The University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning presents..."Footprinting the Urban Security Cloud", an Emerging Voices Lecture by Javier Arbona.

Javier Arbona is a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow in the American Studies Program at the University of California, Davis. As a geographer, Arbona’s work exposes suppressed narratives in landscapes and spaces.

In 2010, Arbona co-founded Demilit, an experimental landscape arts collective, with Bryan Finoki and Nick Sowers. Along with various collaborators and curators, they've created works for the Headlands Center for the Arts, Deutschlandradio, and the 2012 New City Reader at the Istanbul Design Biennial. Recent writings include contributions for Volume, The Funambulist, The State, and the exhibition Timing is Everything at the UCSD University Gallery. In this talk, Arbona will share new research in-progress, performed through on-foot explorations into urban infrastructure, surveillance, and everyday securitization. In their research process, Demilit uses modes of listening, walking, and sensing to detect what they call "spatial leaks" into the urban security cloud.

Arbona holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California at Berkeley (undertaken with the support of a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and a Bancroft Library Award), a Bachelor's of Architecture from Cornell University, and a Master's of Science in Architecture Studies from MIT. Arbona's book manuscript (in-progress) is tentatively titled, "The City of Radical Memory: Spaces of Home Front Repression and Resistance in the San Francisco Bay Area." "The City of Radical Memory" is a study on racial violence and organized forgetting as perpetuated through military shaping of landscapes. At UC Davis, he co-leads the Militarization Studies Group, and is collaborating on a new edited journal issue on the theme "Bases, Bunkers, and Ports."

This lecture is part of P+ARG's Emerging Voices Lecture Series. P+ARG is comprised of research students in both Urban and Regional Planning and Architecture. Our main purpose is to enhance the social and academic experiences of research students in the college.

About University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning:

The Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan is a leader in interdisciplinary education and research with a focus on creating a more beautiful, inclusive and better built environment. The college and its alumni are committed to pushing the boundaries of architectural practice, advancing global engagement, and significantly enhancing diversity in the profession. The college offers the following degrees: Bachelor of Science in Architecture, Master of Architecture (currently ranked #6 nationally; ranked #1 in 2010 by Design Intelligence Report), Master of Science in Architecture, Master of Urban Planning, Master of Urban Design, and PhD programs.