‘LL: What’s the most surprising or intriguing thing you’ve learned from documenting and interviewing people thus far?
Christian: I love what’s going on agriculturally, that’s something that I think needs to happen in Puerto Rico. The idea that we buy things that are easily produced in Puerto Rico has always bugged me out. There’s several people that are doing a lot of stuff around agriculture – small sustainable farming that’s going on in Puerto Rico. I love the fact that we are getting back to that. It’s starting small scale which is good because that can be replicated in different communities.
‘LL: What’s DefendPR doing right now?
Christian: Right now, we are launching a call for artists to do an art exhibit, Viajero (Adrian Roman) is leading that. We want to engage people that are interested in doing something but don’t necessarily know what to do. So, we want to keep the momentum going. We are doing a call for artists from the island and also from the diaspora once again making that connection through an artistic way, looking for art work that represents what’s going on in Puerto Rico. That’s the big thing we are doing now. Beyond that is sort of up in the air. I think we are going to continue documenting. The next phase is to document people here in the diaspora who are doing things for Puerto Rico.
Artist submissions are officially open from January 6th-January 20th. Get more information on the upcoming exhibit and the movement itself at www. defendpr.com and on social media @defendpr.