Part of the Practice

33: Creative Possibility with Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel Atrib

Social Practice CUNY Teaching Scholar-in-Residence Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel Atrib joins host Catherine LaSota for a conversation about the South Bronx, cats, definitions of home, ecosexuality, and more. Tune in and be inspired by Nicolás's description of his writing office, The Shrine, plus his deep love for water and his connection to the Bronx River. This is our last episode before a brief hiatus in season two, while Catherine focuses on other projects at SPCUNY, including a book of conversations (Practicing in Public) to be published by OR Books in February 2027. We will be back with more Part of the Practice episodes soon! A couple of corrections on things mentioned in this conversation: Dumit is actually Nicolás's middle name (not his last name), and the Ecosex Symposium in the UK was in 2013. About our guest: Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel Atrib treads an elusive path that manifests itself through creative experiences that he helps unfold within the quotidian. He has exhibited or performed at Madrid Abierto/ARCO, The IX Havana Biennial, PERFORMA 05/07/21, IDENSITAT, Prague Quadrennial, Pontevedra Biennial, Queens Museum, MoMA, Printed Matter, P.S. 122, Sculpture Center, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance BAAD!, Hemispheric Institute of Performance Art and Politics, City as Living Laboratory, Princeton University, Anthology Film Archives, El Museo del Barrio, Center for Book Arts, Longwood Art Gallery/BCA, The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Franklin Furnace and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Nicolás has received mentorship in art in everyday life from Linda Mary Montano, a historic figure in the performance art field. Nicolás holds an M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, where he studied with Coco Fusco, and an M.A. from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. He was recently a Senior Lecturer and Social Practice Artist in Residence in the Art and Art History Department at The University of Texas at Austin; and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. Nicolás is a 2025-26 Teaching Scholar in Residence at Social Practice CUNY (SPCUNY). Born in Santiago, Dominican Republic, he was baptized as a Bronxite in 2011. Photo of Nicolás is by Donna Hoffman. More about Nicolás: website: interiorbeautysalon.com [https://www.interiorbeautysalon.com/] Instagram: @interiorbeautysalon [https://www.instagram.com/interiorbeautysalon/?hl=en] Learn more about Social Practice CUNY [https://socialpracticecuny.org/]. Follow us on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/socialpracticecuny/]. Thank you to our podcast editor Jade Iseri-Ramos, and thank you to Gaius LaSota for our Part of the Practice music. Part of the Practice logo courtesy of Maliyah Mohamed. Social Practice CUNY is funded by the Mellon Foundation.

32: A Continuity of Discontinuities with Chris Harding

This episode features a conversation with Chris Harding (2024-25 SPCUNY Student Actionist Fellow), who is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at the City University of New York Graduate Center. His work focuses on themes relating to capitalism, class, labor and agrarian life in Mandate Palestine, and his work was featured in the Biennale di Venezia in 2024. In this conversation with host Catherine LaSota, you'll hear about Chris's time learning Arabic and living and working in Palestine in 2022-23, as well as the projects he's worked on in Bethlehem with Dar Jacir and his ongoing research. Chris also discusses how his interest and research in 1920s through 1940s Palestine intersects with his connections with Palestinian communities today and his archival research more broadly. About our guest: Chris Harding is a PhD candidate at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. His work focuses on labor and capital in the Mandate period (1922-1948) in Palestine. In 2024, his work, “Researching Palestine” featured in the Biennale De Venezia, as part of the exhibition South West Bank—Landworks, Collective Action and Sound and is available online at Jadaliyya. Recently he published an essay with the magazine Public Seminar titled, "A House in the Middle of the Road", which examined the dual-colonisation of Palestine during the Great Revolt (1936-1939). More about Chris Harding and organizations mentioned in this conversation: Dar Jacir: darjacir.com [https://darjacir.com/] and on Instagram: @darjacir [https://www.instagram.com/darjacir/] Researching Palestine booklet: jadaliyya.com/Details/46118 [https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/46118] Public Seminar essay by Chris Harding: publicseminar.org/2026/03/cannibal-colonization-palestines-great-revolt [https://publicseminar.org/2026/03/cannibal-colonization-palestines-great-revolt/] Learn more about Social Practice CUNY [https://socialpracticecuny.org/]. Follow us on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/socialpracticecuny/]. Thank you to our podcast editor Jade Iseri-Ramos, and thank you to Gaius LaSota for our Part of the Practice music. Part of the Practice logo courtesy of Maliyah Mohamed. Social Practice CUNY is funded by the Mellon Foundation.

31: Performing Our Selves with Alyssa Kitt Hanley

Join strip tease scholar and burlesque performer Alyssa Kitt Hanley (2025-26 SPCUNY Faculty Fellow) for a conversation with host Catherine LaSota in this episode. They discuss Alyssa's experience as a performer, dramaturg, and mentor, as well as Alyssa's view of a burlesque audience as co-conspirators. Alyssa also shares her personal journey with cancer and facial paralysis, as well as her involvement with the Disabilibabes community. Tune in for an inspiring discussion and learn what burlesque can teach us about the importance of inclusivity and diversity in our social practice. About our guest: Alyssa Kitt Hanley is a burlesque scholar, award-winning performer, and PhD candidate in Theatre & Performance at the CUNY Graduate Center. Known onstage as the “Siren with the $7 million smile,” she bridges performance and research as a theorist of embodied political practice and specialist in contemporary performance infrastructures. Director of the Australian Burlesque Museum and National Associate Producer of Mx Burlesque Australia, she has competed at and judged the Burlesque Hall of Fame’s Mx Exotic World. Her scholarship examines erotic performance, disability, and subcultural value formation within global burlesque circuits. More about Alyssa Kitt Hanley: Website: alyssakitt.com [http://www.alyssakitt.com/] Instagram: @missalyssakitt [https://www.instagram.com/missalyssakitt] Facebook: /alyssa.kitt [https://www.facebook.com/alyssa.kitt/]     Bluesky: @missalyssakitt.bsky.social [https://bsky.app/profile/missalyssakitt.bsky.social] Learn more about Social Practice CUNY [https://socialpracticecuny.org/]. Follow us on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/socialpracticecuny/]. Thank you to our podcast editor Jade Iseri-Ramos, and thank you to Gaius LaSota for our Part of the Practice music. Part of the Practice logo courtesy of Maliyah Mohamed. Social Practice CUNY is funded by the Mellon Foundation.

30: Making Meaningful Art Together with Alexandra Juhasz

In this episode, Dr. Alexandra Juhasz (SPCUNY 2022-23 Faculty Fellow) joins host Catherine LaSota to share her thoughts as a scholar, maker and organizer around activist media. She discusses the queer and feminist methods in her work and talks about process and the importance of the distribution of an artwork -- how it is received, and how it is archived. This episode also includes reminders of how important it is for us to keep making our artwork in the face of fascism and censorship. About our guest: Dr. Alexandra Juhasz is a Distinguished Professor of Film at Brooklyn College, CUNY. She makes and studies committed media practices that contribute to political change and individual and community growth. She is the author of scholarly work on feminist and Black lesbian media, most recently with Yvonne Welbon, Sisters in the Life: A History of Out African American Media Making (Duke 2018); AIDS, most recently, We Are Having this Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production (with Ted Kerr, Duke, 2022); and fake (and real) documentaries, most recently, Really Fake  [https://meson.press/books/reallyfake/](with Nishant Shah and Ganaele Langlois, Minnesota and meson Presses, 2021). Her edited anthology of community-produced poetry about Fake News, My Phone Lies to Me was published in 2022 by punctum press [https://punctumbooks.com/titles/my-phone-lies-to-me-fake-news-poetry-workshops-as-radical-digital-media-literacy-given-the-fact-of-fake-news/]. Her VHS Activism Archive [https://activismvhs.omeka.net/home] holds records of all her tapes collected about the issues raised above. Her current work (Fall 2025), HOLDING PATTERNS [https://one.usc.edu/exhibition/holding-patterns], takes the form of an installation about archives, grief, AIDS, and research and is showing at ONE Archives in Los Angeles and the Center in NYC. See: pleaseholdvideo.com [http://pleaseholdvideo.com/] for more. More about Dr. Alexandra Juhasz Website: alexandrajuhasz.com [https://alexandrajuhasz.com/] Instagram: @mediapraxis [https://www.instagram.com/mediapraxis] Learn more about Social Practice CUNY [https://socialpracticecuny.org/]. Follow us on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/socialpracticecuny/]. Thank you to our podcast editor Jade Iseri-Ramos, and thank you to Gaius LaSota for our Part of the Practice music. Part of the Practice logo courtesy of Maliyah Mohamed. Social Practice CUNY is funded by the Mellon Foundation.

29: Boundaries of Intelligibility with Jay Reinier

Social Practice CUNY Student Fellow Jay Reinier, an MFA candidate in the Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA) program at Brooklyn College, joins host Catherine LaSota in this episode to discuss the more-than-human grief of climate collapse, speculative posthuman subjectivities, game theory, and how we might use technology in productive ways. The pros and cons of Instagram are touched upon in this conversation, too. About our guest: Jay Reinier (they) creates multimedia performances and interactive art that blends approaches from composition, concrete and sound poetry, and software design. Their work explores questions surrounding the way software shapes our values and creativity, the more-than-human grief of climate collapse, and speculative posthuman subjectivities. More about Jay Reinier Website: jpalindrome.com [https://www.jpalindrome.com/] Instagram: @j.palindrome [https://www.instagram.com/j.palindrome] Learn more about Social Practice CUNY [https://socialpracticecuny.org/]. Follow us on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/socialpracticecuny/]. Thank you to our podcast editor Jade Iseri-Ramos, and thank you to Gaius LaSota for our Part of the Practice music. Part of the Practice logo courtesy of Maliyah Mohamed. Social Practice CUNY is funded by the Mellon Foundation.