Josh Rios
Other Instrumental Subjects (A Script in Stanzas)
Video, color, stereo
11 minutes 15 seconds
2020
Other Instrumental Subjects (A Script in Stanzas) was originally published for Quarantine Times, an expanded web-based project that provided support to artists by commissioning new works daily from March through June during the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020. The video essay shot from a second story apartment window in Logan Square documents the early phases of the lock down by focusing on the limited movement of people, contemplating the transhistorical linkages between Foucault’s biopolitics and Chicago’s stay at home orders.
–– Josh Rios
Josh Rios is a founding member of Sonic Insurgency Research Group (SIRG) and faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he teaches courses in social theory and research-based practice. As a media artist, writer, and educator his projects deal with the histories, presents, and futurities of Latinx and Chicanx subjects and transnational resistance to globalization and neocolonialism. Recent projects have been featured at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Portland), Locust Projects (Miami), and the Vincent Price Art Museum (Los Angeles). In 2021, Rios was a cohort member of the year-long residency program, Re:place, sponsored by Co-prosperity (Chicago). Recent publications include “What is Justice to the Dead? On Sabra Moore’s Reconstruction Project” in the exhibition catalog for Art for the Future: Artist Call and Central American Solidarities and “Sonic Legal Spaces: An Essay of Overdubs” in the journal openwork for Columbia University’s Academic Commons. Other projects include a series of ongoing conversations and autonomous study groups on sound and power sponsored by MARCH International: A Journal of Art and Strategy. Forthcoming publications include, “Mythic Sonic Beings in Social Space: An Experimental Symposium,” for the book, Situated Listening: Attending to the Unheard (Routledge, 2024).
For more on the work of Rios and SIRG, visit s-i-r-g.net. Also recommended: The Wide-Ranging Importance of the First Nations Garden.