Radhika Subramaniam is the Director and Chief Curator of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons The New School for Design, where she is also an assistant professor of art and design history and theory. Her research interests lie in everyday sensory urbanisms and cultures of catastrophe. Her curatorial practice is cross-disciplinary and dialogic, committed to public pedagogy, critical urbanism, and political and social justice. She previously served as director of cultural programs at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), where she commissioned several public art projects in downtown Manhattan and oversaw a program of art and ideas. Recent projects include Living Concrete/Carrot City, co-curated with Nevin Cohen; Art in Odd Places: Sign; Abecedarium for Our Times; Rods and Cones: Seeing from the Back of One’s Head; and Cities, Art and Recovery, a major two-year international initiative focused on art and culture in the aftermath of catastrophe. Subramaniam was also the founding and executive editor of Connect: art.politics.theory.practice, an interdisciplinary art journal published by Arts International. She has a PhD in Performance Studies and a master’s degree in Anthropology. Subramaniam is a recipient of the Seed Fund Teaching Fellowship in Urban Studies.

Benjamin Grant is a city planner, urban designer, curator and lecturer who currently heads SPUR’s interagency Master Plan for Ocean Beach. Grant also co-founded CITY|SPACE, a nonprofit cultural institution exploring cities and urbanism through fine art, film, design and cultural landscape research. Grant has contributed to a range of planning and urban design projects in the Bay Area and beyond, including a vision plan for parts of Beijing, the San Jose: 2020 Downtown Strategy, the redevelopment of Treasure Island, and the VTA Community Design and Transportation program. His areas of practice include conceptual urban design, climate adaptation planning, transportation and land-use integration, and targeted client and stakeholder communications.