Sole-authored book
Explosivity: Following What Remains (University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming 2025). Andrea Gaffney, Photographer
Co-authored chapter
Javier Arbona-Homar & Julie Sze. “Waterfront/Battlefront: Vallejo’s Black Landscapes of Resistance Against Police and Environmental Violence.” Routledge Handbook of Architecture, Urban Space and Politics II (Routledge, forthcoming 2024).
Peer Reviewed
“Anti-memorials and World War II Heritage in the San Francisco Bay Area: Spaces of the 1942 Black Sailors’ Uprising” (2016) Landscape Journal – LINK
“Vieques, Puerto Rico: From Devastation to Conservation and Back Again,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, Volume XVII, Number 1, Berkeley: The International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (2005). LINK
–Please contact me if you are searching and need a copy
Edited Forum
“The Explosivity of Kelp,” Society and Space, Caren Kaplan, Gabi Kirk, and Tess Lea, editors. Everyday Militarisms: Hidden in Plain Sight/Site Forum, March 9, 2020. LINK
Chapters in Edited Collections
“The Port Chicago Sailors’ Wildcat Strike,” Rachel Brahinsky and Alex Tarr (eds.), A People’s Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area, University of California Press, 217-219.
“Trial by the Bay: Treasure Island and Segregation in the Navy’s Lake” (2017). Urban Reinventions: San Francisco’s Treasure Island. Lynne Horiuchi and Tanu Sankalia, eds. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press ON WORLDCAT / ORDER FROM PRESS
Critical Writings
Suspunk: Thinking with Suspicious Packages (2016; collaboration with Bryan Finoki and Nick Sowers), Harvard Design Magazine, No. 42
Forget Me Not: on police memorials and injustice at The New Inquiry.
“Ecologies of Practices in a Post-Military Cinema” / “Ecología de prácticas en el cine posmilitar” (2016). Beatriz Santiago Muñoz: A Universe of Fragile Mirrors (exhibition catalog). María Elena Ortiz, curator and editor. Pérez Art Museum Miami.
Co-authored piece with Demilit – on a monument to networked surveillance in downtown Oakland: “OKLDCAAN: Capital Building of the Oakland Security Cloud,” The Funambulist no. 1 (Militarized Cities).
Zone, and Zone Out, essay for Progressive Planning — on planners, policing, and silence.
Variable World: Bay Model Tour & Salon (talk transcript) — an event co-curated with Chris Woebken and Avant.org
A review of Findery, a geoweb app, at the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, on the combination of a “cartographic sensibility with a community that shares a passion of—and for—a mediated place.”
Podcasts
Interview with Vallejo Sun about combined police and environmental violence
Funambulist with Demilit — A Weaponized Urbanity: Morning Drift in Militarized Downtown Oakland
Participation
Site and urban design consulting with the Block Party: From Independent Living to Disability Communalism team, for Reset: Towards a New Commons exhibition at the Center for Architecture, Summer 2022, co-curated by Barry Bergdoll and Juliana Barton.
Winter Session 2013: Land, Place, Visuality
Summer Session 2013: Walking Seminar
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•••
Selected Talks…
Landscapes of Explosivity, UC Berkeley Geography Colloquium February 12 2020
Memory/Cloud: a San Francisco Police Department Memorial, at Princeton University, School of Architecture, PhD Colloquium
Footprinting the Urban Security Cloud, Emerging Voices series, Taubman College, University of Michigan, 2015
Military Abstractions: The Hidden Architecture of State Secrecy, University of Nevada, Reno, 2014
MIT History, Theory, and Criticism forum on blogs and architecture criticism, with Kazys Varnelis and Mark Jarzombek (moderator).
Previously…
Happy Fifty Years, Gentrification! … Does Gentrification Gentrify without Gentrifiers?
An Unsolicited charter for the Very Large Organization, an exhibition by Jordan Geiger, 2013.
Architecture’s Avatars, Fulcrum, Issue 69, Architectural Association, March 4, 2013.
The Rise Of the Darists, PLAT Journal: On the Bias, Issue 2.5, Fall/Winter 2012, Rice School of Architecture. [For a PDF draft without images see Final submission 2012 | post].
http://www.platjournal.com/ (please support this publication by ordering the journal via their website)
…
….& more collaborative works with Demilit…
Landscape fiction: Demilit (co-author), “[In]Visible Sites”, published for the exhibition Timing Is Everything, University of California, San Diego, University Art Galley, curated by Michelle Hyun (presented at opening events and accompanied with a La Jolla walk).
Footprinting Secrecy, Volume, number 36, Summer 2013.
They Came To The Desert And Were Consumed By A Flickering Fortress, The State: Speculative Geographies, 2012.
Terra Incognita, The New City Reader: Puzzles, no. 03, Istanbul Design Biennial, 2012. | Biennial: Link | COMPLETE text: HTML | Original paper
& Even more of my stuff (if you’re still here)…
Journey to the transnational narcopolitical city, DomusWeb, August 24, 2011.
“It’s in Your Nature: I’m Lost in Paris,” (On the work of Francois Roche and RSie), Territory: Architecture Beyond Environment, Volume 80, Issue 3, pages 46–53, May/June 2010. PDF:
“Dangers in the Air: Aerosol architecture and its invisible landscapes,” Alphabet City: Air, Number 15, MIT Press and Alphabet City Media. (An edited excerpt appears at Design Observer, October 21, 2010)
“Spaces for Architectural Discourse, and the Unceasing Labor of Blogging,” MAS Context: Information, Number 7, Fall 2010
“La matrícula que no paró de subir: una mirada al presupuesto de la Universidad de California,” Diálogo Digital, May 31, 2010
“Home Cooking,” (on the work of Santiago Cirugeda and his studio, Recetas Urbanas), SAM, Number 2, August 2007, Number 02, 2007, Basel: Swiss Architecture Museum, 48-51.
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•••
Here are more book reviews…
“What Is a City?: Rethinking the Urban After Hurricane Katrina,” Historical Geography, Volume 38, 2010, 145-183. PDF:
“The Known World: The State of Mapping,” Forum for Urban Design, 2007
•••
Selected posts from the blog Archives…
Je Suis Charlie Hebdo? | The Air for States | Interview with Toshiko Mori | Architecture Imagined as Ecological | Rolex Watches | Slumdog Millionaire Series
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Some reviews of our work in press…
Ben Valentine, “Exposing Our Infrastructure: MacroCity Conference Reveals the Secret Machinery of Cities” (about the Macro City conference and walking Oakland’s securitized infrastructure) at core77.
Léopold Lambert, “Weaponised Urbanity” (about Demilit’s Oakland walking tours) for DAMN 09.
•••
see also https://ucdavis.academia.edu/javierarbona.
And here are more links…
A founding member of DM / Demilit / Decoding Military Landscapes:
Demilit is an experimental research and landscape arts collective founded in 2010 by Bryan Finoki, Nick Sowers, and Javier Arbona. We work with various collaborators on specific projects, performances, and improvisational exploring. We draw from architecture, sound art, creative writing, geography and other fields to produce work that encompasses events, texts, web memes, and more.
La Ciudad Usada was a workshop held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to research everyday social uses of the city, while also examining dominant discourses of sustainability and ecology about the transformation of urban realms. La Ciudad Usada was an intensive skills, methods and discussion seminar, open to the public, and hosted by non-profit arts organization BetaLocal, San Juan PR, August 2010 [link].
