Confluence Studio
An artist, writer, and educator, Sam Gould co-founded the artist collaborative Red76 (2000 - 2015). Following Red76, he established the neighborhood-based platform Beyond Repair, a collaborative that looks past the rhetoric of “people and places that need fixing.” As a platform for Beyond Repair, Gould co-founded Confluence: An East Lake Studio for Community Design. Gould was a founding faculty member within the graduate department for Social Practice at the California College of the Arts, the first such department to be established in the United States, as well as a full-time visiting professor at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has lectured extensively within the United States and abroad at institutions such as Harvard University, the New Museum, and SF MoMA; held residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts, The Luminary, Villa Montalvo, and elsewhere; and has had projects commissioned by institutions such as Creative Time, the Walker Arts Center, Printed Matter, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and many others.
John Kim is an artist, activist, writer and educator. He creates work about the environmental and social history of the Mississippi River Valley, the river as an interconnected ecological and cultural corridor (a “Fourth Coast”), and ways to digitally represent the environment for public education. John has published widely, including a book, Rupture of the Virtual (2016); journal articles; and other print publications. He has also exhibited interactive art, sculpture, video games, and software in galleries and festivals around the world. With his art design group, Futures North, John creates work at the intersection of environmental representation and data spatialization.
Duaba Unenra is a cultural worker and community organizer based in Minneapolis. His work draws upon critical theories of identity and African Diasporic and Indigenous ways of knowing to repurpose the culture of the academy into engaging learning experiences which aim to advance collective liberation and deepen the radical imagination. He has also produced and hosted cultural events for people in Black, Indigenous, and Anti-Marginalization movements focused on healing and reconnecting to legacies of resistance. He is a co-founder of Confluence: An East Lake Studio for Community Design.
