PennSound podcasts
Dani Zelko with Jennifer Ponce de León
PennSound podcast #66
Argentine poet Dani Zelko was joined in the Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House by Jennifer Ponce de León to discuss North Border: forced migrations (Gato Negro, 2019), the latest installment of Zelko’s Reunión project. Zelko and Ponce de León’s conversation explores the Reunión writing procedure as a “reciprocal work,” the book as a political object, migrant and feminist agencies, and artistic production as means to form community.
Dani Zelko is a poet and contemporary artist whose work focuses on subverting notions of power, borders, and hierarchies. His published works include North Border: forced migrations, Juan Pablo by Ivonne: A counter-narrative to the Chocobar Doctrine (Gato Negro, 2018), Earthquake: 19-11- 2017 – 13:14:40hs (Gato Negro, 2017), The Complete Questions of Osvaldo Lamborghini (Gato Negro Ediciones, 2016), and others. Individual exhibitions include Reunión (at Rutas Arts Festival, 2018; Princeton Live Arts Sessions, 2017; Bikini Wax, 2017). He has given conferences and presentations in spaces like MOCA Los Angeles, NYU, Museo Tamayo, and La Casa de las Americas, and he has taught in the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, the Centre for Artistic Research, and SOMA, among others. He was nominated for the Visible Award (2017) and received recognitions from the Ministry of Culture of Argentina and Mexico. Reunión and other books are available online at Zelko’s website.
Jennifer Ponce de León is an interdisciplinary scholar and the author of the forthcoming book Another Aesthetics is Possible: Arts of Rebellion in the Fourth World War (Duke University Press, 2020). She is an assistant professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also faculty in Latin American and Latino Studies. She is associate director of the Critical Theory Workshop, which holds an intensive research program every summer at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and organizes annual symposia at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Ponce de León has published articles in American Quarterly, ASAP/Journal, Social Text, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, e-misférica, Contemporary Theatre Review, The Journal of American Drama and Theater, and Interreview, and contributed work to the collections Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy and Activism in the Americas (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Dancing with the Zapatistas (Duke University Press, 2015), Live Art in LA, 1970–1983 (Routledge, 2012), MEX/LA: Mexican Modernisms in Los Angeles (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011), and Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization: Essays on Disruption (NAi, 2011). — Quinn Gruber
