colectiva somoslacélula is a research and activist collective formed by César Barros A., Ángeles Donoso Macaya, and Amanda Sommer. Their video-essays have been featured at Film Anthology Archives and Maysles Documentary Center (NYC) as part of The People’s Revolt: A Showcase of New Chilean Experimental Cinema, guest-curated by Anto Astudillo. They have also shown their videos at: Interference Archive (NYC); Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral (Santiago, Chile); Khôra Gallery (Quito, Ecuador) as part of Horadar, Segundo Encuentro Internacional de Objetos y Muros, organized by Tlaxcala 3; and Ecologies of Migrant Care.
César Barros A. is Associate Professor and Director of the Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies Program at SUNY New Paltz. His academic work focuses on the intersections between politics, visuality, performance, and historical memory in Chile and Latin America. His book Escenas y obscenas del consumo was published in 2013. Besides being an educator and a videographer with colectiva somoslacélula, he does mutual aid/migrant justice work with different communities in NYC.
Amanda Lotspike is a member of colectiva somoslacélula. She is currently studying law at the City University of New York School of Law, where she focuses on land, housing, and immigration. She holds a BA from the University of California, Davis and a MA from the Center for Latin America and Caribbean Studies at New York University.
Ángeles Donoso Macaya is Professor of Latin American Visual Studies in the Ph.D. Program in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures at The CUNY Graduate Center, and Professor of Spanish at BMCC/CUNY. She is the author Lanallwe (Tusquets 2023), La insubordinación de la fotografía (Metales Pesados 2021) / The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship (U Florida P 2020) and co-author of archivo imperfecto (Metales Pesados 2023) along with Paz Errázuriz. She is Faculty Lead of Archives in Common: Migrant Practices/ Knowledges/Memory, part of the Public Seminar of The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY. In NYC, Ángeles is part of a broad coalition of mutual aid activists who organize around food access and food sovereignty, and (im)migration and housing justice.