Open Session #13: Hosted by Virginia Hanusik and Columbia Books on Architecture and the City

Join us for the launch of Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana by Virginia Hanusik. Following the book’s expansive dialogue between writing and image, this event convenes artist Hanusik, contributor Billy Fleming, and researcher and Assistant Professor Darien Alexander Williams. Their conversation will be moderated by Storefront’s Jessica Kwok. 

In South Louisiana, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico, water—and a history of controlling it—is omnipresent. Through a collection of photographs by Virginia Hanusik, Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana reflects on the vulnerabilities and possibilities of living on the water during an ongoing climate catastrophe catalyzed by fossil fuel extraction—past, present, and future. Framing the architecture and infrastructure of South Louisiana with both distance and intimacy, and introspection and expansiveness, this work engages new memories, microhistories, anecdotes, and insights from scholars, artists, activists, and practitioners working in the region. Into the Quiet and the Light recognizes the multiplicity of voices that come together in South Louisiana’s water-ruled landscapes.

Contributors: Richie Blink, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Jessica Dandridge, Rebecca Elliott, Michael Esealuka, T. Mayheart Dardar, Billy Fleming, Andy Horowitz, Arthur Johnson, Louis Michot, Nini Nguyen, Kate Orff, Jessi Parfait, Amy Stelly, Jonathan Tate, Aaron Turner, and John Verdin.

Virginia Hanusik is an artist whose work explores the relationships between landscape, culture, and the built environment. Her projects have been exhibited internationally and supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Graham Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Pulitzer Center. She writes about landscape representation, extraction, and the visual narratives of climate change, and has been featured in Aperture, British Journal of Photography, National Geographic, and the New Yorker, among others. Her first book, Into the Quiet and the Light: Water Life and Land Loss in South Louisiana (Columbia UP, 2024) was shortlisted for the 2024 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards.

Darien Alexander Williams is an Assistant Professor in the Macro Practice Department at Boston University with a focus on climate and environmental justice. His research broadly engages Black and Muslim urban planning history, hurricane disaster recovery, and community organizing. More specifically, it examines methods of counter-institution-building developed by the Nation of Islam as it grappled with segregation and land clearance in urban neighborhoods across the twentieth century. He is currently an organizer for the Queer Muslims of Boston, a grassroots organization that builds social and spiritual space for LGBTQ Muslims across New England.

Billy Fleming is the founding Wilks Family Director of the Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design. He is co-founder of the Climate and Community Institute, Data Refuge, and Indivisible. His recent work includes the forthcoming volume Building Postcarbon Futures (Lincoln, 2025), A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation (Island Press, 2021), Design With Nature Now (Lincoln, 2019), and the digital humanities projects, “Field Notes Toward an Internationalist Green New Deal” and “An Atlas for the Green New Deal.” His writing has appeared in Dissent, The Guardian, Washington Post, Places Journal, LA+, and the Journal of Architectural Education, including the recently published theme issue “Worlding Energy Transitions,” co-edited with Rania Ghosn.