Panel 2: Mobilities and the Non-Human Artifact

In Mobilities and the Non-Human Artifact, Laura Y. Liu and Radhika Subramaniam examined the border as a site where images, materials, and infrastructures shape political experience. Subramaniam’s reading from “Notes for a Seedy Politics” traced how seeds—whether ornamental escapees, invasive travelers, or remnants carried in ballast—quietly map histories of colonization and ecological disruption. Her meditation on ruderal plants invited the audience to consider forms of resilience that arise in disturbed ground, offering a potent metaphor for unsettled political landscapes.

Laura Y. Liu, Associate Professor of Global Studies and Geography at The New School.

 RADHIKA SUBRAMANIAM, Associate Professor of Visual Culture at Parsons, is a curator and writer with an interdisciplinary practice that deploys such platforms as exhibitions, texts and public art interventions as conscious forms of knowledge-making.