Astrid Kensinger

From VCUarts Uncharted · 24:35

Show by VCUarts

VCUarts Qatar graphic design chair and (IN)>Tangible Lab director Astrid Kensinger describes how art and design can make cultural heritage tangible and shares the remarkable story of two students who unexpectedly discovered their own ancestors in a 1959 ethnographic expedition, retraced their journeys and shared the experience with the world.---About Astrid KensingerAstrid Kensinger is an Associate Professor and Chair of Graphic Design at VCUarts Qatar, where she also serves as Principal Investigator of the VCUarts Qatar Institute for Creative Research (IN)>Tangible Lab. Her transdisciplinary practice and research explore information visualization, cartographic performance and visual communication as tools for engaging with place, cultural memory and contemporary social and environmental issues.Kensinger’s work brings together design, mapping, performance, archaeology and intangible cultural heritage, while also engaging community knowledge and cultural institutions as active forms of research. She investigates how site-specific narratives and participatory forms of making can reveal relationships between people, place, memory and cultural knowledge. Through (IN)>Tangible Lab, she works with students, alumni, cultural institutions and community partners across Qatar and internationally, developing projects that connect creative research with public engagement and cultural heritage.Her current research includes Mapping Migration Memories, exploring Qatari desert-to-sea migration histories through mapping, sound, and participatory storytelling, and In Search of the Desert Truffle, a transdisciplinary investigation of ecological knowledge, foodways, language and intangible cultural heritage surrounding Qatar’s seasonal desert truffles.Kensinger holds an undergraduate degree in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology and an M.F.A. focused on designed experiences and the archaeology of festivity. Her international practice and collaborations span Japan, Singapore, Australia, China, Europe and Qatar. She is particularly interested in design as a mode of research and as a means of making complex cultural knowledge visible, experiential and accessible.---VCUarts Uncharted is recorded in the Community Media Center in the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU. Music by Felipe Leitão. For more information, visit arts.vcu.edu/uncharted.

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