Chucho (Jesús) Ocampo
CV
Chucho (Jesús) Ocampo Aguilar
08. 02. 1991 - México.
+1 6176427372
Chuchoocampo.com
Chucho@derivelab.org
Derivelab.org
Education
Spring 2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Master of Science in Art, Culture, and Technology (SMACT)
- Thesis project How to Never Walk in a Straight Line Again. Focused on artistic methodologies for environmental scale understanding through artistic research and experimentation. Advisor: Gediminas Urbonas. Readers: Krzysztof Wodiczko, Marjetica Pötrc and Tobias Purtih.
- Experimental research and fabrication of interfaces for environmental awareness on public space.
Fall 2015 Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Escuela de Diseño y Arquitectura (EDA).
- Thesis project Espacio Abierto on pedestrian crossing in the border of Tijuana and San Isidro. Recipient of first prize thesis award and published in different architecture platforms. Advisor: Marcelo Sanchez.
Professional
Experience
2013 – present Derive LAB, Partner, and creative director
Art, architecture, and urbanism practice based in Querétaro, México
- Project coordination and creative direction for architectural and urban projects.
- Conceptualization and design, art direction, project development and construction administration for the BEMA project, a cultural center dedicated to art, architecture, and city themes.
- Administration and supervision of execution of architectural projects (design and civil works): PA Project, Casa Guadalquivir, Refugio Barichara, BEMA.
- Development of architecture and public art projects: Vivir Arriba 2018, Monumento 2017, Mesarrón 2017.
- Support in the coordination of the DERIVAS project in its four editions, as well as assistance in art direction and editorial assistance for the publication under the same name, a product of trips to different cities around the world: Bogotá, Buenos Aires, GPRD (Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong) and Ciudad Juárez.
2016 – present BEMA, Co- founder
Cultural center based in Querétaro, México, that aims to act as a platform for art, architecture, and urbanism projects.
- Development of linkage strategies with artists, residents, and collaborators.
- Implementation of linkage and funding strategies with members, sponsors, and donors.
- Coordination and procurement of funds for the operation and development of projects for the cultural center.
- Organization of cultural events inside and outside the cultural center facilities.
2016 – present Fundación Multitud, Co-founder
Non-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion and development of cultural, artistic, and design projects for cities.
- Preparation of collaboration agreements with different public and private entities such as the Tourism Secretariat of the Municipality of Querétaro and the Culture Secretariat of the state of Querétaro for the development and execution of projects and programs.
- Support and collaboration in the implementation of strategies for the dissemination of culture through architecture and visual arts projects.
- Development of fundraising strategies and linking allies, sponsors, and donors.
2021 – present Nano Cal, Co-founder, partner
Company specialized in the manufacture of high purity lime coatings.
- Design and conceptualization of color palette, textures, and uses of lime coatings.
- Research on material experimentation and potential properties of lime products.
- Design and production of Nano Cal’s showroom, located in Querétaro, Mexico.
- Outreach and organization of practical workshops related to sustainable materials and construction methods.
2020 – 2023 ppppress,co-founder, editor, printer, designer
student run independent press.
- Enabled trainings, workshops, and classes taught to the broader MIT community and designed and produced public exhibitions of printed matter.
- Worked with labs and programs such as the Space Exploration Initiative, Architecture School, Imprint Publication, Threshold Journal, ACT, MIT Nano Lab, and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies archive.
- Collaborated with various artists and organizations such as Nicole L’huillier, Miriam Simun, Constanza Alarcon, MIT Asian American Association, NOMAS MIT, Vera Van de Seyp, Maggie Coblentz, Simone Lassar, Tobias Purtih, and Gediminas Urbonas
2022 Ecosistema Urbano, Artist and Designer
Socio environmental design and architecture firm based in Spain and USA.
- Worked closely with faulty and scientists from Universidad de Málaga to conceptualize public space instruments related to their field of research.
- Designed a variety of instruments including analemmatic clocks, interactive weather stations, playground objects that exemplified laws of thermodynamics, and wind instruments in the form of rotating masts and generators.
Research
Experience /
Grants
2022 – 2023 Taiwan Ministry of Culture grant for Latin America - Taiwan Initiatives
Awarded for the support of the project Invisible Interfaces developed in Taiwan in the summer of 2023.
2021 - 2022 MIT Art, Culture, and Technology program Post Graduate Fellow
Worked closely with faculty as well as continuing editorial projects and exhibitions within the department.
2021 – 2022 Harvard Film Study Center Fellow. Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Awarded to support the project Expect People to be Exhausted, a short film documenting the history of gunpowder and migration in Latin America.
2021 – 2022 FONCA (Mexican National Fund for Culture and the Arts) grant
Awarded for the project Interfaces de lo Invisible, presented in the Museum of the City of Querétaro in collaboration with UNAM’s Geoscience Center in México.
2021-2022 Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, Latin America – Taiwan Initiatives grant
Invisible Matters / Plastic Soup, in collaboration with Zonesound Creative, Chi Po Hao, Rae Yu ping Hsu, Nancy Valladares, and Luiza Bastos Lagues.
2021 MIT Transmedia Storytelling Collaborative grant
Awarded for editorial and bookmaking design project with the Center for Advanced Visual Studies Archive.
2020-2021 MIT Center for the Arts grant
In support of ppppress, a student and alumni run publishing platform within MIT.
2020 MIT Transmedia Storytelling Collaborative grant
for 3D immersive environment), MIT.
2020 MIT Art, Culture and Technology Pilot Year 2 increased-tuition Merit Fellowship
2020 MIT Art, Culture and Technology Pilot grant
To support the fabrication of pieces for the project Invisible Interfaces.
2019 MIT Art, Culture and Technology Pilot grant
to support traveling to Tultepec, Mexico to conduct fieldwork research on the history of gunpowder and pyrotechnics.
Teaching
Experience
Part Time Faculty The New School, Parsons School of Design’s Integrated Design Program. New York City, NY.
Fall 2023 Integrated Design Studio 2. Share Improvise, Record, Duplicate. The course introduces students to contemporary interdisciplinary research methodologies from art and design and uses the SIRD methodology to further their understanding of design research, artistic research, and their possible artistic or design outputs. Students are required to utilize The New School’s archives and resources as well as the city of New York as pedagogical tools to develop a series of projects related to their immediate political, social, or ecological environment.
Teaching
Assistant Harvard University, Art, Film, and Visual Studies program at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Cambridge, MA
Fall 2023 Making Things [Breaking Things]. Co taught with Senior Lecturer and artist Katarina Burin. The course reflects on the conceptual and ontological implications of "stuff" in a world of new materials and material obsolescence. Students engage innovation along with failure as motors for experimental practice and self-knowledge. Strong reflection is vested on the implications of programmed obsolescence present in everyday life and how breakage, recycling and adaptive reuse may be counterpoints to expectations of infinite growth. By cracking open objects to think about technology and manufacturing processes the class explores their potential as makers and our agency as consumers.
Visiting Lecturer Universidad Anáhuac, Campus Querétaro. School of Architecture. Soria, Gto.
Summer 2023 Taller Experimental de Arquitectura: Soria como Modelo. Taught with Urbanist Ximena Ocampo. The workshop aimed to use design, architecture, and environmental observation as methodologies to experiment on possible scenarios for the XIX Century textile factory and town of Soria, Guanajuato. Students analyzed the regional and planetary systems such as geological, hydric, infrastructural, historical, environmental, and social layers that meet and intersect local scales to inform their understanding of the case study.
Lecturer MIT, Art Culture and Technology program. Cambridge, MA
Spring 2023 Intro to Artistic Experimentation: Scale, Signal, Spectrum. The course offers an introduction to artistic experimentation through the lens of incommensurability. Focusing on the observation, measurement, and translation of the environment through artistic methodologies to understand the conceptual and political implications of scaling mechanisms that deal with time and space; them being biological, geological, astronomical, urban, or just mechanical. Students work range from printmaking, textiles, metalworking to time-based media or sound.
Fall 2022 Intro to Artistic Experimentation: Share, Improvise, Record, Duplicate. The course is structured as the mirror of a scientific research methodology, where collaboration, experiment design, time-based media and publication of results are a constant. Being a mirror of scientific research processes, SIRD methodology has special emphasis on collaborative explorations, hands on prototyping and fabrication, improvisation techniques, time-based media, and dissemination of information through printmaking and exhibition design.
Adjunct Faculty Wentworth Institute of Technology, School of Architecture. Boston, MA.
Spring 2022 Architecture core Studio 01. Students get familiar with different design and fabrication methodologies such as model making, drawing, material explorations, and architectural observation. Part of the duties in this position consisted of delivering two lectures to the school's first year cohort on various topics such as scale and section.
Fall 2021 Architecture core Studio 02. Students get familiar with different architecture methodologies, prototype building, basic computing software and modeling. Strong emphasis is placed on the broad understanding of what architecture could mean beyond modernist methodologies, walking as fieldwork, process driven presentations and prototypes, material, and spatial experimentation as well as multimedia explorations such as animation, casting, photography, and collage. Part of the duties in this position consisted of delivering two lectures to the school's first year cohort on various topics such as perception and vision.
Adjunct Faculty Universidad Anáhuac, Campus Querétaro. School of Architecture.
Spring 2019 Teaching position at Universidad Anahuac, Campus Querétaro, School of Architecture. Strong emphasis was placed on walking as fieldwork, understanding cases of Latin American cities and their contexts as well as understanding critical standpoints towards modernism and top-down development.
Adjunct Faculty Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Querétaro School of Architecture, Design and Art.
Spring 2018 Urban Methodologies and Designcourse. Co-taught with Ximena Ocampo and Francisco Paillie. Covered a historical overview of themes surrounding urbanism and architecture since the beginning of the 1900s, the difficulties and complications of urban scale and its critiques as well as working on an urban scale project.
Student Teaching
Assistantships MIT, Art Culture and Technology program. Cambridge, MA
Jan 2022 Making Across Media: Kites Cameras, and Kaleidoscopes. Three-week course co-taught with prof. Nida Sinnokrot in partnership with Sakiya center in Palestine. Worked on the conceptualization of the syllabus, research of materials and references for the class as well as assisting with lectures, fabrication demos, workshops, documentation, and critical analysis on early technologies and media archeology. Students’ projects culminated in an extended family of “air pieces” that related to the student’s individual research.
Spring 2021 Seminar in Art and the Public Sphere: Nuclear Aesthetics. Taught with Prof. Gediminas Urbonas and Arianna Mazzeo in partnership with MIT’s Nuclear Reactor Laboratory. Worked on student feedback, fabrication demos and conversations with the Nuclear Reactor operators and scientists to facilitate the conceptualization of work that dealt with VR technologies, deep time, ecology, and scientific instrumentarium.
Spring 2021 Advanced Workshop in Artistic Practice and Transdisciplinary Research – Common Ground: Art and Agriculture.Taught with prof. Nida Sinnokrot in partnership with Sakiya center in Palestine. Worked on student feedback, fabrication demos, and lectures for the design and edition of a publication of the class conversation and pieces.
Fall 2020 Advanced Workshop in Artistic Practice and Transdisciplinary Research: Choreographing the City.Taught with Gediminas Urbonas in partnership with Theatrum Mundi Prof. Richard Sennet, and chorographer Adesola Akinleye. Produced an eight-episode podcast based on a set of public virtual conversations held with a variety of guests.
Spring 2020 Advanced Projects in Art, Culture and Technology: Into the Wild, taught with prof. Tobias Putrih. The class looked at ways of representation of the environment through different media such as artificial intelligence platforms, signature prediction algorithms, paper model making and casting, and alternative cartographies. Worked closely with students to edit, design, and print a publication that served as the culmination of the class work throughout the semester.
Awards
2021 – 2022 FONCA (Mexican National Fund for Culture and the Arts) Award
Awarded for the project Invisible Interfaces.
2021 MIT’s Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts Prize
Awarded to three students every year at MIT for their art practice as students.
2020 MIT Department of Architecture Dean’s Office
Awarded for the project Planetary Interfaces.
2019-2020 MIT Department of Architecture Graduate Fellowship Award
2017 PECDA, Stimulus for Artistic Creation and Development
Awarded in recognition of the project “Vivir Arriba”.
2015 Best degree project from the School of Design and Architecture (EDA)
For the project “Open Spaces” in the city of Tijuana, Baja California.
2015 Alberto J. Pani Architectural Composition Award
In representation of the School of Design and Architecture (EDA).
2015 27th ENEA National Meeting of Architecture Schools, 1st Prize
For the project developed in Mexicali, BC, México. Category: Integration into the urban landscape.
Talks and
Conferences
2019 Congreso Sinápitica. Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, Ciudad Juárez.
2018 [Re] Imaginando la ciudad desde el borde. Instituto de Arquitectura, Diseño y Arte, Ciudad Juárez, México.
2017 Fighting Monoculture, the work of derive LAB, Design Trust, Hong Kong.
2015 Simposio Ciudades y Territorios Incluyentes, Mérida, México.
Exhibitions
2023 Scale, Signal, Spectrum. Sonic Sensory Lab. Taipei, Taiwan
2023 Scaling the World. Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab. Taipei, Taiwan
2022-2023 Interfaces de lo Invisible. Museum of the City of Querétaro, México
2022 ppppress show. MIT Wiesner Art Gallery. Cambridge, USA
2021-2022 Invisible Matters / Plastic Soup. Taipei Artist Village. Taipei, Taiwan
2021 MIT’s Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts virtual exhibition
2020 Tempo Falacioso, Superimposiciones Botánicas. Chuquimarca Project space. Chicago, IL.USA
2020 Who Feels at Home in the Invisible World. Online exhibition, MIT
2019 Asteroide Perec. French Aliance Gallery, Ciudad de México, México
2018 Memorias en Transito. Galeria Libertad, Querétaro, México
2018 Print Show 4th edition. Galería DaSubstanz, Querétaro, México
2017 In solidarity: Living, Making, Together (Marjetica Pötrc and Design for The Living World). Muca ROMA, Ciudad de México
2017 Tierra de Nadie. Galería municipal Querétaro, México
2017 Open Studio. Galería DaSubstanz, Querétaro, México
2019 Falsos Límites. Galería Libertad, Querétaro, México
2018 Vivir Arriba, an action by Chucho Ocampo. Galería DaSubstanz, Querétaro, México
2018 Vivir arriba. Museo de la Ciudad, Querétaro, Mexico
Publications
2023 Ocampo, J. Scale, Signal, Spectrum, ppppress, Cambridge, MA.
2023 Coblentz, Maggie. Ocampo J. editor. Unidentified Food Objects, in collaboration with MIT Space Exploration Initiative, ppppress, Cambridge, MA.
2022 Ocampo, J. Momentary Instrument, ppppress, Cambridge, MA.
2022 CAVS series published by ppppress (with Aarti Sunder, Chi-Pohao, Yimeng Zhu), Wiesner Gallery, MIT
2021 Ocampo, J., Tobias Putrih. Into the Wild, ppppress, Cambridge, MA.
2020 Ocampo, J. The Struggle Between, in collaboration with MIT CAVS Archive, ppppress, Cambridge, MA.
2019 Ocampo, J. Escala y tiempo. Derivas, vol. 1 Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, pp. 90-93.
2018 Ocampo, J., Ocampo, X., Paillie, F. y Yu-Pearson, H. (2018). The urbanist kids of San Francisquito. In H. Karssenberg, R. Danenberg and V. Doumpa, ed., The city at eye level for kids, pp. 271-274. Rotterdam: Stipo. Available in: https://bernardvanleer.org/app/uploads/2019/06/eBook_CAEL_Kids_Book_Design_Kidsgecomprimeerd.pdf.
2018 Ocampo, J. Vivir Arriba. Querétaro: Gold Rain.
Links
4.301 – Intro to Artistic Experimentation – course, Fall 2022 - MIT
Share, Improvise, Record, Duplicate course video:
https://vimeo.com/781834956
Interfaces de lo Invisible – Artistic research project
Project presentation:
https://vimeo.com/787428870
Alewife Interplanetary Antenna – Artistic research project
Documentation video:
https://vimeo.com/555470055
Expect People to be Exhausted – Artistic Research Project
Essay film:
https://vimeo.com/413129039
psw: Tultepec
Webpage:
https://chuchoocampo.com/
Bio
Chucho (Jesús) Ocampo Aguilar is a Mexican artist and architect. At the heart of his practice lies the concern of how, through interfaces, workshops, walking, and appropriation of spaces can we misuse, misinterpret, and detour deterministic conceptions of our milieu. Using drifting/erring as a tool, Chucho seeks to challenge preconceptions around scale, use-function, bureaucracy, and our relation to more than human entities. Chucho holds a Science Master in Art, Culture and Technology from MIT, where he cofounded ppppress, a student and alumni run independent press. In parallel, Ocampo works as creative director and partner in dérive LAB: an art, architecture, and urbanism firm with projects related to housing, urban design, public space interventions and cultural management, and is cofounder of BEMA: a cultural center in Queretaro, Mexico. Ocampo has taught and researched in the Art, Culture and, Technology program at MIT, Parsons School of Design, and the Art, Film, and Visual Studies program at Harvard University.