Coffee Hour with Jessica Lopez Lyman

Place-Keeping Tactics: Latina/x Infiltration Movidas in the Twin Cities

In this talk Lopez Lyman argues Latina/x artists in the Twin Cities use what she terms “infiltration movidas” as a tactic for place-keeping. While our understanding of Latina/o/x activism and belonging in the creative economy has often been framed as place-making, Lopez Lyman’s study, following the artists in her book project, offers an alternative spatial paradigm — place-keeping. In the creative economy, place-making relies on a perception of emptiness and vacancy where artists in partnership with governments, businesses or non-profits create cultural experiences to fill a space. This logic affirms a settler colonial project because it reproduces the assumption that there is no social life that preexists the intrusion of racial capital. Latina/x artists in the Twin Cities, who are invested in a politics of solidarity, enact infiltration movidas as a place-keeping strategy in order to uplift the voices of residents already existing in the neighborhood, specifically Black, Indigenous, and other people of Color. Infiltration movidas thus serve as a way to unsettle colonial logics by resisting cultural displacement and potentially housing displacement as well.