CSPSTL is a multiplatform convening that takes on the spatial politics of the city. Organized by the Divided City, an Andrew Mellon Foundation–funded initiative in Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities, CSPSTL constellates around a series of citywide exhibitions addressing the entanglements between (sub)urbanism, landscape and race.

As the second in the Divided City’s Summer City Seminar, the conference brings together scholars and creative practitioners working at the intersection of spatial and political concerns, with a particular eye to the ways creative practice and historical research mingle in the fields of exhibition and institution building. Across a range of disciplines — art, architecture, geography, history and urbanism — the participants all bring to the table a particular way of seeing, of responding to and of communicating the imbrications of politics and space.

Central to the orientation of the seminar is building relationships among institutions, practitioners and activists in St. Louis and beyond, and providing a platform for collaborative projects across the city. As a form of social practice itself, the seminar will structure a convergence among institutions and projects in order to nurture critical dialogue around art, politics and history in St. Louis. Our goal over the long weekend will be to reflect upon, and to put into practice, a range of methodologies — historical, creative, architectural, geographic, etc. — that reorient our received ways of approaching the Divided City.