On Thursday, November 21, the American Academy in Rome concluded its two-event series at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York with a panel discussion on “Material Afterlives.” Participating in the panel were the artist and architectural preservationist Jorge Otero-Pailos (2022 Resident) from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, the classicist and archaeologist Caroline Cheung (2017 Fellow) of Princeton University, and the artist Karyn Olivier (2019 Fellow), a professor in the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University.
In a discussion that connected concrete examples and complex ideas, and which was moderated by AAR President Peter N. Miller, the three speakers engaged a series of connected topics: What did materiality mean for their work? How did focusing on reuse distinguish their work from that of others? How Rome was a stimulus for their thinking? Cheung, whose April 2024 book Dolia focused on the way large storage jars helped drive the Roman wine industry, showed slides of how these containers were repaired and reused—including a planter in Villa Aurelia! Olivier talked about sculptures such as How Many Ways Can You Disappear (2021), in which lost and cast-off fishing lines are reshaped, like the lives of those who might once have handled those ropes. Otero-Pailos told the audience about his project, The Ethics of Dust, which showed how the methods of the most careful historic preservation could also be a method of making new art objects out of the past.
Storage as the foundation of power, lost people recovered from storing rather than discarding, and the act of preserving as a way of making new—the three positions wove together to provide a new understanding of afterlife. And, as one audience member noted during the question period, there is no sense to “Material Afterdeaths.” When others expressed wonder at the extent of convergence coming from three such distinct positions, the participants reported that it was precisely denied that there was anything surprising to them in this, as it reflected their daily experience of living and talking at the American Academy in Rome.
The first event at the Italian Cultural Institute this year was a concert of work by recent AAR composers on September 18. Notes from Rome featured music by five Rome Prize Fellows: Baldwin Giang (2024), Igor Santos (2022), Suzanne Farrin (2018), Kate Soper (2024), and Anthony Vine (2024).