This month, the Atlanta Center for Photography (ACP) introduced Puerto Rican nonprofit Beta—Local as its Bookshelf Resident, installing “La recia voluntad de permanecer en el lugar” in the center’s Reading Room at 546 Edgewood Ave. SE.
The residency runs alongside “Le’Andra LeSeur: After Stone, After Ruins (Notation 2)” through April 18 and gives visitors another way into LeSeur’s exhibition.
Based in San Juan, Beta—Local has built artist-run cultural infrastructure in Puerto Rico for more than a decade, operating as a working hub for artists, cultural workers, and the public. The nonprofit launched in 2009 and now runs three free, connected programs: La Práctica, a long-term seminar/residency where artists and cultural workers develop projects; The Harbor, an international residency that brings visiting artists and thinkers into conversation with the local community; and La Iván Illich, an open school that offers public workshops and courses.
A residency that works as a guide
ACP’s Bookshelf Residents respond to exhibitions on view often by selecting books and materials for its Reading Room. Beta—Local pushed the format further. Instead of offering a neat reading list, the group set up a mix of items to encourage visitors to follow their curiosity. Start here. Jump there. Then circle back.
“When someone first walks into the Reading Room, they see a loose index of texts and objects, fragments gathered together,” the Beta—Local team shared with Rough Draft. “There is no single centerpiece, no fixed narrative.”
That lack of structure, ironically, shapes the experience. Visitors don’t move through a single storyline. They build their own path.
“What we hope they notice first is that this is an invitation to read,” the team said. “… the viewer is asked to read with us, moving between fragments and forming their own connections.”
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The installation includes mini publications and bright-printed pieces arranged alongside handmade and found objects. Each piece suggests a backstory and/or raises a question.
“We bring together essays and … objects as a sample of how we think and work,” Beta–Local told Rough Draft. “The objects, some constructed, others found, carry narrative weight. Their meanings are not fully transparent; they hold slightly opaque histories.”
“The strong will to remain in place.”
Beta—Local titled the installation “La recia voluntad de permanecer en el lugar,” roughly, “the strong will to remain in place,” drawing on a line from Caribbean writer and philosopher Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation and linking it to current conditions in Puerto Rico.
“The title ‘La recia voluntad de permanecer en el lugar … feels especially urgent in our context,’” the Beta—Local team shared. “In a moment of massive displacement on the island, remaining in place is an active stance. It requires intention, commitment, and collective effort.”
For visitors who want to follow Beta—Local’s trail of references, the Reading Room points to Puerto Rico-rooted thinkers and researchers, including novelist and critic Marta Aponte Alsina, historian Fernando Picó, and archaeologists Jaime R. Pagán-Jiménez and Reniel Rodríguez Ramos.
In conversation with Le’Andra LeSeur
Beta—Local’s Bookshelf Residency lives alongside LeSeur’s exhibition, which explores how the body moves through places shaped by history and violence and describes “wayfinding as an embodied practice” across coastal Georgia sites.
“Her practice attends to land as a site of memory and embodied history,” the Beta—Local team said. “Ours approaches land as a contested text. One that must be read through fragments, references, and material traces.”
For visitors who know Puerto Rico mostly through tourism imagery, political headlines, or disaster coverage, Beta—Local hopes the residency complicates the picture without turning it into a lesson plan.
“Puerto Rico is a complex and intellectually active place,” the team said, “shaped by layered histories, internal debates, cultural production, and ongoing acts of self-definition.”