TBA21 on st_age: Recent Episodes
TBA21 on st_age
TBA21 on st_age is TBA21’s research and commissioning digital space. Based on long-term relationships of trust, it reaches out to bring a multiplicity of voices and contexts into conversation, supporting artist’s needs throughout both research and practice.
TBA21 on st_age focuses on environmental and social contemporary artistic practices, and presents video, animation, sound, and text works, as well as projects specifically designed to be experienced online. These are accompanied by a series of contextual materials, which make both the work and the research behind it accessible to a broader audience. These materials include artist-curator conversations, editorial podcasts, research clusters, and calls to actions, as well as the backst_age series, which connects the different projects through conversations, video glossaries, and curated views. All featured works remain the property of the artists and authors.
With the rise of artificial intelligence, a new frontier emerges in human cognition and experience. Concepts such as consciousness and creativity are constantly redefined by algorithms and code performances. Extraction, manipulation, and radicalization are some of the intensified side effects of applying computational techniques to traditional media. Can adopting radical transparency, decentralization, and the inclusion of non-human perspectives help us steer this new media toward becoming a productive force of sustainability and regeneration? One of the central topics of this episode is the concept of deep fakes, an emergent technology with profound societal implications. The episode further delves into its intricacies through a podcast hosted by Marta Peirano, a journalist specializing in technology and power, who is joined by researcher specializing in deep fakes Henry Ajder and human rights advocate and technologist Sam Gregory. Together, they offer invaluable perspectives on the opportunities and challenges posed by synthetic media. Credits:Contributors: Henry Ajder and Sam GregoryConducted by Marta Peirano
For video podcast in sign language please visit st_age website on the following link: https://www.stage.tba21.org/detail/ocean-for-all-----------------------------------Abecedarium. The Ocean in Sign Language is the name of a multi-year educational and participatory project in collaboration with ENS, Ente Nazionale Sordi (Italian Deaf Agency), and CNR ISMAR, Institute of Marine Sciences.The main idea of the project is to create an eco-glossary in sign language, beginning with Italian sign language, before moving to other countries and international signs related to the marine world and the climate emergency. The ocean covers almost the entire Earth, and all human lives depend on the ocean—from the air we breathe to the food we eat to what we wear. Yet the ocean is also endangered because of the great impact of human activities. To be able to care for the Ocean it is absolutely fundamental that everybody has access to artistic content and scientific knowledge without exclusion. We all need to be involved in safeguarding the planet, and everyone must have the information and tools required to access it. ‘Abecedarium, The Ocean in Sign Language’ proposes a vision of an ocean sea as an open access for all to information. This is an engaging and inspirational ocean, where different expressions and experiences converge, and are also translated into tangible manifestations related to contemporary culture. Art, in the values it expresses, can be an effective means of social development to achieve this change. Building the possibility of interpreting our history together through training activities, and creating new forms of expression for new situations, for new worlds, means opening up to new areas of cultural growth, thereby guaranteeing processes of democracy, equity, exchange, and cultural interaction between the various components of society.Contributors: Angela Pomaro and Mirko SantoroConducted by Valeria Bottalico
Born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, Fana Fraser is currently a U.S. based contemporary dance artist who explores the nature and essence of things within a framework of exploratory embodiment. Her short film, nesting (2023), was filmed both in and near water, at the intersection of physical and philosophical constructs of borders, urgency, and care. It enjoins us to consider the environment, our responsibilities, and our humanity, and, although the film was shot on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, it evokes a feeling of Caribbean consciousness and reality. Three artists who live and work in the Caribbean region—dance practitioners Sonja Dumas (host) and neila ebankhs, from Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica respectively, as well as Trinidad and Tobago poet Shivanee Ramlochan—examine the work in the context of the Caribbean’s relationship to its environment, the ache of its past, and musings on its future.Sonja DumasCredits:Contributors: Shivanee Ramlochan and neila ebankhsConducted by Sonja Dumas
In this podcast, artist and researcher Susana Jiménez Carmona talks with scientists Claudio Barría, a marine biologist, and Michel André, a bioacoustician. Both are involved to different degrees in the artistic production and research project ruido ê by Silvia Zayas, an audiovisual and performing artist—a fragment of the film ruido ê can be seen on this same platform. Some issues raised by or arising during the development of this project are addressed here by Barría and André, including interspecific coexistence in coastal cities, encounters with elusive electric rays, the effects of anthropogenic noise on living creatures and marine ecosystems, and collaborations between disparate humans.Text by Susana Jimenéz CarmonaCredits:Conducted by Susana Jimenez CarmonaContributors: Michel André and Claudio Barria
The Climate Matters podcast will delve into the socio-political and economic contexts surrounding the climate change conversation in India. Through engaging discussions and expert insights, our guests will shed light on the frameworks and challenges related to climate policy and environmental law with a special focus on the communities most affected by climate change. The podcast will take a comprehensive approach to unpacking the complexities of climate action in India.
This podcast was produced and hosted by Khoj team members Alina Tiphagne, Head of Media and Communications, and Isha Bhattacharya, Junior Curator and Program Manager, who are accompanied by award-winning independent science journalist Disha Shetty, who writes mainly on public health, climate change, and women; Shibani Ghosh, environmental lawyer and fellow at the Centre of Policy Research (CPR), who specializes in environmental and access to information laws; and Awadhendra Sharan, Director of the Centre for study of developing societies (CSDS), whose research interests are in the fields of urban and environmental studies, present in his most recent publication Dust and Smoke: Air Pollution and Colonial Urbanism, India (2020).
Credit: Contributors Disha Shetty, Shibani Ghosh, and Awadhendra Sharan Conducted by Alina Tiphagne and Isha Bhattacharya
Link to full st_age episode: https://www.stage.tba21.org/episode/khoj-and-zuleikha-chudari
This podcast is based on the work of the artist Irene de Andrés, A orillas del Manzanares (On the Banks of the Manzanares River, 2022), whose research originates in a pool shaped like an ocean liner, known as La Isla (the island), which was built in the Madrilenian Manzanares river in the 1930s.
With the help of two experts—Malú Cayetano, landscape designer and forestry engineer, and David Uribelarrea del Val, professor of geomorphology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid—we open a conversation about the Manzanares river, understood as a theater of memory, that puts into circulation the layers and flows of a city in relation to the forms of life that its river has made and will continue to make possible.
Violeta Janeiro Alfageme
Credits: Contributors: Malú Cayetano and David Uribelarrea del Val Conducted by Violeta Janeiro Alfageme
A piece of architecture is a fraction of a more extensive infrastructure. An experience of a building lingers, capturing the essence of a particular time and place. Modern architecture created motifs that traveled to other cities. Versions of these motifs often evoke a sense of familiarity when their variations are encountered. Some modern monuments' direct relationship to past regimes puts them at risk of being neglected, destructed, repurposed, or even preserved for myriad reasons. Often, there is no comprehensive framework in place to address their significance or ensure their preservation. This podcast delves into the interpretation of monumental projects as evidence of intricate relationships between regimes. It also reflects on the intangible yet profound impact of stories and their transformative impact on architecture, revealing the complex interplay between politics, imagination, and the ever-changing nature of constructed environments.
Ala Younis
Credits: Contributors: Dina Taha and Ali Yass Conducted by Ala Younis https://www.stage.tba21.org/episode/sahil-naik
Focusing on the fascinating species of the sperm whale, this conversation brings together José Luis Espejo, researcher and curator, and Txema Brotons, biologist specialized in whales and acoustics, and Tursiops' Association scientific director. The podcast proposes an archaeology of the means by which science and other branches of knowledge first began to listen to and classify cetacean sounds. The scientific research carried out can help us understand the impact of anthropogenic sound on the communication systems of whales, with a focus on the cachalots.
The podcast departs from talk took place at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, on May 25, 2023, as a part of the public program of the exhibition “Wu Tsang: Of Whales.”
Are you eager to dive deeper into the Ocean? Explore the vast depths of knowledge and immerse yourself in https://ocean-archive.org/, TBA21–Academy’ digital platform.
Credits: Txema Brotons in conversation with José Luis Espejo Cover image: Cocos Research Expedition, 2014. Photo: Jose Alejandro Alvarez.
In this podcast Carlos Duarte, scientist and oceanographer, discusses how anthropogenic noise—meaning noise produced by human beings and the machines they make and use—produces an impact on marine fauna, and asks how it is possible to reverse this impact of human pollution. Duarte tells us about the efforts to understand how sound communication functions in the Ocean among the different species, and the importance of art in conveying this to the general public in order to put policies into action.
The podcasts consists of interventions by Carlos Duarte, extracted from the conversation with sound artist Jana Winderen, in a talk moderated by curator and researcher José Luis Espejo that took place at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid on April 18, 2023, which was part of the public program of the exhibition “Wu Tsang: Of Whales.”
Are you eager to dive deeper into the Ocean? Explore the vast depths of knowledge and immerse yourself in https://ocean-archive.org/, TBA21–Academy’ digital platform.
Credits: Speaker: Carlos Duarte Cover image: Whales, Silverbanks Research Expedition, 2013. Photo: Jose Alejandro Alvarez.
Artist Bo Choy speaks with Sayana Namsaraeva, an anthropologist from Buryatia, a republic in Eastern Siberia bordering Mongolia, whose work focuses on the Indigenous cosmologies of the people from her region. Together they delve into animated landscapes that surround Lake Baikal, the deepest and oldest freshwater lake on the planet.Their conversation considers the intimate connection between these largely untouched landscapes and the rich fabric of belief systems, Indigenous cosmologies, oral traditions, and mythologies that emerge from them. Moving through their shared and diverging influences spanning pre-Buddhism shamanisms, Chinese and Mongolian Buddhisms, Feng Shui, and ancient eastern philosophies, Bo Choy and Sayana Namsaraeva discuss the spirit-life of these lands as they rub up against planetary climate urgencies, and contemplate how ancient wisdoms can have a vital role in the local and global relational ecologies we must form for the future.If you want to delve deeper into the permafrost, visit the full online programme Dissolving Earths https://dissolving.earth/Credits:Soundscape and sound-editing by Either/Or Productions.Cover image: Bo Choy, ‘These Yearnings Of The Exiled Souls, To Which Time Shall We Send Them?,’ 2022, video still
Cultural theorist, Astrida Neimanis’ theory of Hydrofeminism, positions water as an ever-shifting body that connects all beings and archives all histories. Unlike other bodies of water however, the permafrost wishes to remain still. Neimanis speaks with permafrost hydrologist, Nikita Tananaev to discuss the cultural, philosophical, and ecological implications of permafrost degradation as it disrupts ancient ecosystems suspended in the ice.This podcast was first released by RW MACBA, before the UK sanctions of the Dissolving Earths program were lifted.The soundscape and sound-editing is by Either/Or Productions.https://dissolving.earth/Credits:Cover image by Robert Bye
Drawing on the importance of poetry and the practice of symbolic interpretation for an evolving politics in Omarzad’s practice, this podcast is hosted by philosopher and writer Federico Campagna, who is joined by contributors Dr Lucy Mercer, lecturer of creative writing at Goldsmith University and author of the recent poetry book Emblem (Prototype, 2022), and Arianna Dalla Costa, from the Warburg Institute, researcher on the ancient arts of divination and geomancy.Two areas of tension are explored: poetry and politics; magic and science. Emblems, as thresholds between image and text, are discussed with Dr Mercer: their origin and definition, symbology and function, as well as their convergences and divergences with memes and instagram motivational posts. Dalla Costa discusses divination and geomancy, looking into their etymologies and particularities within the context of the intellectual encounter between different monotheistic religions in the Medieval Mediterranean, challenging contemporary understandings of the age of the Crusades as a time of intolerance. Credits:Contributors Lucy Mercer and Arianna Dalla CostaConducted by Federico Campagna
The work of Ana María Millán (Santiago de Cali, 1975) uses the language of video games to channel collective work processes, in which she addresses diverse realities that are constructed as they are enunciated. Popular feminism, the struggle against extractivism, and the Colombian Pacific have been key issues of Millán’s work in recent years. Through the voices of philosopher Michael Marder, who talks about his thinking on the spirituality of plants, and sociologist and popular feminist activist Betty Ruth Lozano, we explore ways of thinking that inform Ana María Millán's practice.Catalina LozanoCredits:Contributors: Michael Marder and Betty Ruth Lozano Conducted by Catalina Lozano
This podcast, conducted by visual artist and film scholar Pallavi Paul, explores the relationship between image making and the ecological. Departing from artist Pranay Dutta’s piece Neti (2022), dealing with the Sundarbans regions in South-East Asia, Paul interviews artist, photographer, environmental campaigner, writer, and curator Ravi Agarwal, and filmmaker, video artist, and film scholar Shaunak Sen. Unfolding across geological time scales on the one hand and microscopic cellular life on the other, the 'ecological' is often in excess of optical infrastructures. What does this mean for photography and cinema? Is an apocalyptic world a world without people or a world without images? What is the stake of art in ecological justice?Credits:Contributors Ravi Agarwal and Shaunak SenConducted by Pallavi Paul
This podcast accompanies the work Pájaro, cómeme (2022) by artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz. Hosted by María Montero Sierra, Head of Program of TBA21–Academy, it deals with the role that the Ocean takes in the practices of decolonization in the Caribbean, and how these affect particularly to Puerto Rico, today a non-incorporated territory of the USA, a free associated state with self-government status. Montero Sierra is joined by contributors Reniel Rodríguez Ramos, Doctor of Anthropology at the University of Florida and Professor of the Social Sciences Program of the Universidad de Puerto Rico, who is specialized on Isthmo-Colombian and Transatlantic precolonial connections; and Nicole Cecilia Delgado, poet, translator, and co-founder of the printing workshop La Impresora, as well as author of adjacent islands | islas adyacentes (2022) which gives title to the podcast and encompasses the bodies of work subtropical dry (La Impresora, 2015) and Amoná (artist book, 2013); Delgado is interviewed by Uroyoán Noel, translator to English of islas adyacentes, as well as poet, critic and teacher at the New York University yand Stetson University. Through these voices we discover how the archaeological evidence inscribed in the natural spaces as well as the nomadic writings inspiring the recuperation of indigenous languages are two different strategies with a shared goal: decolonize the Caribbean. Both processes situate the Ocean not just as an atemporal space that links the prehistoric and foundational past of the Caribbean with the current moment, but which broaden the identitarian processes of the region by bringing in an oceanic vision. Credits:Contributors: Reniel Rodríguez Ramos, Nicole Cecilia Delgado & Urayoán Noel Conducted by María Montero SierraSound editor: Roberto Bosoms
This Spanish-language podcast, hosted by curator and researcher Carolina Jiménez, accompanies the premiere of the documentary Aquel verano del 22 [The Summer of ‘22] by artist and filmmaker Lorenzo Sandoval for TBA21. Carolina and Lorenzo have been in conversation over the years, often pursuing collaborative research together, as with their current project Rhythmepistemologies, which they are working on under the name Office for the Edition of Patterns and Poetics of Repetition. OEPPR is an organization for the analysis, production, and redistribution of the intersections between infrastructures and cosmovisions.
In this podcast they explore the continuities between body and landscape, addressing the implications of different semiotic, listening, and reading devices within and beyond human language. In doing so they consider provisional in(ter)ferences in the establishment of a new legal paradigm of the rights of nature for Mar Menor in Murcia. They review the extractivist logic that has been apparent in the region for decades, fueled by the interconnection of mining, agroindustry, and urbanism that flourished during Franco’s era of developmentalism. Considering how such conditions might be reassembled, they look/listen to flamenco from La Unión as both a symptom of pain and trauma and practice of inscribing a corpus of vernacular knowledge of the workers and the landscape otherwise.
Contributors: Teresa Vicente, Professor of Philosophy of Law and director of the Chair of Human Rights and Rights of Nature at the University of Murcia. Promoter of the ILP of the Mar Menor. Paco Paredes, flamencologist, writer, advisor to the Festival del Cante de las Minas de La Unión.
Sound clips: Rosendo García Fernández, Minera and Taranta. Recording of the Festival del Cante de las Minas de La Unión, 2022. Baldomero Cortés Heredia, Minera and Taranta. Recording of the Festival del Cante de las Minas de La Unión, 2022.
Acknowledgements: dublab BCN
This podcast, which accompanies the video work The Mountain That Hid by Sim Chi Yin on TBA21 on st_age, is hosted by researcher and curator Kathleen Ditzig. Through the perspective of literature and the work of Tash Aw and Preeta Samarasan, it examines how poetic license and personal family stories can speak to uncomfortable political Cold War histories that are part of nation-building projects in Southeast Asia. Aw and Samarasan are two diasporic Malaysian writers, whose works have included familial and generational narratives to speak to the long reach of the region’s and Malaysia’s racial and political histories. Through their perspectives, this podcast touches on the necessary nuance of considering anti-colonial projects, the radicality of writing family histories, and the necessity of criticality in reviewing national histories and the gaps, erasures, and silences they leave in their wake.
Credits: Contributors Tash Aw & Preeta Samarasan Conducted by Kathleen Ditzig Cover image: Sim Chi Yin
This podcast, which accompanies the performance Carried Away: Beyond a Rooted Condition by Madison Bycroft, Nana (Anaïs) Pinay, and Léo Landon Barrett for TBA21 on st_age, is hosted by researcher and writer Jess Saxby. It draws links between the artwork’s themes of naming, taxonomy, and categorisation to the broader discipline of botany, and considers the performance’s location in the botanical gardens of Córdoba. Samir Boumediene is a historian whose research focuses on the search for medicinal plants in the 15th century, and Chanelle Adams is a multidisciplinary essayist, researcher, and translator who is currently working on the political ecology of medicinal plants in Madagascar. Through their insights we can trace histories of bioprospecting, taxonomy, and appropriation of knowledge and resources that continue to this day.
Credits: Contributors: Chanelle Adams and Samir Boumediene Conducted by Jessica Saxby Cover image: Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France
This podcast, accompanying Laia Estruch’s performance project for TBA21 on st_age, is hosted by curator, writer, and lifelong birder Max Andrews. It takes flight into the realm of birds, looking at politics and practices that disrupt dominant historical narratives and exceed scientific and cultural boundaries. Alex Holt is a spokesperson for Bird Names for Birds, a movement to decolonise bird names, and Hollis Taylor is a zoömusicologist specializing in birdsong. Through their perspectives we glimpse new and speculative kinds of human–bird narratives; what Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin have described as “minor ornithologies.”
Credits: Contributors: Alex Holt and Hollis Taylor Conducted by Max Andrews
Audio Clips Credits: PIED BUTCHERBIRD SINGING. “Wordsworth” abandons formal song with a coda of mimicry, recorded 28 September 2007 on Wordsworth Road, N Queensland at 4:10am. © Hollis Taylor / piedbutcherbird.net
SUPERB LYREBIRD SINGING. Audio clip #5: Mimicry of birdsong and two flute phrases from a “flute lyrebird” recorded at Enfield State Forest (130 kilometres from Allan’s Water) at 6:53 a.m. on 16 June 2013 by Hollis Taylor. © Hollis Taylor / flutelyrebird.com
The concept of "Minor Ornithology" was coined by Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin in 2013 and is their title of an ongoing series of multidisciplinary collaborations within their curatorial framework Reassembling the Natural / reassemblingnature.org and their edited publication, These Birds of Temptation (K. Verlag & Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2021).
In this podcast, sociologist and activist Ximena Cuadra Montoya is accompanied by two of the protagonists of the struggle for the defense and deprivatization of water in Chile: Manuela Royo, lawyer and former constituent of the Chilean Constitutional Convention, who is part of MODATIMA (Movement for the Defense of Water, Protection of the Earth and Respect for the Environment), along with activist Luz María Huenupi, spokeswoman of the Mapuche communities defending the Truful-Truful river, a sacred space to these communities that is endangered by a hydroelectric project in the Melipeuco territory.
Departing from Mapuche artist Seba Calfuqueo’s performance Ko ta mapungey ka (Water is also territory), at the Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía C3A in Córdoba on June 3, 2022, the podcast explores the relevance of the most fundamental element to sustain life in a country where water is privately owned as an inheritance of Augusto Pinochet’s Constitution. In the context of the upcoming vote about the Chilean Constitutional Convention on September 4, 2022, we will listen to their experiences and testimonies about the possible changes to come in Chile.
Credits: Contributors: Manuela Royo & Luz María Huenupi Hosted by Ximena Cuadra Montoya
In this podcast, anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Aarhus University, Denmark, meets Heather Anne Swanson, a fellow anthropologist at Aarhus University and collaborative partner for Sonia Levy’s film Creatures of the Lines (2021) previously presented on TBA21 on st_age. Tsing is the author of several books, including The Mushroom at the End of the World, as well as a co-editor of the digital project Feral Atlas together with Jennifer Deger, Alder Saxena Keleman, and FeiFei Zhou.
In the podcast, Tsing and Swanson discuss several of Tsing’s recent projects, while also describing the significance that these approaches had on Creatures of the Lines (2021). Along the way, this conversation covers wide-ranging topics, including Tsing’s notion of feral ecologies—i.e. those shaped by interactions with human infrastructures, but outside of the control of the humans who designed those infrastructures. The dialogue also features a special focus on oceanic and coastal contexts, including Tsing’s new work on mangroves in Southeast Asia and her idea of “fragmented porosities” as well as its conceptual links with Levy’s film on British canal worlds. Both cases highlight how colonial infrastructures are part and parcel of Anthropocene ecologies.
Departing from the work of Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa ‘Hocho’ (Abrirse las orejas / To Open One's' Ears, 2022) this podcast is hosted by the activist and researcher Aura Cumes, who is accompanied by the historian and anthropologist Edgar Esquit, and the economist, poet, creator, musician, and editor Kaypa' Tz'iken. Also taking Fray Francisco Morán’s 1695 Spanish-Ch’olti’ dictionary, Arte y vocabulario de la lengua Ch’olti’ as a reference, this podcast explores the geography and history of the Ch’olti’ community, as well as the process of christianization, colonial violence, genocide, and ethnocide to which this people were subjected together with other Mayan cultures, but also the defense mechanisms and fierce resistance with which they challenged it. This conversation looks into the past, but also defiantly into the present and future of the Mayan communities, in both their cultural-linguistic and political dimensions, with the aim of creating spaces of dialogue for those voices that have been silenced.
Contributors : Edgar Esquit & Kaypa' Tz’iken Hosted by Aura Cumes
Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa ‘Hocho’(Abrirse las orejas/To Open One's' Ears), 2022 Sound varying durations Field and voice recordings made with the assistance of Ameno Cordova and Stef Arreaga
Commissioned by TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary for TB21 on st_age and supported with extra funds from the Inga Maren Otto Fellowship (The Watermill Center, NY)
Image credit: Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa Huertos de los ch’olti (VII), 2021 Watercolor and pencil on paper, series of 21 29.7 x 20.6cm Courtesy of the artist
Released on the occasion of the 44th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting held in Berlin (May 23 - June 2, 2022), this podcast presents a conversation between Giulia Foscari (founder of UNLESS), Alan D. Hemmings, Carlo Barbante, and James N. Barnes on the urgencies facing the Antarctic and, in turn, planet Earth.
This conversation offers data and concrete arguments in support of the call to ‘Speak Up For Antarctica Now’ and sign the three Petitions for the protection of the Antarctic available here. The urgencies can be summarized as follows:
To meet the Paris Agreement targets of limiting global temperature increase to 2°C above pre-industrial levels until 2050, 60% of our planet’s proven hydrocarbon reserves must remain in the ground. To date, this percentage does not include the abundant hydrocarbon basins of Antarctica. While their extraction is currently banned by the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, the Prohibition of Mineral Resource Activities may be dangerously challenged as of January 2048. Extracting Antarctic hydrocarbons would have devastating effects not only on the continent, but on a global scale. It is urgent to sign the Petition to forever ban hydrocarbon extraction now and commit to decarbonizing our global economy.
To meet the United Nations’ pledge to protect 30% of the planet and its ocean by 2030, it is essential to establish Marine Protected Areas in the Southern Ocean. Known as the greatest planetary carbon sink due to its capacity to store 40% of anthropogenic CO2, the Southern Ocean is largely unprotected despite being home to thousands of unique species. The 26 member countries of the CCAMLR (Commission on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources) have the power to establish large marine sanctuaries in Antarctica and protect a site equivalent to the entire European Union. It is urgent to sign the Petition in support of the largest act of ocean protection in history, to safeguard biodiversity, abundance, and ecosystem health, and provide climate resilience.
To ensure true scientific cooperation in the only continent exclusively devoted to peace and science, as stipulated by Article III of the Antarctic Treaty, we need to commit to international stations in our Global Common. Only 1 out of the current 76 stations is a shared one. The deregulated proliferation of stations, often built in proximity to one another and conducting similar scientific research, mostly reflects a geopolitical strategy to overtly assert territorial claims and hinders the scientific potential of Antarctic programs. It limits the average surface area devoted to scientific laboratories to 13.5% and the scientist to staff ratio to 1:9. It is urgent to sign the Petition to advocate for international stations and reduce our contaminating footprint on the continent.
Credits: UNLESS Contributors: Carlo Barbante, James N. Barnes, and Alan D. Hemmings. Hosted by Giulia Foscari Produced by: TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary for TBA21 on st_age.
This podcast is a live recording from the talk between artist Janet Cardiff and essayist and professor Estrella de Diego Otero, which took place at the Real Academia de Bellas de San Fernando in Madrid on February 16, 2022. This event marked the beginning of the twenty-year anniversary celebrations of TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Introduced by Deputy Director and Treasurer of the Academia, Alfredo Pérez de Armiñán y de la Serna, and the Chairwoman of TBA21, Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, this dynamic conversation explores the work of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, an artist duo whose collaboration has been central to the development of the TBA21 Collection.
Originally commissioned by TBA21 for the 16th Sydney Biennale (2008), Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s sound installation The Murder of Crows is presented by TBA21 from February 17 to July 31, 2022, in collaboration with Matadero Madrid, in the cold chamber of the city’s former slaughterhouse. The work explores the physical and sculptural qualities of sound, via 98 loudspeakers that are distributed throughout the space, surrounding the viewer. With the human voice as a central element, as well as soundscapes and compositions by musicians such as Freida Abtan, Tilman Ritter, and Alexandr Alexandrov, The Murder of Crows deals with questions of desire, love, loss, and memory, using an ambiguous and fractured narrative.
An important reference to this work is Francisco Goya’s etching The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters (Caprinchos, 1799), which original plate is precisely preserved at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes San Fernando. Both works conjure a series of monsters, threats, and shadows born from the realm of dreams, but these are the result of human reason as well as the source of the artists’ creative process. In the Caprichos series, Goya, imbued with the spirit of the Enlightenment, criticized the tyranny, ignorance, and superstition of a political, religious, and social structure that advocated immobility as its sole strategy. By contrast, Cardiff and Miller's 2008 work responds to a new globalized world order, which also aspires to subjugation, but this one imposed through technology and consumption. If reason was Goya's response to escape ignorance and fanaticism, then in the present moment, which has maintained these same vices, the response resides in a utilitarian and polarizing reason, which is perhaps precisely the result of these vices. And as in Goya's time, the obscuring of reality, or the construction of false truths, continues to accompany us today.
In this timely conversation, Cardiff and de Diego discuss a wide range of topics ranging from questions of intimacy, dreams, trauma, memory, technology, cinematic experience, to working methods, and many others, in order to unravel Cardiff and Miller’s practice, while reflecting on the fascination that Goya’s oeuvre continues to arouse in the contemporary artistic sphere, as well as highlighting the points of convergence of past and present artistic expressions.
Credit: A conversation between Janet Cardiff and Estrella de Diego, introduced by Alfredo Pérez de Armiñán y de la Serna and Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza
Associate Professor of Anthropology at Aarhus University and Director of the Aarhus University Centre for Environmental Humanities, Heather Anne Swanson describes the tightened relationships between the oceans and the British canals. These infrastructures were introduced as part of the British empire and global shipping commerce in the 17th century. Since then, the canals have not merely transformed England’s landscapes and fresh waters as they were fashioned into an effective means to transport goods; they have also become an ecological space where ocean materialities and freshwater lifeworlds merge. Swanson invites us to question "What may be noticed if we study oceans from inland areas?" – a line of research that has grounded her collaboration in Sonia Levy's film, Creatures of the Lines, presented on st_age.
By Heather Anne Swanson with Sonia Levy
This podcast, departing from Regina de Miguel's experimental sound piece for st_age, is hosted by writer and curator Àngels Miralda in conversation with specialists in topics related to the site of Río Tinto in Andalucia. Javier García Fernández is a historian specializing in the social struggles of rural Andalucía, and Juan Ángel Vaquerizo is a physicist working in the Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC-INTA) in Torrejón de Ardoz, Madrid. Through these perspectives, we see a territory full of life and resistance, framed by a geography that is not only on the extremity of Europe, but is also one of the most extreme landscapes on earth.
In this podcast and thanks to Markus Reymann, director of TBA21–Academy, we dive deeper into the dramatic situation of the coral reefs to better understand Claudia Comte’s work. Marine biologists Denise Henry and David Gruber talk about corals: their importance in the ecosystem, their symbiotic relationships, and their ability to sense oncoming disasters. The notions of shape and time, and the importance of restoration—like the reef rehabilitation work developed by the Alligator Head Foundation in Port Antonio, Jamaica—become key to understanding this aquatic life-form.
The conversation begins by unpacking the idea of the Anthropocene with ecosystem scientist professor Yadvinder Malhi who talks about why a deep time perspective helps us understand how truly volatile the planet is. He also discusses the need for evidence-based science that’s inclusive of indigenous knowledge, which offers more sustainable ways of relating to the environment.
Even while the scientific establishment grapples with what is already known about changing ecosystems to enact policy and systemic change, there are parts of India where narratives and data remain suppressed and ignored by mainstream media.
Public health researcher Shweta Narayan speaks about this disparity in media coverage between the Global North and South, as well as between rural and urban areas within India, as a manifestation of environmental racism. In India, lower caste and indigenous (Adivasi) bodies bear the brunt of toxicity in their environment, while their land and labor fuels petrocapitalism’s extractive rampant greed.
Journalist and poet Jacinta Kerketta, who grew up near the Saranda Forest in Jharkhand, Asia’s largest Sal forest, which is now being destroyed by mining, talks of the disproportionate impact of pollution on India’s oppressed and marginalized Adivasi and Dalit communities. She talks of how addressing systemic inequality and engaging with the Adivasi worldview, that looks at the environment holistically to recognize just how interconnected we are, can help us weather our own climate emergencies.
Contributors: Jacinta Kerketta, Shweta Narayan and Yadvinder Malhi Conducted by Aruna Chandrasekhar
What would happen if we engaged in a speculative exploration of queer futurities—an “elsewhere” that would rupture the continuity and pervasiveness of neoliberalism and narratives of terror? Ghiwa Sayegh, together with Nacira Guénif and Hanna Al-Taher, evoke the possibility of different geographies, weaving in history, myth, and personal stories, so they can explore various transnational links. Contexts that are part of a continuum of control and surveillance, such as in France, do not operate in isolation from each other. When control becomes the context, infrastructures can be recognized as modes of coercion and hegemony. In this podcast speakers therefore think through borders and commodities that, unlike people, can move, in spite of a regime of passports as anti-travel documents. Ultimately, they question citizenship, and by extension nation-states, as tools of coercion instead of carriers of rights.
Contributors: Nacira Guénif & Hanna Al-Taher Conducted by Ghiwa Sayegh
Preventing Delayed Deaths from War: Issues of Unexploded Ordnance in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia
This episode, inspired by the short film “The Sounds of Canons Familiar Like Sad Refrains” by artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen, addresses the problems posed by unexploded ordnance and landmines left in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia after the end of the Vietnam War, as well as the ongoing humanitarian efforts and clearance operations that try to make this land safe for its people. This conversation is hosted by curator Nhung Walsh, who is joined by Chuck Searcy from Project RENEW and Pham Thi Hoang Ha from PeaceTrees Vietnam.
It is hard to mention any Hollywood movies or documentaries about the Vietnam War without thinking of airstrikes and bombardments, and the iconic footage in which we see the destruction of forests, rivers, lands, and the humans inhabiting them. War itself is catastrophic, but nearly five decades after the war ended, hundreds of thousands of people, including children, still continue to lose their lives or are injured by the bombs and mines that have been left behind. In “Nothing Never Dies,” Pulitzer-prize winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen says that “we must also tell the war stories that made ghosts and made us ghosts.” Unexploded ordnances are more than war ghosts, they are the most destructive and direct extension of a war that is still taking lives in time of peace.
Contributors: Chuck Searcy and Ha Pham Conducted by Nhung Walsh
What healing power does the ocean hold for us? How can we learn to be in the right relationship with the earth, ourselves, and non-human companion species by engaging with the ocean? If we imagined the ocean as a divine ecology, how would that transform how we approach it? What if the ocean could teach us how to survive climate catastrophe and the violence of white supremacy? This fluid and dynamic conversation brings together four Black women artists, activists, scholars, and spirit workers to discuss Courtney Desiree Morris’s experimental film project, Sopera de Yemaya. The film explores the esthetic, spiritual, and political dimensions of Black motherhood by staging an encounter with the many roads of Yemaya, the orisha (Yoruba deity) who governs the top layer of the ocean. Morris joins playwright Sharon Bridgforth and Ayana Omilade Flewellen, a marine archaeologist, in a free-flowing conversation facilitated by Ashara Ekundayo about the wisdom of the ocean, queering motherhood, how Orisha might save the world, and the possibilities that emerge when we surrender to the ocean and the water that lives inside us.
Contributors: Sharon Bridgforth, Ayana Flewellen Conducted by Ashara Ekundayo
This podcast episode invites us to think through and with crisis and how this engenders a series of reconsiderations and adjustments. Inspired by the questions driving Omar Mismar’s work, particularly his Studies in Mosaics Series, Syria, we ask what is the importance and significance of cultural heritage in moments of total collapse, and what becomes of representation and witnessing in these particular contexts? These issues are explored from the vantage point of Lebanon, where the perpetual crises and violences that have plagued this nation since its inception are today being experienced viscerally amid a crippling economic crisis and in the aftermath of the world’s largest non-nuclear explosion. Turning first to architect Yasmine Dagher, we learn more about the work of the Beirut Heritage Initiative, an organization that safeguards urban heritage in the wake of the Beirut Blast. Next we reflect generally on how the relationship between images and violence has been traditionally conceived and how developments in technology have added new dimensions to these considerations. Finally, we engage with Lina Mounzer to think about how translation can serve as a framework or metaphor for the ethical mediation of violence.
Contributors: Yasmine Dagher, Beirut Heritage Initiative, and Lina Mounzer, journalist and translator Conducted by Zeina Tarraf
‘Learning, a Biological Ability’ is a podcast that borrows its title from Munir Fasheh´s ideas on education. Hosted by Dani Burrows the podcast expands on the work ‘Barruntaremos’ by Asunción Molinos Gordo who invited collaborators Munir Fasheh, Reef Fakhouri and Dina Bataineh to share their ideas on how personal stories are powerful departure points for exploring sources of knowledge, harnessing the diversity of wisdom to emancipate learning and foster personal wellness, our communities and our planet.
This podcast, hosted by Katrine Elise Pedersen, immerses us in aspects of artist Diana Policarpo’s latest project ‘Nets of Hyphae’, touching themes such as queer ecology, botanical and ancestral knowledge, biohacking, and herbal medicine.
Feminist theorist and molecular biologist Deboleena Roy discusses the importance of attuning to different bodies and different knowers, both human and non-human. For Roy, this realization came through endless hours together with the very objects of the research she was conducting. Sociologist and Research Director at CNRS Morgan Meyer and herbalist and anthropologist Charis Boke respectively discuss medical knowledge produced and cultivated beyond the boundaries of scientific institutions: biohacking and Western herbalism. In different ways, both embrace the principles of openness, decentralization, and the sharing of knowledge.
Podcast | Camouflaged words: A conversation with Octo-Durga around art and science | Part 2
A two-part conversation with marine biologist Roger Hanlon and TBA21–Academy’s Markus Reymann around the possible connexions between art and science that can be made through octopus tentacles. Their words dance with Octo-Durga, the “post big-bang underwater cephalopod dancer from the depths of one of Jupiter’s moons, from Europa’s oceans” created by Eduardo Navarro and BaRiya. Sounds from the outer space that is the deepest oceans... our best intuition lives under the sea.
Contributors: Juan Canela, Guest journalist and researcher. | Roger T. Hanlon, Marine biologist, Senior Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University. | Markus Reymann, Director, TBA21–Academy.
Camouflaged words A conversation with Octo-Durga around art and science | Part 1
A two-part conversation with marine biologist Roger Hanlon and TBA21–Academy’s Markus Reymann around the possible connexions between art and science that can be made through octopus tentacles. Their words dance with Octo-Durga, the “post big-bang underwater cephalopod dancer from the depths of one of Jupiter’s moons, from Europa’s oceans” created by Eduardo Navarro and BaRiya. Sounds from the outer space that is the deepest oceans... our best intuition lives under the sea.
Contributors: Juan Canela, Guest journalist and researcher. Roger Hanlon, Marine biologist, Senior Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University. Markus Reymann, Director, TBA21–Academy.
This podcast, hosted by Heba Islam, takes the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as its starting point to talk about the messy contradictions and tensions between ecological considerations, economic aspirations, and the realities on the ground for marginalized Pakistani communities who find themselves in the way of ‘development.’
Urban planner Nausheen Anwar contests the myth of infrastructural utopia which frames such projects as eventually benefiting the public by posing the question: which publics? Anthropologists Tariq Rahman and Naveeda Khan discuss respectively the tactics used by land realtors to force evictions, and how Islamic theology and mythology can help us find a language to think through the alienation and unease caused by displacement.
Contributors:
Research and Interviews: Heba Islam With: Nausheen Anwar, Director, Karachi Urban Lab (KUL) and Professor City & Regional planning, School of Economics & Social Sciences, IBA, Karachi, Pakistan. Tariq Rahman, PhD student in anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Naveeda Khan, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University. Technical Support: Alina Tiphagne Script: Heba Islam, Alina Tiphagne, Niyati Dave
The traditional populations of the Amazon basin have been able to co-constitute their lives with the forest, creating worlds of mega-diversity where the respectful relations between humans and other-than-humans are ruled by a diplomacy of worlding. Yet since the arrival of Europeans in the early 16th century these worlds have been threatened and endangered. As of today the Brazilian government and global investors continue to promote the conquest of the Amazon with the same extractivist logic that has brought the world to the brink of collapse.
Helena Palmquist was born and lives in the Brazilian Amazon. She is a journalist and has a master’s degree in anthropology from the Federal University of Pará. She is currently an advisor to the Brazil Federal Prosecution Office, where she works with the press, the judiciary, and social and environmental movements.
Conducted by Helena Palmquist
With: Bruna Rocha, Doctor of Archeology, Federal University of Western Pará, and member of the Amazonian Scientific Panel, Geraldo Mosimann Silva, agronomist and Doctor of Geography, Beatriz Almeida Matos, Doctor of Anthropology, Federal University of Pará, Júlia Otero, Doctor of Anthropology, Federal University of Pará, Kleber Karipuna, indigenous Karipuna leader, Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), Adriana Ramos, Instituto Socioambiental, Julio Araujo, Federal Prosecutor, Márcia Zollinger, Federal Prosecutor and Alessandra Kurap Munduruku, indigenous Munduruku leader
Download English transcript: https://bit.ly/37WRR8K
Riding the freq_wave: an exploration of the sounds, rhythms, and challenges facing Planet Ocean | Part 2
A two part series hosted by Chris Watson exploring the interface between the art, science, and rhythms under the surface of the largest and most sound-rich environment on the planet—the seas and oceans.
This freq_wave podcast connects bioacoustics with on-line compositional techniques, and cutting-edge environmental monitoring with an international collection of celebrated artists.
As TBA21–Academy director Markus Reymann suggests: log on, choose an ocean, and dive in!
Contributors in order of appearance: Lawrence English, Jana Winderen, Leah Barclay and Markus Reymann
Riding the freq_wave: an exploration of the sounds, rhythms, and challenges facing Planet Ocean| Part 1
A two part series hosted by Chris Watson exploring the interface between the art, science, and rhythms under the surface of the largest and most sound-rich environment on the planet—the seas and oceans.
This freq_wave podcast connects bioacoustics with on-line compositional techniques, and cutting-edge environmental monitoring with an international collection of celebrated artists.
As TBA21–Academy director Markus Reymann suggests: log on, choose an ocean, and dive in!
Contributors in order of appearance: Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Valeria Vergara and Finnbogi Pétursson
In this podcast, human rights and youth activist Scaly Kep’na addresses the situation of LGTB+ people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from precolonial times through to the present, where stigmatization due to deeply-held religious and popular beliefs is commonplace.
As part of a journey that has historical origins, he invites the activist Junior Basosila, from the city of Goma, to discuss the fight against discrimination and prejudice and to imagine a way towards a better future. This conversation is a call for integration and acceptance in a country whose cultural context largely refuses to accept and respect the humanity of those who do not fit heteronormativity.
Credits: Journalist: Scaly Kep’na Guests: Sirius T., Victor Bujirir and Junior Basosila Beat Maker: Didier V.D.
This st_age podcast explores the complex realm of Arabic poetry by women in the context of the contemporary regions of the Middle East and North Africa. This episode is a response to, and contemplation of, Listen to my words (2020) by Saudi Arabian-Palestinian artist Dana Awartani. It delves into themes of cultural destruction and revival through empowering women to find their voices, to harness the written word, and to speak. An overarching dialogue with the Alexandria-based poet, translator, and writer Salma Raafat, weaves in responses by five young poets to the question of what it means to be an Arabic female poet in the world today. The host is Nour Hassan, an Egyptian writer and creative director. The podcast structure mirrors Awartani’s artwork: voices complete one another and almost overlap, they are both diverse and unified, they traverse nuances and taboos to cultivate meaning, presence, and discourse for Arab women universally.
Contributors:
Salma Rafaat is an Egyptian writer, poetess, and performer. She started writing at the age of 11 and established Poetry Comes to Light, the first contemporary poetry club in Alexandria, in 2020. She “writes in the hope that one day people find their missing pieces in what I write, in the same way that I have become whole from what I have read.”
Other contributing poets in order of appearance:
Farida El Sayed
Haidy Zakaria
Yasmin Galal
Mai Mostafa
Nour Kamel
Podcast credits:
Produced by Nour Hassan.
Additional research by Nour Hassan.
Edited by Ana Esteve Reig.
The recent residency of the Costa Rican artist Christian Salablanca in Colombia took him on a journey by foot to one of the sacred places for the country’s indigenous cultures: Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a pyramidal mountain on the Caribbean coast which is topped by the ruins of the ancient Terruna, known today as Ciudad Perdida, or the lost city. In this podcast, Salablanca speaks about his humble origins in Heredia, Costa Rica; his engagement with the visual arts through a reflection on violence and the body; his travels throughout Latin America in recent years; and also his trip to Terruna which inspired his new work Geometría del centro (Geometry of the Centre). With the participation of the curators Tamara Díaz and César Vargas, the director of FLORA ars+natura, José Roca, and the indigenous politologist Iaku Sigindoy.
Patricia Domínguez (Santiago de Chile, 1984) creates installations, videos, and publications that reflect on how late capitalism has triggered the destruction of bodies, both in the physical and social sense. This is a conversation with three people who have inspired and accompanied her work, and in which Domínguez goes deeper into the influences that fields such as anthropology and botany, as well as the political implications of Chilean social organizing, have had on her practice.
Contributors: Alex Vicente (cultural journalist, El País), Rodolfo Andaur (visual arts curator and cultural manager), Lorena Donaire (national representative and spokeswoman of Mujeres MODATIMA) and Raquel González (rural school teacher and director of Las viudas del agua (The Widows of the Water)).
Artists and writers explore shifting lands, hybrid bodies, and polar–south asian imaginations. From a super cyclone, to a rhinoceros gift, and an underwater planet, we travel through time, visit the future, but never quite leave the past behind.
Participants: Skye Arundhati Thomas, Raqs Media Collective, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Nabla Yahya, Bishakh Som
Raqs Media Collective make art and curate exhibitions. They time-travel when necessary. They are the artistic directors of the Yokohama Triennale 2020.
Mary Anne Mohanraj is the author of A Feast of Serendib (Mascot Books, 2020), The Stars Change (Circlet Press, 2013), Bodies in Motion (Harper Collins, 2006), and twelve other titles.
Nabla Yahya is an artist in flux. Her practice stems from an architectural education, and moves into the realm of the metaphysical. She is interested in celluloid, earth, and the ethereal.
Bishakh Som’s graphic novel Apsara Engine (2020) is out now from The Feminist Press. Spellbound: A Graphic Memoir (2020) was recently published by Street Noise Books.
Mario D’Souza is a curator and a writer based between New Delhi and Goa, India. He is presently Associate Curator for the 5th edition of Kochi Muziris Biennale, 2020.
‘Antarctica was a queer rave…’ traces the history of conjecture and how the existence of Antarctica was hypothesized. It recounts, in a non-linear fashion, the Western imagination of the savage underworld, an imagination largely based on projection and fear. It turns this same imagination into a utopian desire: a place not populated by horrific freaks with malformed bodies and exquisite tentacles, but free from the normative conditioning of convention and straightness, free from the grids of the map as it dissolves into mists and fog. The music is analogue and recorded rogue, an acoustic rendering of EDM and 1990s rave beats. By recording single-track, on an acoustic drum set, David Soin Tappeser subverts, emulates, and pays homage to contemporary queer party culture.
Credits: Himali Singh Soin with David Soin Tappeser Chapter 3: Antarctica was a queer rave before it got busted by colonial white farts, 2020 from the ongoing interdisciplinary work: we are opposite like that, 2017-2022 13 min 59 sec Commissioned and produced by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) for st_age
Lady Antigua starts at the bow of the boat. Lying in the net, I couldn’t help noticing the bust of a black woman pinned to it. The poem is a fictional biography of her life, pointing to the imagination of black culture in the binaries of slavery and fetishism. And it began to reflect my own complicated displacement and confusion being a brown body in the polar tundra. We made this piece while the world was out on the streets chanting: Black Lives Matter. The pipe organ harks back to early hymns sung in the church, an institution of control and the force behind European colonial expansion, with the repetitive chord structure representing the repetition of history. The Hammond organ that follows was a portable, inexpensive instrument that led to the empowerment of small communities by placing faith and worship in individual hands. The free improvisation is this desire and celebration for freedom.
Credits: Himali Singh Soin with David Soin Tappeser Chapter 2: Lady Antigua, 2020, from the ongoing interdisciplinary work: we are opposite like that, 2017-2022 3 min 28 sec Commissioned and produced by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) for st_age
Subcontinentment is a manifesto that stems from my fieldwork in the polar circles, where I was confronted with my alienness as a brown body in a landscape commonly used for outer-space simulation experiments. As part of a series of fictional ice archives, south asian futurism, renamed subcontinentment, anti-chronicles the geopoetic links between the poles and the subcontinent.
In transforming the text into a soundscape, David and I began finding correspondences and intersections between my polar recordings and the hyper, denuded aural environment of Delhi under lockdown. Cawing crows, a static in the ether of the polyphonous city, intertwined with screeching skuas, lone reminders of life in the expansive nothingness of the “white” continent. The whirr of a fan points to the circulation of air, capital, contagion, compassion. The extra-terrestrial echoes of stones skimming on frozen lakes sound like firecrackers, blackening the air with their celebratory overzealousness. گھنگرو, ghungroos, the metallic ankle bells of the temple-dancer-by-day, sex-worker-by-night, or ice in a frozen river. The pressure of stretching the word, “rest” builds, it is released as if sounds of government-mandated clangings of pots and pans could avert a pandemic, substitute a virus for a communal agenda. Rhizomatic root structures of melting, frozen lilypads. Lilypads that open at dawn and close at dusk just like the Na'at, poetry sung in praise of Allah, heard in the depths of a tomb.
Credits: Himali Singh Soin with David Soin Tappeser Chapter 1: Subcontinentment, 2020, from the ongoing interdisciplinary work: we are opposite like that, 2017-2022 10 min 22 sec Commissioned and produced by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) for st_age
The Philippines is among the most dangerous countries in the world for environmental defenders. In their struggle to protect the environment and their communities, green activists in this Southeast Asian country have faced a wide array of threats and harassment. While hundreds have been killed for their advocacy, it has not diminished the struggle for environmental rights and justice in the country. This podcast sheds light on the state of environmental defenders in the Philippines through stories from a leader of a group monitoring the attacks and a daughter of a prominent activist who was assassinated nearly a decade ago. Together, their narratives paint a picture of what it means to strive to protect ecosystems in a time of planetary and human rights crises.
Research, interviews, and script by Jhesset Thrina Enano
Special thanks to Yeo Siew Hua, Dan Koh, Anna Lovecchio, and Luis Adrian Hidalgo.