Dark Matter University (DMU) is a counter institutional network of educators, researchers, and practitioners dedicated to anti-racist design education and outcomes, based in Turtle Island (United States and Canada) with a growing international membership. DMUxLisbon is both a living document and a real-time modeling of counter-institutionality within the 2022 Trienal de Lisboa through a collective “constellation” of content co-generated by the network’s many members. This constellation is both a showcasing of DMU’s work and methods, and a manifestation of our multiple, situated identities and narratives. Taken as a whole, we propose this real-time constellation is itself a new canon.

Within Multiplicity, DMUxLisbon uses a site-specific installation of print and digital elements, which form constellations of collective knowledge, both embedded within and layered across the Canons gallery and beyond the museum walls themselves. In leveraging the spatial attributes and cultural relations of the Constellation over the Canon, DMUxLisbon models DMU’s ethos of both decentering and infiltrating western institutional spaces and (re)orienting to immense legacies of knowledge systems across our diasporas, toward new forms of collective knowledge production, practice, and community. The elements within these constellations—representing a wide range of practitioners, student work, co-written pedagogy, co-authored texts, and so forth—constitute a live snapshot of the ever-evolving collective knowledge of DMU’s network. Within the time and space of the exhibition, DMU will facilitate both virtual and in-person workshops with communities in Lisbon to further co-create these constellations of architectural knowledge, and to see what futures they might take us to, together.

Join us in Lisbon

At the exhibition? Download the app to enter the digital constellation

At home? See the digital constellation from home iPhone, Android

Read more about DMU’s practices in a recent discussion between Curator Vyjayanthi Rao and DMU members

See the full set of content from the exhibition

Acknowledgements

DMU Core Team: Bz Zhang, christin hu, Cory Henry, Garnette Cadogan, Jerome Haferd, Maria Villalobos, Shawhin Roudbari, Sophie Weston Chien, Tonia Sing Chi, Victor Zagabe

DMU Network Contributors: A.L. Hu, Albert Chao, Andrew Chin, Bryan C. Lee Jr., Bz Zhang, Camille Sherrod, Catherine Hernandez, Chat Travieso, christin hu, Cory Henry, Curry Hackett, Dan Taeyoung, Garnette Cadogan, Germane Barnes, Jared Culp, Jati Zunaibi, Jelisa Blumberg, Jennifer Low, Jennifer Newsom, Jerome Haferd, Jia Gu, Josh Budiongan, Joyce Hwang, Justin Garrett Moore, Kiki Cooper, Lexi Tsien, Lisa C. Henry, Maria Villalobos, Michele Washington, Mira Henry, Mustafa Faruki, Nupur Chaudhury, Ozayr Saloojee, Preeti Sodhi, Quilian Riano, Samendy Brice, Shalini Agrawal, Shawhin Roudbari, Sophie Weston Chien, Stephen Gray, Taylor Holloway, Tonia Sing Chi, Tya Winn, Venesa Alicea-Chuqui, Victor Zagabe

DMU Collaborators: Rondela Spooner (BLacK @ SSA), Asialy Bracey-Gardella (BLacK @ SSA), Ornella Bonhomme (BLacK @ SSA), George Guida (ArchiTAG), Tatjana Crossley (ArchiTAG), Garvin Goepel (AugmentedArchitecture), NVS Visuals

Thank you to the Trienal de Lisboa, with special thanks to: Vyjayanthi Rao, Tau Tavengwa, Alden Copley, Sofia Baptista