Keynote: Imagination, Impact, and Epistemic Justice

From the LOC: Marisa Morán Jahn offers a playful and joyful vision of partnering with purpose. Working alongside rural communities in Central America, professional athletes, domestic workers in New York, and many other communities, Jahn’s work taps a truly diverse range of cultural assets and creative energy. In this talk, artist and educator Marisa Morán Jahn presents her work, highlighting how a joyful, playful, and imaginative approach serves as a powerful tool to achieving broad-scale social impact — and ask fundamental questions about society. Jahn’s talk draws on two decades of teaching at MIT, Columbia University, and Parsons/The New School as well as K-12 youth and creating civic media toolkits including audionovelas for domestic workers, pocket-sized comics for migrant farmworkers, illustrated maps for New York City’s 13,000 English Language Learners, and more. In 2008, she collaborated with a community in rural Honduras to create “ Bibliobandido ” (in English, ‘story eater’), a literacy movement that centers around a bandit who EATS stories and whose fame rivals Santa Claus. As a living legend still active today, Bibliobandido has transformed the lives of 25,000 young believers in Central and North America. For another civic-scale artwork called “ CareForce ” (2010-ongoing), Jahn collaborated with the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) to create a social practice artwork featuring two mobile studios (NannyVan, CareForce One) and a PBS- and Sundance-supported film that amplifies care workers’ voices. In 2020, “CareForce” informed the creation of “ Carehaus ,” the U.S.’s first intergenerational, care-based co-housing building which Jahn has presented to members of the U.S. Congress to help shape housing policy. Across these projects, Jahn explores how collaboration, storytelling, and design operate as powerful sites of learning—revealing how people make meaning, build empathy, and co-create knowledge through participation. Jahn notes, “I’m fascinated by differences in how we learn and how epistemologies form the bedrock of the worlds we create. Creating art and civic media invites me to stay the most attuned to human subtleties and my environment — and connecting with others.” Her practice offers a model of creating with purpose. Marisa Morán Jahn (she/her) is an artist of Ecuadorian/Chinese descent whose public art, installations, films, and civic media tools explore “civic spaces and the radical art of play” (Chicago Tribune). Jahn’s work directly engages new immigrant families and low-wage workers — and millions more via The United Nations, Obama’s White House, Venice Biennale, Guggenheim Museum, Tribeca Film Festival, The National Public Housing Museum, and international media (The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Univision, Forbes, BBC, CNN, Fader). Jahn’s highly interdisciplinary work achieves scale and impact through partnerships with organizations such as NBA’s Chicago Bulls and WNBA’s Chicago Sky basketball teams, National Domestic Workers Alliance, the U.S.’ Mine Safety Health Administration and through research teams across Johns Hopkins, MIT (her alma mater and where she is now a Senior Researcher), and Parsons/The New School where is the Director of Integrated Design. With architect and MIT professor Rafi Segal, she co-authored “Design and Solidarity” (Columbia University Press); co-founded Carehaus, the U.S.’s first care-based co-housing project; co-created the HOOPcycle (think MesoAmerican basketball meets tricycle), and collaborates on various architectural/urban-scale projects. Jahn has received awards from Sundance, The Holcim Foundation, Creative Capital, Anonymous Was a Woman, and Rockefeller Foundation and is represented by Sapar Contemporary. marisajahn.com https://www.instagram.com/marisa_jahn https://www.linkedin.com/in/marisajahn https://facebook.com/marisa.jahn