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Nicole Cristi

Nicole Cristi

UCL Email: nicole.rojas.16@ucl.ac.uk
Websites: https://ucl.academia.edu/NicoleCristi
Year of start: 2019
Supervisors: Ludovic Coupaye
Subject: Material Culture
Fieldsite: Santiago, Chile

PhD Research

Situated ‘technologies’: Technical objects, technical systems and technical activities on the category of ‘tecnología’ on spaces of digital fabrication in the central valley of Chile.

The research explores the vernacular category of ‘tecnología’ [technology] that emerge inside of spaces which work with digital fabrication (makerspaces, hackerspaces and fablabs) in the central valley of Chile. It involves the use of open sources, design computational programs and machines like 3D printing, laser cutter, and CNC milling. The research explores how the category of ‘tecnología’ emerge through a situated ‘operating milieu, suggested by Leroi-Gourhan and Simondon (Coupaye, 2019) around of the objects of digital fabrication and the very making. That is through the technical activities of the makers, the technicity and agencies of technical objects and systems, the social dimensions that emerge in the process, vernacular logics for the organization of the production, the economic and political conditions of production, and the historical and territorial embodied techniques and knowledge.

It is a techno-ethnography to explore the interweaving of relations existing between non-territorial and territorial dimensions, innovation and memory, human and non-human, codes and body, patterns and creativity, the individual and the communal, and autonomy and dependence, to go beyond of a binary understanding of what ‘technology’ is exploring its alternatives understating from situated experiences and praxis. It could contribute to develop a situated approach to the studies of the techniques and to think the possibilities of ‘futuring’ (Fry, 2010) ‘from inside’ (Escobar, 2018), that is from the very territory, the very practice, and from spaces considered as ‘technological’.

Research Interests

  • Material Culture Studies, Anthropology of techniques and technology
  • Anthropology of Design, Design History, Theory of design
  • Design production processes, Politics of making
  • Design in Chile and Latin America
  • Political Graphic communication of resistance
  • Digital fabrication, makerspaces, hackerspaces, fablabs

Publications

  • Cristi, N., Manzi, J. (2019). Political poster of resistance to Pinochet´s dictatorship in Chile, a productivist approach, Journal of Design History, Special Issue: Locating Design Exchanges in Latin America and the Caribbean, Oxford Journals. Accepted Paper.
  • Cristi, N., Manzi, J. (2017). Construcción de una trinchera gráfica en dictadura: La praxis político estética en la experiencia de la APJ y el Tallersol [Construction of a graphic trench in a dictatorship: The aesthetic political praxis in the experience of the APJ and Tallersol], Revista Chilena de Diseño, 3.
  • Cristi, N., Manzi, J. (2016). Resistencia Gráfica, Dictadura en Chile, APJ-Tallersol [Graphic Resistance, Dictatorship in Chile, APJ-Tallersol], Santiago: Chile, LOM Ediciones.
  • Cristi, N. (2014). A des-sitiar Chile. In M. Vico (Ed.), El afiche politico en Chile 1973-2013 ["Let's un-besiege Chile". In Political Poster in Chile 1973 – 2012](1a ed. pp. 79-102). Santiago, Chile: Ocho Libros Editores.
  • Carvajal, F., Cristi, N., Keller A, & Manzi, J. (2012). Delincuencia Visual [Visual delinquency]. In R. Amigo, H. Badawi, D. Biczel, F. Carvajal, L. Colombino, N. Cristi, … R. Waiss, Perder la Forma Humana, una imagen sísmica de los años ochenta en América Latina [Losing the Human Form. A seismic image of the 1980s in Latin America] (1ed., pp. 35-39). Madrid, España: Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

Presentations & Conferences

  • Cristi, N. (2018, October) Technical activities in design history: contributions of applying the Chaîne Opératoire as a methodology to design history. Paper accepted at ICDHS 10+1 International Conferences on Design History and Studies, Barcelona, España.
  • Cristi, N. (2018, February). Political poster of resistance to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, 1973-1989: context and its implications in muralism. Paper presented at Symposium Contextualising the Chilean Mural at LUU Symposium, Leeds, UK.
  • Cristi, N. (2017, January). Mirada productivista a la gráfica de resistencia a la dictadura [Productivist look at the resistance graph to the dictatorship]. Paper presented at Jornadas de Investigación 6ta Bienal de Diseño, Santiago, Chile.
  • Cristi, N. (2016, October). Political poster of resistance to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, 1973-1989. Paper presented at The International Conference on Design History and Design Studies, Taipéi, Taiwán.

Teaching Experience

  • 2015 - 2016 Lecturer Theory and History of Design. Universidad de Chile. School of Architecture and Urban Studies. Design Department.
  • 2014- 2016 Lecturer Introduction to Design. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, School of Architecture, Design and Urban Studies. Design Department.
  • 2012- 2016 Lecturer History of Design. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, School of Architecture, Design and Urban Studies. Design Department.

Education History

  • MPhil/PhD Student Anthropology/Material Culture, UCL
  • MA/ Material and Visual Culture, Anthropology Department, UCL
  • BA /Aesthetics, School of Philosophy, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
  • BA/ Design, Design Department, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Honours, Awards & Funding

  • CONICYT Scholarship (Chile) – PhD Studies Abroad
  • CONICYT Scholarship (Chile) – MA Studies Abroad

Additional Information

  • Member “Red Conceptualismos del Sur”

Nodo Archivo [Archives Node]

Archivo Visual de la Resistencia [R. Visual Archives of Resistance 1973-1989].