Artist, musician, designer, and researcher committed to fostering participatory art, political activism, electroacoustic music, and storytelling, Ivan is a PhD researcher at the Interuniversity Graduiertenkolleg ‘Normativity, Critique, Change’ and the creative director of Resonar Lab, an international collective of artists, designers, musicians, and activists dedicated to promoting ecosocial transformations. He has experience as a professor at several universities and has guided multidisciplinary projects with a social impact, integrating art mediation, community engagement, and collaborative approaches. Ivan holds an MFA specializing in Music for Social Transformation from the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), an MFA in Sound Art from Konstfack University in Stockholm, and a specialization in Arts and New Technological Media from Universidad Nacional in Colombia, where he studied Industrial and Architectonic Design.

RECENT TEACHING

Guest lecturer at Global Challenges BASc Program
Brunel University
London, UK
2021-Present

Guest lecturer at School of Political Science
University of Essex
Essex, UK
2023-Present

Guest lecturer at School of Public Administration
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, USA
2023-Present

Associate Professor at Faculty of Arts and Design
Jorge Tadeo Lozano University
Bogotá, Colombia
2015-2020

Master Thesis Advisor at School of Social Sciences
University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam, Netherlands
2015-2018

Radical Sonic Storytelling, Trickster Poetics, and Counterhistorical Fabulations
This project explores the intersection of storytelling and music, examining their role in challenging dominant historical narratives and fostering epistemic and somatic resistance. Focusing on Vallenato, a Colombian genre with African, Indigenous, and Spanish roots, it investigates the music's connection to Black Atlantic traditions (Blues, Reggae, Hip Hop, etc.) and its capacity to defy social and artistic conventions.

Vallenato's lyrical storytelling is analyzed as a "counterhistorical sonic device" with the potential to recount silenced and alternative historical versions in order to challenge determinism, dominant discourses, and hegemonic history. The research also explores its ties to literary Magical Realism and its potential for alternative historicism.

Adopting a critical, practice-based methodology, the project integrates phenomenological, comparative, and performative ethnography, drawing from decolonial applied ethnomusicology. In its final phase, it will develop “radical sonic storytelling tools” to support ecosocial defenders in resisting oppressive narratives within interdisciplinary activism.

Research Interests:

• Activist Movements


• Environmental Justice

• Storytelling


• Resistance Narratives

• Ethnomusicology


• Speculative Design

• Participatory Performance

• De/anticolonial Studies

• Electroacoustic Music, Hip-hop and Folk Music

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

(2024) Radical Resonances, Social Transformations and Friendship. Chapter in the Encyclopedia of Radical Helping / Thick Press / Washington DC, USA.

(2023) Ohne Klang gibt es keine Resonanz –Without sound there is no resonance–. April edition, Magazine from the Montag Foundation Art and Society / Bonn, Germany.

(2023) Musicking as Somatic (Self-)Repair and Existential Storytelling as an Education Device. Institute for Art in Context / Berlin University of the Arts.

(2022) Musical Food Lab: Participatory Artistic Mediation to Strengthen the Intangible Heritage of Communities in the Colombian Caribbean. Latin American Food Design Magazine / Buenos Aires, Argentina.

(2022) Ohne Bewegung gibt es kleinen Klang –Without movement there is no sound–. March edition, Magazine from the Montag Foundation Art and Society / Bonn, Germany.

(2021) A Polyphony of Voices: Dialogical Artistic Research. Transitory White: Spinning the Bridges (3rd Issue) / Berlin University of the Arts.

(2018) Week of Dreams: A Community-Based, Music and Interactive Design Co-Production. DESIGNA 2018 ‘DESIGN & TERRITORY’ - International Conference on Design Research / University of Beira, Covilhã, Portugal

(2018) ‘Vacile Creativo’: An Immersive, Participatory Lab of Social Repair in the Colombian Caribbean. Carnival Voices - International Conference on Creative Social Practices / National University of Colombia.

(2016) An Oasis in the Middle of a Former Dumpster: Political Agency through Music, Art and Design. Conference MEDIATIONS, Art & Design Agency and Participation in Public Space / Royal College of Arts, London, UK.