized people’s homes and security.
#35
Apr 6, 2023 · 40 min
Plot of Land - Ep. 2: They’re Trying to Lure Homeowners to Sell
Have you ever seen billboards on the highway offering cash for houses? Has a stranger called you offering money for your home sight unseen? In Plot of Land’s second episode, we wade into the world of housing speculation, considering how private equity markets and real estate investment trusts have transformed the places we literally call home. How did housing become such a profitable market? And so volatile that it could lead to the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression?
#34
Mar 30, 2023 · 46 min
Plot of Land - Ep. 1: Location, Location, Location
Plot of Land dives into the history of land ownership through the emerging future: real estate in the Metaverse. In creating virtual land, we could make literally anything true, from universal public space to zero gravity, so why have people chosen to replicate real-world patterns of land use when we know they are highly inequitable, exploitative, and unjust? In this first episode, we meet the Plot of Land team of producers and go deep into the ways land, housing, and memory intertwine.
#33
Mar 27, 2023 · 2 min
Plot of Land - Trailer
Plot of Land is a podcast mini-series by Monument Lab that explores how land ownership and housing in the United States have been shaped by power, public memory, and privatization. Over the last year, we have assembled a team of storytellers and reporters to explore the invisible forces that shape both the land and story of this country. The podcast breaks down how race, class, land, and power have been used to create unfair systems that harm nearly everyone today. We believe that to build the f
#32
Mar 2, 2023 · 37 min
Future Memory Takes Flight with Tatyana Fazlalizadeh
This episode, co-host Li Sumpter, caught up with multidisciplinary artist, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh at the onset of her mural project, Flight. Tatyana sees flying as a metaphor for liberation, escape, and transformation. She informs and illuminates this vision through the experiences, hopes, and dreams of everyday people who dare to look up. Li and Tatyana dig into the layered meaning of flying and share some of the literary and pop culture inspirations for Flight. From Toni Morrison to Kendrick Lam
#31
Feb 17, 2023 · 40 min
Reading the Rocky Statue with Paul Farber
In this episode, co-host Li Sumpter turns the mic to Future Memory co-host and Monument Lab Director, Paul Farber, to go behind-the-scenes on the production of his new podcast project The Statue from WHYY digital studios and the NPR podcast network. The series investigates one of Philly’s most monumental destinations visited by millions from around the world each year --- the Rocky Statue. Li and Paul discuss some of the local and global stories that make the history of the statue as epic as the
#30
Aug 12, 2022 · 37 min
A Crack in the Hourglass: An Ongoing COVID-19 Memorial with Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Sekou Cooke (Live at the Brooklyn Museum)
For this episode, we take a trip to the Brooklyn Museum with Future Memory co-host Paul Farber where he moderated a program for the popular discussion series Brooklyn Talks. How can we memorialize and visualize the extraordinary loss of life caused by COVID-19? Farber explores this question in a dynamic exchange between Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Sekou Cooke – two powerful practitioners working in separate but intersecting fields. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is a media artist working at the crossroads of
#29
Aug 4, 2022 · 18 min
Building a Monument for Dr. Maya Angelou with Lava Thomas
This episode, co-host Paul Farber speaks to multidisciplinary artist Lava Thomas. They catch up about a major project a long time in the making – a monument honoring Dr. Maya Angelou – prolific poet, Civil Rights activist, and American memoirist. The monument is slated for installation outside of San Francisco’s main public library in the near future. Lava’s monumental journey begins with bike tours with her family in Washington D.C. and makes a sharp turn in when she learned monuments had the p
#28
Jul 28, 2022 · 50 min
Leaving a Future Record Behind with Yolanda Wisher and Trapeta B. Mayson of ConsenSIS
We kickoff a new season of the Monument Lab podcast Future Memory with Yolanda Wisher and Trapeta B. Mayson, two renowned former poet laureates of Philadelphia. Wisher and Mayson are the creators of ConsenSIS, a project that summons “sisterly history” to preserve the past and present literary legacy of Black women and femme poets in Philadelphia. ConsenSIS is a part of Monument Lab’s nationwide Re:Generation project, supported by the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project. Co-host Li Sumpter sp
#27
Jul 21, 2020 · 54 min
Monumental “Local Diaspora” in St. Louis with MADAD’s Damon Davis, Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, and De Nichols
MADAD’s Damon Davis, Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, and De Nichols work to reimagine how joy, justice, and interactivity improve public spaces in St. Louis. The group started their collaborations during the making of Mirror Casket, a sculpture, performance, and visual call to action composed in the aftermath of the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014. Mirror Casket is now in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.Their new project, Black Memory

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