Mark (مارک)

Repost @thickpress ✨our zine-book is available for purchase!✨Link in profile with info about the launch next week on Crowdcast and at @lucyparsonscenter ! **** “Rehearsing Solidarity: Learning from Mutual Aid” Mark Anthony Hernandez Motaghy (with CHMA and MAMAS) 4.4 x 7 in, 153 pp risograph-printed; blue ink on white, blue, and yellow paper Printed by Impresos Mexico $18 This zine-book is an artifact of mutual aid organizing by Crown Heights Mutual Aid (CHMA) and Mutual Aid Medford/Somerville (MAMAS) from the beginning of the pandemic until early 2022. It contains transcribed interviews between Mark and mutual aid workers; the transcript of a conversation about food pods, convened by Mark (and sponsored by the Urbano Project) with members of the two mutual aid groups; an article by Lauren Hudson (CHMA member) about solidarity economies and mutual aid, reprinted from a digital publication by the Editorial Collective of Rethinking Marxism; and flyers from CHMA and MAMAS. The texts are interspersed with descriptions and reflections written by Mark, who has been involved with both groups. Important themes include, among others: solidarity, mutuality, needfulness, adaptability, and the role of technology in organizing.

Reception photos from the @boscenterforarts group show at Mills Gallery, curated by @meclinaart . On view until August 1. Paz Server (v.25.12), 2025 Servilleta bordada, web server, amplifier, speaker, wire cable, USB Wi-Fi Adapter Paz Server is an intergenerational, autonomous network for the Hernandez-Paz family archive. A web server is stitched to a servilleta bordada made by Eugenia “Mama Genia” Paz to create a trans-local database between Boston, MA, and Colima, Mexico. Instead of relying on the “Big Tech cloud,” the archive is stored in a vernacular cloud, co-stewarded by the current sysadmin, Mark HM—Mama Genia’s great-grandchild. Oral histories from women in the Hernandez-Paz family, who co-steward the network, play through a speaker stitched to the servilleta—broadcast directly from the server. The network, or kin LAN/dscape, questions what we share, how we are accessed, and what it means “to serve”—challenging its history of gendered, class-based labor through an autonomous circuit that spans generations and borders. 📷 @kat_concep

Studio time with @yvesworld.co & @sunbangaz 🪡

Paz Server is a project I've been working on for a few years, creating a trans-local web server that functions as a family database. This iteration of the project, Paz Server v.2024.07, houses the oral histories about my great-grandmother, Mama Genia. Displayed on the table lies my reinterpretation of one of Mama Genia's hand-embroidered servilletas, a family heirloom, hung on the wall. I added three additional components to my iteration: 1) a server storing oral histories of her daughters' migration to the U.S., 2) embroidered patterns containing encoded family scripts, and 3) conductive thread and an amplifier that functions as a fabric speaker. The components serve as a relay between craft and data, intertwining what we share, how we are shared, into an autonomous circuit that transmutes patterns into fragmented memories. The fabric speakers were an experiment informed by Sara Ahmed's notion of a "homing device," and the thought of hearing my aunties speak through the patterns my grandmother had sewn. You can read the README text file on the @dxarts SoftLab blog. Presented August 2024 (late post 🐌) at the University of Washington’s DXARTS SoftLab with @studiotilt.design and @afrdt Paz Server v.2024.07, manta fabric, conductive fabric, heirloom doily, hardware

Recession indicator I’m getting on the Substack wagon /@breadfellow 📸: @kolaveri.rhe !

conchitas w grandpa

Congrats @thickpress on this rich and timely resource, An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping! Very special to have had an opportunity to reflect on the zine-book on mutual aid we published together and be among so many other wonderful friends/contributors.

It’s the fourth and last day introducing the 16 new BCA Studio Residents, all supported by Wagner Foundation (@wagnerfoundation ) who are beginning their residencies with us. Today please welcome the last 4 artists in this batch: Mark Hernandez Motaghy (@markanthony.hm ), Marla L. McLeod (@marlamcleodart ), Ngoc-Tran Vu (@tranvuarts ), and Yuko Okabe (@ykook.art ). Mark A. Hernandez Motaghy’s work incorporates experimental video and documentary, as well as installation, performance, and text, where they explore the practice of being in common through community networks, care-based economies, and sociotechnical imaginaries that are decolonial. Marla L. McLeod, is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator. Marla’s paintings and textile works investigate how history and race relate to the power of the black body by combating false narratives and exploring the creation of new ones. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at MIT and Southern Connecticut State University. Ngoc-Tran Vu is a 1.5-generation Vietnamese-American multimedia visual artist and cultural organizer, celebrated for her deeply socially engaged practice that melds various artistic mediums with community activism. Yuko Okabe is an illustrator and cultural worker playing at the intersection of youthful whimsy and community engagement. She likes making characters, stories, curriculums, murals, and other colorful things. See link in the BCA bio for each of their full bios. For the first time in the history of the program, the 16 three-year residencies are fully subsidized by a generous $300,000 grant from Wagner Foundation, marking a significant first step in the broader $1.5m fundraising initiative to sustain and expand this vital artist-focused program at BCA. Artist portraits: Mark Hernandez Motaghy by Zhidong Zhang 张之栋; Marla L. McLeod courtesy of the artist; Ngoc-Tran Vu by Virginia Sutherland; Yuko Okabe by Savanna Li. #bosarts #bostonarts #boston #visualarts #artsresidency #ContemporaryArt #bostonartist #artsgrant #wagnerfoundation

📸 @hugo.agz

I was fortunate to spend last month at the University of Washington’s @dxarts and @studiotilt.design Soft Data and Common Wares art residency 🛜 For one week, I held a speculative workshop titled “Vernacular Clouds.” In this workshop, communication networks were reconsidered from the grassroots, moving beyond corporate data clouds and monopolistic service providers. Participants outlined the nodes of a personal, autonomous grassroots network and synthesized it into Midjourney prompts. How might the nodes of a network emerge from local knowledge systems and material culture? We aimed to use Midjourney not to speculate an impossibly distant future, but to ‘mine the near present.’ 1 A diasporic web server enmeshed in a family heirloom from Colima, Mexico, containing oral histories — Mark 2 A community library with a server where people can share downloadable versions of books that may be hard to find in print — Tara 3 A server made of yarn, situated in the cave high up in Mount Zas in Naxos, connecting plant life, animals, villages, farms, soil, sand, sea, and the artifacts of local artisans — Afroditi Psarra 4 A server in a grey van parked in the Heather Meadows, connecting people with the mountain, the trees and the moss, the whiskey jack birds and the brown squirrels — Audrey Desjardins 5 A server entangled with tree roots, tied to a wooden street lighting, networking non-human agents, sounds, and stories of the environment — Cristina Brambilla 6-7 A server inside a community refrigerator located in a candy shop in Lake Tahoe with people, trash and food, holding a party — Sadaf 8 A magical item from an RPG world sits within a statue as a node. Gamers surround the item, connecting their signature items to log in and gain oracular insights — Umut 9 A server situated in a heart implant given to a 93-year-old who requires a wheelchair and is navigating through her senior living facility options — Althea 10 Web servers situated in a drag house, where furniture, clothes, and data is accumulated in the ballroom community— xiaowei These works were part of my show, Looking in a Circle, in a Circle of Clouds.

Tonight is the opening reception of  @boscenterforarts  27th Drawing Show, Yušká: Uncoil, curated by @emgenia 🌟 ‘In the Dakhota language, the word Yušká means: to untie, release, uncoil, loosen, set free. Its meaning can range from the simple untying of a knotted rope, all the way to a philosophical undoing of political, economic and social constructs.’ For these pieces, I looked to family oral histories when I returned to Colima, Mexico. My grandmother’s hands form a circle within a circle, using a servilleta tablecloth to shape the masa. She recalls Papa Pancho, his native language and attire, with white pants called calzon de manta. President Porfirio Díaz, in an attempt to modernize Mexico, was convinced that these trousers, worn by Indigenous people and rancheros, were a sign of economic and social backwardness. The garment was outlawed in 1887. The servilleta passed down to me, however, was made by my great-grandmother from the same manta fabric. Each concentric circle on the story cloth can mark an unraveling of accumulated memories. Yušká, in this context, can be seen as an undoing that is both of preservation and futurity, recasting the past to see our direction before the promises of modernity. distant company / con pan. 23 On view May 11–Aug. 3 | Mills Gallery, 551 Tremont Street

👀 Artists in Residence announcement! ‘Soft Data and Common Wares’ is an interdisciplinary collaboration between Dxarts SoftLab (@afrdt ) and Studio Tilt. We are interested in the process of collecting, archiving, and critically transcoding data from the intimate spaces of the home and the body, and the search for meaningful interpretations. As part of this project, this Spring 2024 we are hosting two one-month artist residencies. The two artists were selected through an open call which received an astounding 80 proposals from artists around the globe. The goal is to engage the two visiting artists in conversations with DXARTS and Design students and colleagues. Xiaowei R. Wang, @xrwang88 , a California-based artist, writer, organizer and coder, will work on the project Witch Fever during mid-April to mid-May. Witch Fever is a research based art project at the intersection of climate crisis, colonialism and violent beauty. The project elegantly combines printed textile pieces, speculative botany, textile as archive, colonial histories, and practices of repair.  Mark A. Hernandez Motaghy, @markanthony.hm , a Boston-based artist and cultural worker, as well as the co-founding director of Fortunately Magazine, will focus on the project Serv/ir from mid-May to mid-June. Serv/ir is a transmedia exploration consisting of video, sculpture, and poetry that creates a diasporic server between Montebello, California, and Colima, Mexico. This work opens questions about family heirlooms, oral histories, diaspora politics, hardware, and craft. This residency program is supported by a Kreielsheimer/Jones Grant from the Arts Division of the College of Arts and Sciences. 📷 images by Xiaowei R. Wang and Mark A. Hernandez Motaghy #artresidency #data #dataart #softdata #ixd #dxarts #design @uwsoa @dxarts