Luis Berríos-Negrón (born 15 May 1971 in

San Juan, Puerto Rico San Juan ( , ; Spanish for "Saint John the Baptist, John") is the capital city and most populous Municipalities of Puerto Rico, municipality in the Commonwealth (U.S. insular area), Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the ...

) is a Puerto Rican artist working with sculpture and installation, in public and environmental art. He has an independent practice, as well as is the founder of the Anxious Prop art collective and the Paramodular environmental design group. Berríos-Negrón lives and works in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

, Germany, since 2006.

Education

He currently is candidate for doctor of philosophy at the Konstfack College of the Arts and the

Royal Institute of Technology KTH Royal Institute of Technology (), abbreviated KTH, is a public research university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH conducts research and education in engineering and technology and is Sweden's largest technical university. Since 2018, KTH consist ...

(KTH) in

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

. He holds a

Master of Architecture The Master of Architecture (M.Arch. or MArch) is a graduate professional degree in architecture qualifying the graduate to move through the various stages of professional accreditation (internship, exams) that result in receiving a license. Ove ...

from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(M.I.T.) and a

Bachelor of Fine Arts A Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) is a standard undergraduate degree for students pursuing a professional education in the visual arts, Fine art, or performing arts. In some instances, it is also called a Bachelor of Visual Arts (BVA). Background ...

from the Parsons New School for Design. While at the New School, he was teaching assistant to urban ecologist Jean Gardner, assistant editor/curator to conceptual artist Silvia Kolbowski, and studio assistant to photographer

Larry Clark Lawrence Donald Clark (born January 19, 1943) is an American film director, photographer, writer and film producer who is best known for his controversial teen film '' Kids'' (1995) and his photography book ''Tulsa'' (1971). His work focuses pri ...

. While at M.I.T., he was teaching assistant to

Joan Jonas Joan Jonas (born July 13, 1936) is an American visual artist and a pioneer of video and performance art, "a central figure in the performance art movement of the late 1960s".Antoni Muntadas and

Krzysztof Wodiczko Krzysztof Wodiczko (born April 16, 1943) is a Polish people, Polish artist known for his large-scale presentation slide, slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments. He has realized more than 80 such public projections in A ...

. His master's thesis was co-advised by then Dean of the School of Architecture Adèle Naudé Santos, and director of the Center for Advance Visual Studies,

, and was co-read by

Mark Jarzombek Mark Jarzombek (born 1954) is a United States-born architectural historian, author and critic. Since 1995 he has taught and served within the History Theory Criticism Section of the Department of Architecture at MIT School of Architecture and ...

, Nader Tehrani, and William J. Mitchell, then head of the M.I.T Media Laboratory.

Teaching

From 2011 to 2013, he was Assistant Professor and Researcher at the Institute for Design and Architecture Strategies at the Architecture, Civil Engineering, and Environmental Sciences Department of

Technische Universität Braunschweig TU Braunschweig (, unofficially ''University of Braunschweig – Institute of Technology'') is the oldest ' (comparable to an institute of technology in the American system) in Germany. It was founded in 1745 as Collegium Carolinum and is a membe ...

. From 2013 to 2014 he was Visiting Lecturer at the

University of Münster The University of Münster (, until 2023 , WWU) is a public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. With more than 43,000 students and over 120 fields of study in 15 departments, it is Germany's ...

for Applied Sciences, and now as part of his doctoral candidacy, he is lecturer at

Konstfack Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, is a university college for higher education in the area of art, crafts and design in Stockholm, Sweden. History Konstfack has had several different names since it was founded in 1844 by the eth ...

offering the fine-arts courses “Instance Notation Sensation” (Fall 2015) and “Immediate Archaeologies” (2016–17).

Exhibitions

In 2012, he was core collaborator with

Paul Ryan Paul Davis Ryan (born January 29, 1970) is an American politician who served as the List of Speakers of the United States House of Representatives, 54th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. A member of the ...

exhibiting in th
Threeing project at Documenta 13
and in

Ute Meta Bauer Ute Meta Bauer (born 1958). She is an international curator, professor of contemporary art and the director of the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Singapore. Early life and education Bauer was born in 1958 in Stuttgart, Germany. She studie ...

's Future Archive at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. In 2013, he represented Germany with curator Matthias Böttger in the São Paulo International Biennial for Architecture, and was in residence at the

Zürcher Hochschule der Künste Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK, ) has approximately 2,500 students, which makes it the largest arts university in Switzerland. The university was established in 2007, following the merger between Zurich's School of Art and Design (HGKZ) and ...

. In 2014 he was commissioned artist in the 3rd Biennial of Art of Bahia, and in 2015 he showed in Remote Control 2 at Lothringer 13 Kunsthalle in Munich, and was commissioned artist for Experiment Stockholm at Färgfabriken.

Awards

He has received various awards, including first prize of the Parsons-Kalil Award for Smart Design 2002, first prize of the M.I.T.-Schnitzer Award for the Visual Arts 2004, and most recently the 2013 Royal Danish Council for the Arts International Visiting Artist stipend, and the 2015–19 Art, Technology and Design Doctoral Stipend from the Konstfack & Royal Institute of Technology (KTH).

"Social pedestals"

Berríos-Negrón defines a social pedestal as an art form that looks to make visible the dematerialisation of sculpture. He does not see it as a singular, physical thing, but a time-based form of displaying art that is characterised by multiple types of visible and invisible sculptural objects and experiences. Berríos-Negrón argues that the social pedestal does evolve from the "

Social sculpture Social sculpture is a phrase used to describe an expanded concept of art that was invented by the artist and founding member of the German Green Party, Joseph Beuys. Beuys created the term "social sculpture" to embody his understanding of art's pot ...

" in that it also looks to contribute to the understanding of art's potential to shape, structure and transform society and the environment. In that regard, Berríos-Negrón intends his social pedestals to go beyond the body and agency of the artist, aspiring to condition the transformative potential of art by making environments that operate by themselves, without the direct intentionality of the artist. As such, Berríos-Negrón deploys these environments with the intention of facilitating a social experience that is often contemplative and participatory, one that displays affirmative intersections between artistic, curatorial, political, and scientific practices. Berríos-Negrón argues that these environments rely on objects of collective experience rather than on individual agency. He roots these experiences in the conceptual objects of the "relational circuit" by

, the “

boundary object In sociology and science and technology studies, a boundary object is information, such as specimens, field notes, and maps, used in different ways by different communities ''for collaborative work through scales''. Boundary objects are plastic, in ...

” by

Susan Leigh Star Susan Leigh Star (1954–2010) was an American sociologist. She specialized in the study of information in modern society; information worlds; information infrastructure; classification and standardization; sociology of science; sociology of wor ...

and James R. Griesemer, the "epistemic thing" (from the “ Experimental System”) by

Hans-Jörg Rheinberger Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (; born 12 January 1946) is a Swiss-born Liechtensteiner historian of science. He was director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin from 1997 to 2014. His focus areas within the history of science ...

, and “abstract machines” as defined by philosopher Gerald Raunig. Berríos-Negrón states that "most of these works, as temporary, cultural things, abstract or concrete, may simply seem to be either scenographies, recalcitrant props, or semi-functional things. But, when situated, they give manifold, human and non-human access to a more ample social and sensational reality that does not necessarily privilege the visual sense. This mental and sensational architectonic primarily looks to reform temporary space through multidimensional probability, not necessarily as social sculptures, but through social pedestals." Berríos-Negrón's social pedestals take environmental form as their medium. In parallel to the works of contemporary artists such as Mark Leckey that take the dematerialisation of sculpture as part of the digitalisation of life, in the case of Berríos-Negrón’s work, his temporary works often contend with dematerialisation as part of the geopolitics of climate change or forced migration. These time-based works are conditioned by things that at first glance could be dispassionately thought of as ordinary things, such as ropes, tables, chairs, carpets, book shelves, archives, and so forth. Berríos-Negrón believes that these things only begin to work as social pedestals when activated by collective engagement. As part of his own culture and education, Berríos-Negrón points to Brazilian and Latin American Neo-concrete art and to "

transculturation Transculturation is a term coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz in 1940 to describe the phenomenon of merging and converging cultures. Transculturation encompasses more than transition from one culture to another; it does not consist me ...

", as well as to North American Interrogative Design and

Second-Order Cybernetics Second-order cybernetics, also known as the cybernetics of cybernetics, is the recursive application of cybernetics to itself and the reflexive practice of cybernetics according to such a critique. It is cybernetics where "the role of the observer ...

.Berríos-Negrón, L., et al. (2011
"Case 4: Making Visible"
Anxious Prop.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Berrios-Negron, Luis 21st-century Puerto Rican sculptors 1971 births Artists from San Juan, Puerto Rico Environmental artists Living people MIT School of Architecture and Planning alumni Parsons School of Design alumni Puerto Rican artists