S3 2: ALLEYS | NILI PORTUGALI Architect . Filmmaker . Author
A seventh generation descendent of family who lived in Sefad, Israel, the city where mystical scholars of the Kabbalah found refuge in the 16th Century; Nili Portugal is an architect, author and filmmaker. We discuss her film “And the Alley She Whitewashed in Light Blue”, a stunning, poetic, visual masterpiece of the seasonal rituals in her Grandmother Rivka’s hotel, at the end of an alley in that old city. The film is one of her many works which seek to find a universal answer to the question “What is the basis of all those places in which one feels at home, and wants to return to, again and again?”
Episode 10: MOVEMENT CREATES SPACE Sofia Kondylia: Choreographer | Performer | Architect
Sofia Kondylia is an award-winning choreographer, performer and architect. Motivated by the simple truth, that ‘movement creates space’, her work, through dance, performance, physical theatre and film, explores intersections between choreography and architecture and its impact on emotional self transformation.
Episode 09: SPATIAL FICTIONS | FROZEN DAYDREAMS Clement Luk Laurencio
Clement Luk Laurencio is a storyteller and master of pencil drawings. His surreal, poetic drawings capture the dreams, inventions, memories and flashbacks of places he has lived, visited and cherished. He calls them ‘spatial fictions’. He says they are an invitation for pause, and wandering, in its timeless labyrinth. He probes the question ‘How is the dwelling a place of reverie and protection for the dreamer?’
Episode 08: ONE YEAR IN: COLLEGE IN QUARANTINE Emma Bowers | Alex Durham | Irene Pan
It is one year into the pandemic. Colleges closed their doors in March of 2020. Students weighed their decisions about how and where they could continue to learn. Where are our students now? What are the impacts, and unexpected lessons they have learned?
We speak with 3 students who all have different stories. Emma Bowers has had a nomadic experience. Alex Durham went home to live with family. Irene Pan is a Chinese international student, who decided to remain in the USA and study online.
Episode 07: ‘OUR HOMES’ IN ANOTHER PLACE Photographing Disappearing Jewish Communities CHRYSTIE SHERMAN
I speak with CHRYSTIE SHERMAN, a photographer who documents the loss and disappearance of Jewish communities. Coinciding with the beginning of the Jewish Passover holiday, her art captures themes of exodus, migration, nomadic wandering, and the longing for a homeland .... universal questions, very much alive today.
Episode 06: HOUSE CALL! BELONGING TO EARTH, PLACE AND SELF
She thought she was nomad. New to to this town, she experienced serendipitous events, meetings with eccentric creatives, and a deep curiosity about the land. We hear how her home was realized, in a beloved, magical summer camp, once called the ‘Fried Egg'. It is a story of belonging to earth, place and self - through anchoring, listening, learning, and rebuilding with friends.
Episode 03: A SENSE OF DIRECTION
In the week of his 90th Birthday, I spoke to Yi Fu Tuan, a Chinese scholar and philosopher. He invented the phrase ‘humanist geography’ as a way to explore "how geography reveals the quality of awareness’. He writes about the contradictions of space and place as the necessary tension of the human experience for both freedom and security..... for movement and pause. With simple personal stories and observations, we are led us into his world.