Season 2 - Episode 1 Joseph Zeal-Henry

In this episode, designer, urbanist, and curator Joseph Zeal-Henry joins ArtLab director Bree Edwards to discuss equity and politics in the built environment. We sat down with Joseph to explore his year-long residency as the Loeb Fellow at ArtLab, where he sought to bridge public service and art in pursuit of new cultural architectures. In collaboration with HUCA, Joseph spent his time at Harvard constructing a public sound sculpture called the “SUPA System,” a sonic installation that utilizes sound as a medium for shaping space.

Joseph discusses the need to shift from models of cultural consumption to cultural production, especially through exploratory spatial practices in music. He emphasizes the importance of integrating different scales and perspectives to create new communal structures for relating and creating. This approach engages a politics of spatial architecture that acknowledges continual evolution and transformation, catalyzing a redistribution of agency and power. Join us for an inspiring conversation about Joseph’s innovative approach to equitable architecture here at ArtLab and beyond.

Joseph’s ArtLab page: https://artlab.harvard.edu/directory/joseph-zeal-henry/
Joseph’s personal website: https://josephzealhenry.com
Joseph’s instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/josephzealhenry/

Works in Progress is recorded and produced in ArtLab’s Mead Production Lab, located on the traditional territory of the Massachusetts people, the original inhabitants of what is now known as Boston and Cambridge. The show is hosted by Bree Edwards, produced by Kat Nakaji, and edited by Luke Damrosch. Theme music by Kicktracks.

For more information about the show, the ArtLab, and the artists featured, visit artlab.harvard.edu. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram by searching @ArtLabHarvard.

Transcript

[INTRO MUSIC PLAYING]

BREE EDWARDS: Welcome, and thank you for joining me for Works in Progress, a podcast about artistic research, experimentation, and collaboration. My name is Bree Edwards, and I'm the director of the ArtLab, a multidisciplinary incubator for the arts at Harvard. 

The ArtLab supports creative research and development and is a special initiative of Harvard's Office of the President and Provost. While we commission new work and support course-based workshops, the artist residency program is the foundation of the ArtLab.

In this podcast, we speak with the artists in residence at ArtLab and those that are working at Harvard about how they are grappling with contemporary issues and transforming ideas into art. 

In this episode, we are joined by Joseph Zeal Henry, the 2024 Loeb ArtLab Fellow. Joseph is a designer, urbanist, and curator whose practice advocates for a more equitable built environment through policy and cultural production. Before coming to Harvard, Joseph worked for the Office of the Mayor in London in the Culture and Creative Industries unit, delivering new cultural infrastructure for the city of London. He co-founded the platform Sound Advice to explore new forms of spatial practice through music. He is a trustee of the UD Music, a charity that empowers and harnesses opportunities for young people through black music culture. 

As the Loeb Art Lab Fellow, he has continued to develop his unique multidisciplinary practice that bridges public service and art. Joseph curated a public program at the ArtLab that was entitled Ritual Imaginations, that was a series of artist-made short films that explored everyday rituals for immigrant communities in the United Kingdom and the influence of these rituals and the communities on the built environment. During the fellowship, The Harvard University Committee on the Arts, also known as HUCA, commissioned Joseph to design and build a public artwork, a sound sculpture, that is called the SUPA System, which we will discuss today. 

Welcome, Joseph. We've had a full academic year of working together, and this has included several exciting conversations about art and culture and cultural industry. I'm really glad that we have this opportunity to sit down in the Mead Production Studio and talk about it for the podcast. So thanks for joining me today. 

JOSEPH ZEAL-HENERY: No worries Bree, happy to be here. 

BREE: So I'm gonna start out with a few kind of amazing quotes that I've read from your writing and some interviews that you've given in the past just to start us off. So ‘Architecture is the creative output from which we can't escape.’ And ‘Architecture needs to be a practice that centers on people's interests.’ ‘Architecture should be recognized as a culture.’ And ‘If we are to advocate for an expanded notion of architecture, a platform rather than a protected profession, architecture needs an alternative starting point and a wider field of view.’ 

So these are kind of radical statements about architecture that I find really exciting. Could you talk to me about how you support or create this shift as a designer, educator, curator, and policymaker?

JOSEPH: Yeah, I think the final of the hats, I guess, has been the most important for me, which is being a designer when I worked for the Mayor of London and just seeing a much broader way that space is political and how we manifest our built environment is an outcome of many different forces, not just the form that architects make, but who funds it, who pays for it, who gets to operate it, how long the legal structure is underpin it. And I think that experience of having a much broader view of how the city at large is made gave me a slightly more intentional, not necessarily unique perspective, but one that I enjoyed testing myself as a designer in that space. And I think my interest in scale and working with the varieties of scale came from seeing designers as a strategic tool at the scale of the city, but then also doing projects where you're designing a book, or you're making a film or doing a short-time temporary activation with the V&A and seeing that it's only when you work across multiple scales and multiple perspectives you're able to actually affect change. 

BREE: And coming in, how many years were you with the Mayor of London office? 

JOSEPH: Just over four and a half years. I actually know, almost six years, I think.

BREE: And did you come in, what is your personal path? How did you find yourself working in this very multidisciplinary way? Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

JOSEPH: Yes, so until I was studying for my master's in architecture, it was a very traditional route. And the university that I chose to go to, which is no longer called the CAS, but was called the CAS in those days, had a cities unit, like a new cities unit, and they offered a master's in spatial planning and urban design alongside an architectural master's. And it was sort of I could buy one, get one free, MA deal, wasn't quite that, but almost. So, I decided to do a dual MA in architecture and urban design. And it was through studying urban design I met designers working for the Mayor's Office and started to build a relationship with them. 

At the end of university, I went back and worked traditionally as an architectural assistant for a big firm. And at that point, I was becoming more critical about the services that we were providing and the people we provided them for. And I decided that I didn't want my investment in my education to be just a service for wealthy landowners and I became more interested in serving the public using my skills to serve the public. 

The funny thing about working for the Mayor's Office is that projects, the form of projects, respond to the intention and the impact you're trying to have. So that might be guidance, which is immaterial in some ways, or it might be investing in a new community center. So actually, the public service and working in policy was much more agnostic to outcomes. So you might be, so my first job at the city hall was to work on circuit economy policy, for example, but at the same time you're building timber construction food markets somewhere else. So, you have this ability to understand how different forms and mediums were able to influence different things. So it actually seems very natural to have a multimedia practice when you shouldn't predetermine the form before you start thinking about what it is you're trying to do. So I- 

BREE: Do you think this was unique for a city office that was involved with planning? 

JOSEPH: Yeah, so the mayor's office department or the team that I worked in was originally set up by Richard Rogers. And it was when Ken Livingstone was mayor, and he wanted to - It seems funny to think about this, but the center of London was sort of like a dead zone. And they set up a program called Urban Renaissance, and it was all about rebuilding culture into the center of the city. And he worked with Richard Rogers, and Richard Rogers set up the architectural and urbanism unit, which then became Design for London, which then became the regeneration team and is now the spatial development team. 

So the team had origins in design and creative thinking and being slightly rebellious and radical. And quite a few of the staff who founded the team in 2002 with Richard Rogers, were still there when I joined in 2017 and are still there now. So there's this sort of history of designers in City Hall. 

BREE: And we're lucky to have you here in Boston from London because I know, from some of our conversations, the city of Boston has looked a lot to the work and the planning that happened in London as models for Boston. 

JOSEPH: Yes. We have a uniquely energetic deputy mayor for culture and creative industries in London, who has a saying which is that planning is a secret weapon for culture. And if you really want to change the city, you have to use planning as a tool to do that. So, although it might not be obvious for culture and planning to be bedfellows, but actually, if you want to create a more lively night scene you have to look at licensing, which often manifests itself in a city plan, ultimately nighttime policy or whatever, these things tend to be embedded in city planning at large. And it's important for cultural practitioners to engage in the systems that govern how and what they are allowed to do or not. 

BREE: I think that's such an exciting idea. I want to also just unpack a little bit of a phrase that you use a lot that I find really interesting, “cultural infrastructure”, which is something that I've heard you say you build, you work in the realm. What is cultural infrastructure? And what does it mean to do it, to implement it, to plan for it?

JOSEPH: Yes, it's a funny term because we've been using it a lot in London. And it's essentially the spaces for culture or spaces for culture to be performed and made. So it's not about just the spaces of consumption, but actually, in London, we focus mainly on production. And I think of cultural infrastructure as mainly about where culture is made and the spaces that you have to create for it. And again, Justine Simons, the aforementioned deputy mayor, always used to talk about, we plan for schools, we plan for transport. Why don't we plan for culture? And there was a way of putting culture in the same conversation as other serious bits of city-making. 

So it's kind of branding cultural spaces to put it alongside other things that the city and the public sector are used to funding. In London, the culture and economy was worth one in five jobs in London, and it had the same GDP impact as the banking system but used to employ way more people. So it was really important for us to place culture alongside other sectors, which are used to getting subsidized or preferable tax treatments, whatever. And that term cultural infrastructure was just a way of placing it much more directly alongside; it made it easier for planners to plan around it, with the back to planning. 

And since then, it's taken a bit of a life of its own. Other cities now talk about their cultural infrastructure plans. London was the first city to have a cultural infrastructure plan in the world. And lots of cities are now developing similar approaches. I think, in part, it's because the creative industries are lots of cities' secret weapons in terms of growth, providing employment, and providing a sense of place. And I think it's just taken a while for the treasury or funders to, or these government funders, to take that seriously. 

BREE: And this shift also, perhaps away from exhibition or consumption and onto production is very close to our hearts here at the ArtLab. So, it's a really interesting model for me to look at as well. I wanted to just switch gears a little bit and talk about culture and art as a tool for engagement. 

One of the things that we've talked about a lot is how art, culture, music, dance is a political act that can be used differently to engage and empower communities. So I wanted to just ask about what is your engagement strategy and what are the outcomes that you see that are different just based on some of the experiences that you've had? 

JOSEPH: Yeah, it's funny. I don't necessarily think about engagement in a particularly explicit way. But I think about the human desire to express - people's desire - to express themselves being a relatively universal emotion or desire. And therefore, I'm interested in spaces that are about people expressing themselves in a collective way. So a lot of our work with institutions in London has been about recreating these house parties in big institutions because, to me, those spaces are about expression, expression of the DJ, but also what people wanna wear, how they move, how they dance. 

And I think I'm interested in the politics of pluralism. And I think it's important that you're able, many different people from different perspectives, can see not necessarily a full reflection of themselves, but like a refracted version of themselves in an event or a space that I create. So it's a small detail, but whenever we do an event, we always have a different DJ every hour. They'll play a totally different style of music. So, if you're not necessarily into the Grime set, you might like the Two-Step Garage set. And if you're not into that, then you might like the Amp Piano set. And it's a way of telling lots of people that they're welcome in the space. But it takes time to build trust with an audience and a community. 

And I think my engagement strategy, to a certain extent, is lingering. Which is easy when you're working in a place you're from, like we've been in London for 33 years. People sort of know you after a while, that they trust, and they know your intentions. It's much harder when you move to a place like Boston. Not Boston specifically, but anywhere away from home, to then carry the same ideas with you, but then reapply it and see how it reapplies somewhere else. And it just takes time as well. 

A lot of my work is also not about necessarily being the sole author but creating frameworks or protocols or infrastructure for other people to take ownership and to convene around. I always liked infrastructure as a term. Because if you're, I was on the T this morning, some people are using the T to drop off a kid to daycare like I was, some people are using it for leisure purposes, some people are using it to get to work. So everyone has their sort of use case for how they wanna use that piece of infrastructure, and I feel the same around culture. 

It's like some people might use culture infrastructure for educational purposes, some people might use it for mental health reasons, some people might use it for expression, but I think that's, it's all about that sort of ability for people to project themselves, maybe spend them reflect, to project themselves onto the space that you create. But most of it is time and investment in time. 

BREE: Although tonight is that kind of party, the launch, it is not the endpoint, it's not an exhibition that closes, that you will be able to have the SUPA System in residence at the Art Lab for another few months and really get to kind of begin to try out what are the possibilities? What are the opportunities? 

JOSEPH: Yeah, I think I'm trying really hard not to overly predetermine what I think would be a great response to the sound system because I think that the ability to keep an open mind to what someone might see in it will be part of their success. 

So I think this is a strange project because I've acted as a creator in some ways and in some ways a maker and in some ways a designer. But I think the biggest discipline often is to trust process in whatever way that means, and I think part of this project is trusting that people will find an interest in how to activate it on their own terms. I think, in a way, the event tonight is an invitation for people to engage in it not as an object but its possibilities beyond how you see it. 

BREE: So for people that can't see the SUPA System, can you describe what it looks like or how it operates? 

JOSEPH: Yeah. I think also back to the learning; I feel like if you are going to place an object into a laboratory of art, essentially, it's the moment to start to take some risks about what the outcome is. And I think that was part of the project, was the idea that you wouldn't, that it would be alright in the end, because the intention or the gesture it's making is one of experimentation, of learning, of research, that you don't have to necessarily - Purity isn't necessarily the most important thing that comes out of this. 

But the sound system itself is - One of my first memories of coming to America was the amount of billboards that we have. And I was talking to Deborah Garcia, who's the collaborator, the design collaborator on the project, about just how to somehow place the sound system in America. And she came up with this idea of a billboard being a form that we could, an infrastructural form that we could adapt and emulize, but then flip it to something else. 

So back to the idea of disruption, it's like disruption doesn't have to be necessarily a pejorative. It can be something which is about claiming ownership or retaking ownership or reinterpreting something. 

But it's like a billboard of a much purer form. I always had an interest in using aluminum, so it's an aluminum billboard. The aluminum was always there in the projects. I found out in the research that it was one of the biggest extracted materials from Jamaica and it pretty much, the Jamaican aluminum reserves pretty much created the American airline industry. Which I think is very interesting, that now people think about Jamaica as the export being either people or reggae music, but actually, aluminum, like an actual physical material, is a big part of the culture there. So in a way, the aluminum is a nod to that. So we had a material palette before we had a form, and the form took a bit of time because we wanted it to place in America, but also allow it to hold many different things. 

So the moment it's set up and it's holding a projection screen which takes up one side of the three-sided shape, but it could be nine shelves with nine sculptures on it, or it could be a library or a record store or even clothing. So, we always had this idea that it was something that would allow different perspectives and forms to be placed into it. So in a way, you could describe it as a subversive billboard, but it's also like some shelves as well. It's like a very large shelving unit. 

And I think when I first was looking at the design, once we settled on it, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, are these just big shelves? But in a way, it's fine if they are because lots of people have shelves in their home and people do amazing things with shelves. You know, libraries are full of shelves, archives are full of shelves, there's nothing wrong with shelving. 

So it's kind of shelving, it's kind of a billboard, it's part chapel, it's a - it gives scale, like it's infrastructure at the scale of the human. And it's up to you to interpret what you see in it. Like we have a design intention that we've followed through, but I'm also very happy if people look at it and go, “oh, that's a chapel of sound.” Or people look at it, and they go, “Ah, that's a massive shelving unit and these are big bookshelf speakers.” I think that's also part of the art is that people are able to interpret it in a way that they think makes it make sense for them. And I'm looking forward to working with other creatives to be able to bring it to life in lots of different forms 

BREE: Nice. I mean, I feel a kinship for that because I often say that the art lab is a building, but it's like a shape-shifter building and it kind of takes on the shape of whatever the project is. And so you could come in one time, and you think oh, this is a gallery you come in the next time. Oh, it's a dance studio, or it's, you know. And I do often think the architects designed it to be kind of everything and nothing and it's really effective in that way of kind of taking on the shape of whatever's happening inside. And I see that to some extent with the Supa System. And just to close this out, I don't know if there's anything else that you want to say about things that you might like to try out over the next few months.

JOSEPH: Yeah, I think I'm trying really hard not to overly predetermine what I think would be a great response to the sound system because I think that the ability to keep an open mind to what someone might see in it will be part of their success. I think this is a strange project because I've acted as a curator in some ways, and in some ways a maker, and in some ways a designer. 

But I think the biggest discipline often is to trust process. in whatever way that means. And I think part of this project is trusting that people will find an interest in how to activate it on their own terms. I think in a way, the event tonight is an invitation for people to engage in not it as an object, but in its possibilities beyond how you see it. 

So we've got it set up today with the sound and one side of a projector to show people that it isn't about purely about sound. And I think this is, I guess, where the project deviates a bit from some of the things I've seen about contemporary sound systems was just so in awe of sound as the endpoint. But I really like Paul Gilroy and Edward LaSane and Toni Morrison's reading of sound as a starting point. And that's why I find it exciting because who knows what someone might do. 

I like the idea. I'm interested in film. That's like a medium that I've spent quite a lot of time in. So I will probably work on films for it. And I would love to work with a dancer. That's one of the ideas, but I'm trying not to overly curate what it is. I think the infrastructure's there and it's for people to, for us to help. And I think the bit I'm most interested in is like techniques of recording and documentation. 

And that it's not; these things don't just happen for the sake of it. There is a - they're somehow held, the memory is held. I think it will become an interesting archive in itself, which hopefully becomes not just an archive of the sound system but somehow is a platform for Boston's creative industries. It's just something I'm - that whole thing about lingering is also something I do. So it seems weird to leave Boston after one year. Hence, I'm staying for a bit longer because I feel like places always have way more time - they take a long time to uncover. And I think it would have been weird to do a project and have a practice like this and then leave back to London and then sort of whatever. So I feel like it requires a bit of time. 

BREE: I appreciate that patience and perspective. And it's really been a pleasure to work with but also learn from you over the past year. And I'm delighted that you're gonna stick around for a bit longer. So thank you. 

JOSEPH: No worries. Thanks.

[OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING] 

BREE:

Thank you for listening to Works in Progress, a production of the ArtLab at Harvard University. It is located on the traditional territory of the Massachusetts people, the original inhabitants of what is now known as Boston and Cambridge. This podcast is recorded and produced in the Mead Production Lab and features artists who are working here. 

For more information about the show, the Art Lab, and the artist featured, please visit artlab.harvard.edu. You can also follow us on Instagram or Facebook by searching Art Lab at Harvard. Thank you.