SENSING THE PLANET - Dartington Trust
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SENSING THE PLANET Part of BLACK ATLANTIC DARTINGTON TRUST 29–31 OCTOBER 2021 Sensing the Planet is a gathering that brings together artists, thinkers and activists. Part of Black Atlantic: a new decolonial cultural project at the intersections of race, art, ecology and climate justice.
SENSING THE PLANET
Taking place between Friday 29 and Sunday
31 October 2021, Sensing the Planet is an
interdisciplinary gathering to discuss how art and
culture can confront some of the most important
challenges of our time. Timed to take place just
before the intergovernmental climate conference
COP26, Sensing the Planet will highlight issues of
race and environmental harm as well as the role
played by the UK, and the south-west of England
specifically, in histories of slavery, empire and
climate breakdown.
Sensing the Planet will also champion the role of
interdisciplinary culture in imagining new futures
built on principles of sustainability and justice,
bringing together leading decolonial thinkers, artists
and activists including Earth Talk speakers Ruth
Wilson Gilmore, Paul Gilroy, Alexis Pauline Gumbs
and Philippe Sands.
WHAT IS BLACK ATLANTIC?
Black Atlantic is a new decolonial arts partnership,
co-established by UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre,
Serpentine, Royal Court Theatre and Dartington
Trust, that aims to strengthen the role of arts and
culture in advancing social and climate justice.
2
SENSING THE PLANET: PROGRAMME CONTENTS
SCHEDULE 4
SENSING THE PLANET PROGRAMME 5
INSTALLATIONS 7
ARTIST FILMS 9
PARTICIPANTS 15
BIOGRAPHIES 16
MAP 35
3
SENSING THE PLANET: SCHEDULE
FREE INCLUDED IN SYMPOSIUM TICKET TICKETED SEPARATELY
Friday 29 October GREAT HALL BARN CINEMA GALLERY DUKE ROOM TAGORE ROOM PONTIN ROOM CAMPUS
10–11am 10am-12pm:
Course: Lessons in Liberation: Interspecies
11am–12pm 11am - 8pm: 11am-8pm: 11am-8pm: Reflection with Alexis Pauline Gumbs
11:30am-1pm: Screening: Ecologies of Installation: Ingrid Pollard Screening: Edouard Glissant in conversa- Sound installation: Jason Singh, I Bring
Empire artist film programme with Nabil 12-5pm: tion with Hans Ulrich Obrist my Body to This Place, to Observe the
12noon–1pm Ahmed, Forensic Architecture, Thandi Coming and Going of Life
Live feed: Radha D’Souza and Jonas
Loewenson, SERAPHINE1369; Staal, Court for Intergenerational Climate
1–2pm 1:15-2:45pm: Screening: Sensing the Crimes
planet artist film programme with
Manthia Diawara, Tabita Rezaire and
2–3pm Himali Singh Soin
2:30-3pm: These Shoots Need to Grow:
3–4pm An invocation by Asadua. Turning Sour 3-4:30pm: Screening: Sensing the Planet
into Sweetness artist film programme
3-4:30pm: Earth Talk: Paul Gilroy
4–5pm 4:30-5.15pm: Short talks and conversa-
tion: Ecologies of Empire
5–6pm
6-7pm
7–8pm 8-10pm: Shifa / Elaine Mitchener. 10pm-
late: Black Atlantic DJ session
8pm–late
Saturday 30 October GREAT HALL BARN CINEMA GALLERY DUKE ROOM TAGORE ROOM PONTIN ROOM CAMPUS
10-10:15am: Tabita Rezaire, Deep Down
10–11am 10:30-12pm: Earth Talk: Alexis Pauline
Tidal
Gumbs
12-12:15pm: Sound work: Zadie Xa 12:15-
11am–12pm 12:45pm: Short talks and conversations:
11am - 8pm: 11am-8pm: 11am-8pm:
Installation: Ingrid Pollard Screening: Edouard Glissant in conversa- Sound installation: Jason Singh, I Bring
Sensing the Planet
12-5pm: tion with Hans Ulrich Obrist my Body to This Place, to Observe the
12noon–1pm Coming and Going of Life
Live feed: Radha D’Souza and Jonas
Staal, Court for Intergenerational Climate
1–2pm 1-2:30pm:
Crimes
Screening: The Otolith Group,
O Horizon
2–3pm
2:30-2:45pm: Screening: Himali Singh
Soin, we are opposite like that; 2:45-
3–4pm 4:15: Earth Talk: Ruth Wilson Gilmore
(via Zoom)
4–5pm
4:30-6:30pm: Short talks and con-
5–6pm versations: Futurism as Organising / 5-7pm:
Organising as Futurism Summer of Soul (dir. Questlove)
6:30-7pm: Performance: Pat Thomas,
6-7pm Piano Solo
7–8pm
8pm–late Black Atlantic Collective DJ Session 8pm: The Stuart Hall Project
(dir. John Akomfrah)
Sunday 30 October GREAT HALL BARN CINEMA GALLERY DUKE ROOM TAGORE ROOM PONTIN ROOM CAMPUS
10–11am 10-10:35am: Screening: Forensic
Architecture, If toxic air is a monument
10:45am-12:15m: Earth Talk: Philippe to slavery, how do we take it down
11am–12pm Sands; 11am - 6pm: 11am-6pm: 11am-6pm:
12:15-12:45pm: Imani Robinson and 11:30am-1pm: Screening: Ecologies of Installation: Ingrid Pollard Screening: Edouard Glissant in conversa- Sound installation: Jason Singh, I Bring
Libita Sibungu, Welcome Note (Quantum Empire artist film programme 12-5pm: tion with Hans Ulrich Obrist my Body to This Place, to Observe the
12noon–1pm Ghost) Coming and Going of Life
Live feed: Radha D’Souza and Jonas
Staal, Court for Intergenerational Climate
1–2pm 1:15-2:45pm: Screening: The Otolith Crimes
Group, O Horizon
2–3pm 2-5pm:
Guided Walks: Land:Scapes with Jason
Singh
3–4pm 3-4:30pm: Screening: Sensing the planet
artist film programme
4–5pm
5–6pm 5-7pm:
Burn! (dir. Gillo Pontecorvo)
6-7pm
7–8pm
8pm–late 8-10pm:
Candyman (dir. Nia DaCosta)
4
SENSING THE PLANET: PROGRAMME 29–31 OCT
= Streamed on Sound Art Radio soundartradio.co.uk
FRIDAY 29 OCTOBER SATURDAY 30 OCTOBER
2:30pm–5.15pm, Great Hall 10–10:20am, Barn Cinema
THESE SHOOTS NEED TO FILM:
GROW: AN INVOCATION BY Tabita Rezaire
ASADUA. Turning Sour into DEEP DOWN TIDAL (2017, 18’41")
Sweetness.
Featuring Barby Asante, Hannah
Catherine Jones, Femi Oriogun
Williams, Foluke Taylor and Seah
Wraye
EARTH TALK:
Paul Gilroy
PRESENTATIONS:
ECOLOGIES OF EMPIRE 10:30–12:00noon, Great Hall
short presentations by artists and EARTH TALK:
activists, focusing on decolonising Alexis Pauline Gumbs
our assumptions about nature
and the English countryside. With 12:00noon–12:15pm, Great Hall
Todd Gray, Paige Patchin, Lucy SOUND WORK:
MacKeith, Ingrid Pollard, Matthew Zadie Xa, ANCESTRAL
Smith and Vron Ware. UNDULATIONS AND THE
TRANSMISSION OF KNOWING
8pm, Great Hall
LIVE MUSIC: PRESENTATIONS:
Shifa (Pat Thomas, Rachel SENSING THE PLANET
Musson and Mark Sanders) and short presentations inviting
Elaine Mitchener participants to seek out an
experience of what lies beyond
DJ set by Jason Singh ecologies of empire – a sense of
connection with the planet and the
planetary that transcends the limits
of island, nation and even species,
bringing us into contact with a
more-than-human world.
5
SENSING THE PLANET: PROGRAMME 29–31 OCT
1–12:30pm, Barn Cinema futures.
FILM:
8pm, Great Hall
The Otolith Group
BLACK ATLANTIC DJ COLLECTIVE
O HORIZON (2018, 90’)
Jason Singh / Chris Hal / Ru D /
Keiko Yamamoto and more
SUNDAY 31 OCTOBER 2021
10–10:35am, Barn Cinema
FILM:
Forensic Architecture
2:30–4:20pm, Barn Cinema IF TOXIC AIR IS A MONUMENT TO
FILM: SLAVERY, HOW DO WE TAKE IT
Himali Singh Soin DOWN (2021, 31’03")
WE ARE OPPOSITE LIKE THAT 10:45-12:45, Great Hall
(2019, 13’)
AGAINST ECOCIDE:
A morning focusing on the
nascent definition of ecocide as
a crime within international legal
frameworks, bringing together
struggles towards social and
environmental justice.
EARTH TALK:
Philippe Sands
EARTH TALK (via zoom):
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
WELCOME NOTE
4:30–7pm, Great Hall (QUANTUM GHOST)
Performance: Imani Robinson & Libita Sibungu
PAT THOMAS, PIANO SOLO
PRESENTATIONS:
FUTURISM AS ORGANISING/
ORGANISING AS FUTURISM
short presentations by artists
and activists, looking at the role
played by imagination in the work
of political organising and in the
building of just and sustainable
6
SENSING THE PLANET: INSTALLATIONS
Duke Room, Fri-Sun 12-5pm Pontin Room
RADHA D’SOUZA and Fri–Sat 11am–8pm, Sun 11am–6pm
JONAS STAAL JASON SINGH
A live feed from the Court for
Intergenerational Climate Crimes
in Amsterdam, a project by Radha
D’Souza and Jonas Staal.
Gallery
Fri–Sat 11am–8pm, Sun 11am–6pm
INGRID POLLARD
A spatial intervention by Ingrid Originally curated by Yasmin Canvin
Pollard on the occasion of Sensing in partnership with Fermynwood
the Planet. Contemporary Art in 2018, I Bring my
Body to This Place, to Observe the
Tagore Room Coming and Going of Life is a sound
Fri–Sat 11am–8pm, Sun 11am–6pm installation by Jason Singh which
HANS ULRICH OBRIST interviews explores themes of home,
EDOUARD GLISSANT separation and migration for both
A nine-hour film archive of people and wildlife. The installation
interviews of writer, poet and was the culmination of months of
philosopher Edouard Glissant research into the social history
(1928-2011) by Serpentine Artistic around Titchmarsh Nature Reserve,
Director, Hans Ulrich Obrist. The formerly known as Thrapston Gravel
interviews of Édouard Glissant Pits, which unearthed connections
by Hans Ulrich Obrist have been between Northamptonshire and
edited, transcribed, subtitled and Washington DC. The work is held
chaptered as part of the ongoing together by a conversation between
research for the Living Archives Jason and Fath Davis Ruffins;
program at LUMA Arles, for the Hans Curator of African History and
Ulrich Obrist archive, deposited Culture in the Smithsonian National
at LUMA Arles. They have been Museum of American History and
presented to the public in Arles interwoven with thoughts from
since the opening of LUMA Arles American residents living on the
on 26 June 2021. outskirts of Thrapston, local stories,
conversations, birdsong from the
George Washington National Forest,
and field recordings from both
Thrapston and America.
7
SENSING THE PLANET: INSTALLATIONS
Radha D’Souza and Jonas Staal,
Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (detail)
8
SENSING THE PLANET: ARTIST FILMS
A free programme of films by
artists and researchers, part
of SENSING THE PLANET, will
take place in the Barn Cinema
throughout the three-day
gathering.
Tabita Rezaire, Deep Down Tidal (still detail)
9
SENSING THE PLANET: ARTIST FILMS
The Otolith Group that Tagore’s project maps onto
O HORIZON the notion of terraforming—a term
2018. 4k video, colour, sound. originating in science fiction and
90 minutes now more widely used—whereby
a party (typically but not always
Barn Cinema, Sat 30 Oct 1pm, an interloper) reshapes the
Sun 31 Oct 1:15pm atmosphere of a place for their
Researched, filmed, and recorded own needs. O Horizon reflects upon
on Visva-Bharati campus at modernist theories of dance and
Santiniketan, Sriniketan and song developed by Tagore and
surrounding areas of Birbhum, the experimental practices of
West Bengal, O Horizon stages mural, sculpture, painting, and
moments from Rabindranath drawing developed by India’s great
Tagore’s extensive environmental modernist artists affiliated with
pedagogy as a series of portraits, Santiniketan: K.G. Subramanyan,
moods, studies, and sketches that Benode Behari Mukherjee, Nandalal
allude to what might be described Bose and Ramkinkar Baij. O
as the outlines of a "Tagorean Horizon draws together visual arts,
cosmopolitics." The film begins dance, song, music, and recital to
with recital of a question posed assemble a structure of feeling of
in one of Tagore’s poems of what the Tagorean imagination in the
has transpired "today in a hundred 21st Century. The Otolith Group were
years," revealing the future – and are part of The Tagore, Pedagogy
radical and monumental cultural and Contemporary Visual Cultures
achievements along with extensive Network founded in 2013. This group
environmental degradation – of of leading international academics
Tagore’s interventions into this and visual arts practitioners create
region after a long century.The multiple platforms to explore the
title refers to the surface layer of legacy and continuing relevance
soil, changed in the area around of Indian poet and polymath
Santiniketan as the result of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941).
Tagore’s introduction of new flora For contemporary art practice,
in development of the campus. In visual culture and educational
studying this trajectory, the film methodologies in schools and
extends The Otolith Group’s ongoing colleges around the world such as
consideration of the Anthropocene, Dartington School of Art, Tagore was
a premise that denotes that the a pioneer and inspired the founders
current geological age is one of the school, Dorothy and Leonard
wherein human activity spurs the Elmhirst with a shared a vision for a
primary changes on climate and more equitable world decolonizing
the environment. With O Horizon, from British rule.
The Otolith Group also proposes
10SENSING THE PLANET: PROGRAMME
Barn Cinema, Fri 29 Oct, 1:15pm them into echoes, listening in
and 3pm, Sun 31 Oct, 3pm on the resonances of potential
futures.
Himali Singh Soin
WE ARE OPPOSITE LIKE THAT Tabita Rezaire’s Deep Down Tidal
(2019, 12’26’) excavates the power of water
as a conductive interface for
Tabita Rezaire
communication. From submarine
DEEP DOWN TIDAL
cables to sunken cities, drowned
(2017, 18’44’’)
bodies, hidden histories of
Manthia Diawara navigations and sacred signal
EDOUARD GLISSANT: ONE transmissions, the ocean
WORLD IN RELATION is home to a complex set of
(2010, 50’) communication networks. Deep
Exploring environment, history Down Tidal navigates the ocean as
and myth, Himali Singh Soin’s a graveyard for Black knowledge
we are opposite like that pairs and technologies. From Atlantis,
poetry and archival material to to the ‘Middle passage’, or refuge-
recount the Victorian anxiety seekers presently drowning in the
of an imminent glacial epoch. Mediterranean, the ocean abyss
The disorienting fear of an carries lost histories and broken
invasive periphery sent shudders lineages while simultaneously
through the colonial enterprise, providing the global
the tremors of which can be infrastructure for our current
felt in contemporary times. telecommunications. Could the
Here, an alien figure traverses violence of the Internet lie in its
the blank, oblivious whiteness, physical architecture? What data
and undergoes an Ovidian is our world’s water holding?
transformation into glimmering What messages are we encoding
ice. Inspired by field recordings, into our waters? Deep Down
an original score for string quartet Tidal interrogates the intricate
creates an etheric soundscape cosmological, spiritual, political
of hissing glaciers and the hard and technological entangled
timbre of the wind, interspersed narratives sprung from water as
with melodic fragments of an interface to understand the
Victorian composer, Edward legacies of colonialism.
Elgar’s The Snow. we are opposite In 2009, filmmaker Manthia
like that beckons the ghosts Diawara, along with his camera,
hidden in landscapes and turns documented his conversations
11SENSING THE PLANET: PROGRAMME
Himali Singh Soin, we are opposite like that (still)
with Martinican philosopher, of creolization, Rhizome, nation
writer, and poet Édouard Glissant borders, and opacity. Produced
aboard the Queen Mary II on only two years before his death,
their transatlantic journey from this documentary perhaps serves
Southampton, England to New as a final summation of Glissant’s
York City. This intellectual voyage lauded work in the field of
encapsulates Glissant’s life’s philosophy.
work and studies on his theory of
Relation and the concept of Tout-
monde, amongst several other of
his philosophical suppositions.
Edouard Glissant is widely
considered to be one of the most
influential Caribbean thinkers
and cultural commentators.
Typically known for his written
works, Edouard Glissant: One World
in Relation offers a first-hand and
accessible view into Glissant’s
thoughts and beliefs on his own
theories, as well as the topics
12SENSING THE PLANET: ECOLOGIES OF EMPIRE PROGRAMME
Barn Cinema, Fri 29 October the Mind of a Fish: The Understory
11:30am / Sun 31 Oct 11:30am of the Understory (Serpentine,
4-5 December 2020), Thandi
Thandi Loewenson
Loewenson’s A Taxonomy of
A TAXONOMY OF FLIGHT
Flight is a piece concerned with
(2020, 24’52’’)
the matter and movement of
Forensic Architecture Blackness on, and of, Earth, and
IF TOXIC AIR IS A MONUMENT particularly with lines of flight;
TO SLAVERY, HOW DO WE TAKE how travel through space and
IT DOWN time is made possible in the face
(2021, 35’03’’) of the prohibition and foreclosure
Nabil Ahmed which attends so closely – so
RADICAL METEOROLOGY stiflingly – to the condition of
(2013, 9’52’’) Blackness. This would seem to be
an impossibility, but as with so
SERAFINE1369 much in our universe, quantum
UNTITLED entanglement is spooky and
(2021, 10’28’’) surprising; one can be talking
Originally produced as an online about flight – about Black flight –
performance lecture on the taking off, whilst tethered to the
occasion of The Shape of a Circle in ground.
Forensic Architecture, if toxic air is a monument to slavery,
how do we take it down (still)
13SENSING THE PLANET: ECOLOGIES OF EMPIRE PROGRAMME
In the US state of Louisiana, how Bhola, one of the deadliest
along the Mississippi River cyclones in history catalysed
between Baton Rouge and New Bangladesh’s struggle for national
Orleans, a heavily industrialised liberation.
‘Petrochemical Corridor’ overlays
SERAFINE1369’s 2021 untitled
a territory formerly known as
film was originally commissioned
‘Plantation Country’. When slavery
by Queer Art Projects. "Attempts
was abolished in 1865, more
to establish a connection, a
than five hundred sugarcane
dialogue with an object through
plantations lined both sides of
the devotional practice of dancing.
the lower Mississippi River; today,
The obelisk is a monolith, a
more than two hundred of those
200-tonne single piece of rock
sites are occupied by some of
that has seen more sunrises
the United States’ most polluting
than I can conceive of. I wonder
petrochemical facilities. Residents
how many died in the process
of the majority-Black ‘fenceline’
of its creation, in the storm of
communities that border those
its movement... There is a time
facilities breathe some of the
capsule inside the pedestal on
most toxic air in the country
which the obelisk is mounted, it
and suffer some of the highest
contains images of the 12 most
rates of cancer, along with a wide
attractive ladies of England from
variety of other serious health
the year 1878; What is the role of
ailments. They call their homeland
worship within our relationships?
‘Death Alley’. Here, environmental
What, or who, do you worship?
degradation and cancer risk
What do we want to remain of our
manifest as the by-products of
time here? Time makes me small,
colonialism and slavery. If toxic
and yet I can touch this time
air is a monument to slavery, how
through the stone - does this time
do we take it down traces Forensic
touch back? Does it speak? And
Architecture’s investigation
if I listen, what does it say? The
into toxicity in post-plantation
writing says that this rock was
landscapes.
gift, whose is it to give the gift of
Nabil Ahmed’s Radical Meteorology time, of the labour of honouring
(2013), first conceived as a something or someone now
3-channel video installation, forgotten, or alive under a new
takes an alternative view of the name. Sun, Moon...gods assume
"Blue Marble" – the photograph new names and persist. Time and
that famously represented a weather, movements
rising planetary consciousness of god."
in the 1970s – to give a glimpse of
14SENSING THE PLANET: PARTICIPANTS
Nabil Ahmed Paige Patchin
Asha Ali Plane Stupid
Barby Asante Ingrid Pollard
Bristol Decolonising Network Racial Justice Network
Imani Jacqueline Brown Tabita Rezaire
Josina Calliste Malcolm Richards
Lara Choksey Imani Robinson
Manthia Diawara Ru D
Radha D’Souza Mark Sanders
Exeter Decolonising Network Philippe Sands
Forensic Architecture SERAFINE1369
Ruth Wilson Gilmore Shifa (Pat Thomas, Rachel Musson
Paul Gilroy and Mark Sanders)
Terra Glowach Libita Sibungu
Todd Gray Jason Singh
Amir Gudarzi Himali Singh Soin
Alexis Pauline Gumbs Pooja Sivaraman
Christopher Hall Matthew J. Smith
Hannah Catherine Jones Jonas Staal
Yasmin Joseph Ali Tamlit
Jacob V Joyce Foluke Taylor
Alexandra Wanjiku Kelbert Eddy Thacker
Land in Our Names The Otolith Group
Thandi Loewenson Pat Thomas
Marcus Macdonald Mama D Ujuaje
Lucy MacKeith Joshua Virasami
Elaine Mitchener Vron Ware
Rachel Musson Ava Wong Davies
Katie Natanel Seah Wraye
Seb O’Connor Carole Wright
Hans Ulrich Obrist with Keiko Yamamoto
Edouard Glissant Zadie Xa
Femi Oriogun-Williams
15SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
Nabil Ahmed has been researching
environmental conflicts as spatial
practice for over a decade. He is
professor of visual intervention at
the Trondheim Academy of Fine
Arts, faculty of architecture and
design at the Norwegian University
of Science and Technology
(NTNU). He is the founder and co-
principal of INTERPRT, a research
and design studio that pursues Barby Asante is a London based
environmental justice through artist, curator and educator. Her
visual investigations. He holds a practice is concerned with the
PhD from the Centre for Research politics of place, space and the
Architecture at Goldsmiths ever-present histories and legacies
University of London where he has a of slavery and colonialism. Her
long-term research affiliation with projects are durational and
Forensic Architecture. He sits on the collaborative exploring memory,
international advisory board of the archival injustice and re-collection,
Stop Ecocide Foundation. through collective writing,
performance, re-enactment and
creating spaces for transformation,
Asha Ali (she/her) is an activist, MA ritual and healing. With a deep
student at the Institute of Arab and interest in black feminist and
Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, decolonial methodologies,
and former innovation specialist Barby also embeds within her
at Dartington Social Research Unit. work notions of collective study,
She is a disrupter of knowledge countless ways of knowing and
production and informal educator dialogical practices that embrace
in the classroom. Her main research being together and breathing
interest centres on the position of together.
Black Muslim women; the layers of
discrimination they face in Britain
and how they navigate the different The Bristol Decolonising Network
communities they are part of. She is is a professional learning network
also passionate about relationships of academics, practitioners and
and their powerful role in making teachers working together to share
changes at both the local and research, resources, and expertise
global level. across disciplines and key stages.
Our aim is to empower young people
with knowledge from beyond the
colonial lens so that they can help
16SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
create a more sustainable and Lara Choksey is a writer and
socially just society. researcher whose work focuses on
confluences of embodiment, land,
Imani Jacqueline Brown utility, and citizenship in the social
(b. 1988) is an artist, activist, and reproduction of environment. She
researcher from New Orleans. Her is currently working on a project on
work investigates the continuum of abandoned pastorals in anticolonial
Extractivism, from settler-colonial aesthetics. Lara’s research draws
genocide and slavery to fossil fuel from science and technology
production, gentrification, and studies, world-systems theory,
police and corporate impunity. In and critical race and decolonial
exposing the layers of violence studies, with a particular interest
and resistance that comprise in speculative fiction and poetics.
the foundations of US society, She is Lecturer in Colonial and
she opens up space to imagine Postcolonial Literatures at UCL
a path to ecological reparations. English.
Imani is currently a researcher
with Forensic Architecture, an Manthia Diawara (b. 1953) is a
economic inequality fellow with writer, filmmaker, cultural theorist,
Open Society Foundations, and the scholar and art historian. Diawara
editor of the forthcoming second holds the title of University
issue of MARCH, a journal of art Professor at New York University,
and strategy, themed around Black where he is Director of the Institute
Ecologies. of African American Affairs. Diawara
has contributed significantly to the
Josina Calliste is a health study of black film. In 1992, Indiana
professional and community University Press published his
organiser. After burning out of African Cinema: Politics & Culture
academia, she began thinking more and in 1993, Routledge published
deeply about food growing and land a volume he edited titled Black
justice. Under an apple tree in June American Cinema. A filmmaker
2019, she co-founded Land in Our himself, Diawara has written and
Names (LION); a black-led collective directed a number of films.
addressing land inequalities
affecting black people and people Radha D’Souza is a Professor of
of colour’s ability to farm and grow International Law, Development and
food in Britain. She loves forest Conflict Studies at the University of
walks & hopes to one day set up an Westminster (UK). D’Souza works
eco-village. as a writer, critic and commentator.
She is a social justice activist and
worked with labour movements
17SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
and democratic rights movements militaries, and corporations.
in her home country of India as FA works in partnership with
an organizer and activist lawyer. institutions across civil society,
She has worked with social justice from grassroots activists, to legal
movements in the Asia-Pacific teams, to international NGOs
region to focus attention on the and media organisations, to
effects of international economic carry out investigations with and
policies on developing countries. on behalf of communities and
D’Souza is the author of What’s individuals affected by conflict,
Wrong with Rights? (Pluto, 2018) police brutality, border regimes
and Interstate Disputes Over Krishna and environmental violence. FA’s
Waters (Orient Longman, 2006) investigations employ cutting
and works with the Campaign edge techniques in spatial and
Against Criminalising Communities architectural analysis, open source
(CAMPACC) in the UK. Together with investigation, digital modelling,
artist Jonas Staal she co-founded and immersive technologies, as
the Court for Intergenerational well as documentary research,
Climate Crimes (2021-ongoing). situated interviews, and academic
collaboration. Findings from our
investigations have been presented
The Exeter Decolonising Network
in national and international
was set up in July 2019 by a
courtrooms, parliamentary
collective of staff across disciplines
inquiries, cultural institutions,
who recognised the need to explore,
international media, as well as in
share and nurture decolonial
citizen’s tribunals and community
teaching and research methods
assemblies.
across the University. It has grown
to include community members
across the South-West area
interrogating decolonisation in their
own practices. Our Network draws
together a plurality of approaches
to decolonial praxis in research,
pedagogy, care and community
engagement.
Forensic Architecture (FA) is
a research agency, based at
Goldsmiths, University of London, Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a scholar
investigating human rights and abolitionist. She is the Director
violations including violence of the Center for Place, Culture, and
committed by states, police forces, Politics and professor of geography
18SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
in Earth and Environmental play and 15 collections of essays. He
Sciences at The City University of was shortlisted for the Nobel prize
New York Graduate Center. for literature in 1992.
Terra Glowach is an English Subject
Leader with 20 years experience
teaching, training and coordinating
programmes in Canada, Japan,
Ethiopia, India and the UK. She
most recently worked as a Lead
Practitioner for decolonising the
curriculum across her trust, with a
particular focus on combating the
racism faced by Somali students in
Bristol. Terra has recently founded
the Bristol Decolonising Network
Paul Gilroy is Professor of the
to platform the work of teachers as
Humanities at UCL and, as
researchers, community workers
Founding Director of the Sarah
and disciplinary experts.
Parker Remond Centre for the
Study of Racism & Racialisation,
is responsible for establishing Dr. Todd Gray is Honorary Research
a vibrant new interdisciplinary Fellow at the University of Exeter,
research centre that harnesses College of Humanities. Gray’s main
scholarship from across UCL in research interests have principally
the critical study of race as well as focused on Devon, particularly
the history, theory and politics of Exeter. He have published widely on
racism and its effects. the sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries (his main area of interest)
Edouard Glissant (1928-2011) was but have pursued a wide range of
a French writer, poet, philosopher, topics which help to determine some
and literary critic from Martinique. of the ways in which Devon was
He is widely recognised as one both alike and dissimilar to other
of the most influential figures in parts of the country. He is the author
Caribbean thought and cultural of many books, including most
commentary and Francophone recently, Devon’s Last Slaveowners:
literature. His writings include Plantations, Compensation and the
Poetics of Relation (1990), Traité du Enslaved, 1834 (2021).
tout-monde (1996) and Philosophie
de la relation (2009), as well as eight
novels, nine volumes of poetry, one
19SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
Amir Gudarzi was born in Iran in book Undrowned: Black Feminist
1986 and graduated at the only Lessons from Marine Mammals is a
school for theatre in the country. series of meditations based on the
Since 2009, Gudarzi has been increasingly relevant lessons of
living in involuntary exile in Vienna, marine mammals in a world with
Austria. His play The Assassin’s a rising ocean levels and part of
Castle was invited to the Berlin adrienne maree brown’s Emergent
Stückemarkt in 2019 and his Strategy Series at AK Press.
work has been shown in theatres
in Austria, Germany, Israel and Christopher Hall is a producer,
the London’s Royal Court Theatre remixer and DJ. His work is a fusion
as part of the Living Newspaper of styles influenced by his love
project. Gudarzi won several drama of club culture, and music that
and literary prizes, numerous evokes esoteric themes. He works
scholarships and is working on his by combining sound sources from
debut novel, that will be published across the whole musical spectrum,
in 2022/2023 with the German along with synthesisers, drum
publishing house dtv. machines, samplers, computers,
and a human hand to create his
unmistakable sound. He also works
as an Indie composer scoring mixed
media with UK label Ninja Tune.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer
Black Troublemaker and Black
Feminist Love Evangelist and an
aspirational cousin to all sentient
beings. Her work in this lifetime is
to facilitate infinite, unstoppable
ancestral love in practice. Her poetic
work in response to the needs
Dr. Hannah Catherine Jones
of her cherished communities
(aka Foxy Moron) is a London-
has held space for multitudes
based artist, scholar, multi-
in mourning and movement. Her
20SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
instrumentalist, broadcaster & comic books, performance art
DJ (BBC Radio/TV, NTS - The Opera and punk music. Best known for
Show), composer, conductor and their illustrations, Joyce has self
founder of Peckham Chamber published a number of books and
Orchestra – a community project illustrated international human
established in 2013. Jones rights campaigns for Amnesty
recently completed an AHRC DPhil International, Global Justice Now
scholarship at Oxford University for and had their comics in national
which the ongoing body of work The newspapers. Recent TFL Arts Grant
Oweds was presented as a series of awardee, artist in residence at
live and recorded, broadcast, audio- Gasworks and the Tate Galleries
visual episode-compositions, using Education department Joyce is
disruptive sound as a methodology a non-binary artist amplifying
of institutional decolonisation historical and nourishing new queer
(awarded with no corrections). and decolonial narratives.
Jones has lectured/performed/
exhibited widely, internationally,
and recently showed Owed to
Diaspora(s) at NIRIN – 22nd Biennial
of Sydney.
Yasmin Joseph is a London-based
writer. Her debut play J’Ouvert
premiered at Theatre503 in 2019
and the Harold Pinter Theatre
as part of Sonia Friedman’s
2021 RE:EMERGE season. She
was nominated for the Evening
Standard’s Most Promising Alexandra Wanjiku Kelbert is a
Playwright Award and most recently London-based educator and activist.
won the 2020 James Tait Black She is a member of Black Lives
Prize For Drama. Yasmin is the Matter UK and the Wretched of the
current writer-in-residence at Sister Earth collective. Her work focuses
Pictures and is on attachment mainly on the politics of race,
at the Royal Court Theatre as a gender, class, climate justice and
winner of the Channel 4 Playwrights radical imagination. She currently
scheme. works at the University of Warwick.
Alexandra has worked on a number
of collaborative and creative
Jacob V Joyce’s work ranges projects and recently wrote a piece
from afro-futurist world building for Skin Deep magazine called ‘No
workshops to mural painting, police, no pollution: A vision for
21SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
Black liberation in the UK’. She is an fiction as a design tool and tactic,
avid reader (and tentative writer) of and operating in the overlapping
fantasy and visionary fiction. realms of the weird, the tender, the
@WanjiKelbert earthly and the airborne, Thandi
engages in projects which provoke
questioning of the status-quo,
Land In Our Names (LION) is a
whilst working with communities,
grassroots Black-led collective
policy makers, artists and
committed to reparations in
architects towards acting on those
Britain by connecting land and
provocations.
climate justice with racial justice.
We reimagine dynamics of land
stewardship and are committed to a Marcus Macdonald is a black
deep healing of the colonial-rooted working class queer south
trauma that separates us from the Londoner, grower, community
land. We understand land rights organiser, tour manager/driver and
as the basis for revolution and a gardener by trade. He has been
sovereignty in our communities. growing his own food since he was
We are working to transform the a young teenager. Marcus has been
narrative around land in Britain in part of the squatting community
how it relates to intersections of in London and the anti-racist
race, gender and class for movement for well over a decade.
systemic change. He is also part of many collectives
including Land in our names,
Decolonise fest and Black Obsidian
Soundsystem.
Thandi Loewenson (b.1989, Harare)
is an architectural designer/
researcher who mobilises design,
fiction and performance to stoke Elaine Mitchener is a contemporary
embers of emancipatory political vocalist, movement artist and
thought and fires of collective composer working between the
action, and to feel for the contours worlds of contemporary new
of other, possible worlds. Using music, experimental jazz / free
22SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
improvisation and visual art. and affect and political emotions,
Mitchener is one of 50 selected primarily in the context of
exhibiting artists featured in Palestine/Israel. Katie’s most recent
the British Art Show 9 touring work shifts focus to decolonial
exhibition 21/22 and is a Wigmore feminist politics, pedagogies and
Hall Associate Artist. ecologies. She has published on the
www.elainemitchener.com gendered politics of everyday life
among Jewish Israelis, as well as
critical and creative pedagogies in
Rachel Musson is a saxophonist,
UK Higher Education.
improviser and composer living
in London, UK. She is involved
with a variety of improvisation
projects, and works regularly
with Mark Sanders, Pat Thomas,
Hannah Marshall, Julie Kjaer, Corey
Mwamba, Olie Brice, Alex Ward,
Alex Hawkins amongst others.
She features on several releases,
including a nonet featuring her
composition I Went This Way (577
Records), two with Shifa, feat. Pat
Thomas and Mark Sanders, (577
Records), one with Mark Sanders Seb O’Connor is a member of
and John Edwards (Two Rivers the Racial Justice Network’s Race
Records), trio with Liam Noble and and Climate Justice Collective
Mark Sanders (Babel), and Corey and a PhD researcher at the
Mwamba (Takuroku). University of Leeds. His PhD is in
Ecological Economics, looking at
Katie Natanel is an educator social and cultural values of the
and academic at the Institute of environment and how they can be
Arab and Islamic Studies (IAIS), used to democratise environmental
University of Exeter. She enacts decision-making. O’Connor is also
radical feminist pedagogies a member of the Consortium of
with teachers and students Environmental Philosophers (CEP).
in her classrooms, exploring
and developing decolonial and
anticolonial orientations. Her
research engages with political
participation and mobilisation;
conflict and political violence;
23SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, His mum was laughing from drugs
Switzerland) is Artistic Director and exhaustion and, he imagines,
of the Serpentine Galleries in everyone else was laughing in
London, Senior Advisor at LUMA solidarity. The only person not
Arles, and Senior Artistic Advisor laughing was Femi, which the
at The Shed in New York. Prior to midwife apparently said was ‘not
this, he was the Curator of the a bad thing’. He lives and works
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de in London, not far from where he
Paris. Since his first show World was born, where he has laughed
Soup (The Kitchen Show) in 1991, he frequently since. His work has been
has curated more than 350 shows. broadcast on Radio 3 and Radio
Obrist’s recent publications include 4 and he has made podcasts and
Ways of Curating (2015), The Age sound installations for various
of Earthquakes (2015), Lives of the institutions such as Somerset
Artists, Lives of Architects (2015), House, Serpentine, Bergen Kunsthall
Mondialité (2017), Somewhere Totally and Rough Guides. He has recently
Else (2018) The Athens Dialogues been awarded Arts Council England
(2018), Maria Lassnig: Letters (2020), funding; created a collection of
Entrevistas Brasileiras: Volume 2 audio testimonies about growing
(2020), and Remember Nature: 140 up as a BIPOC in the countryside;
Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth (2021). co-written a piece of original gig
theatre at the Vaults festival.
Paige Patchin is a feminist
geographer whose work looks at
structures of power in biological,
health, and earth sciences.
Her research interests include
infectious disease, race, and
empire, genetics and epigenetics,
reproductive health, and the
Anthropocene. Her current book
project looks at the Zika public
health emergency between Puerto
Rico and United States. It takes
the circulation of the virus within
Femi Oriogun-Williams is a writer, empire and patriarchy as a
musician and radio producer. He point of departure for rethinking
was born at 00:00 under a Taurus reproduction. Her work is published
moon to a room of laughing people. in the Transactions of the Institute of
24SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
British Geographers and Annals of the ways of challenging oppressive
American Association of Geographers. practices. We support individuals
She is a co-editor of ACME: An and groups to embolden confidence
International Journal for Critical and skills to tackle challenges,
Geographies. and to run effective campaigns.
We also support and encourage
people to build solidarity, and
Plane Stupid was a loose direct
to mobilise large communities
action network against aviation
of resistance to affect change.
expansion in the UK. It became
We have a number of strands of
a network in 2006 at the Drax
concurrent work, including but
Climate Camp, spawned the 10 year
not limited to: #StopTheScandal,
occupation at Grow Heathrow, and
a campaign to resist the use of
was part of the End Deportations
mobile fingerprint scanners with
action at Stansted airport to stop a
links to immigration databases,
charter flight deportation to Nigeria
Covid19 Response and Actions,
and Ghana.
Unlearning Racism Course and
International Solidarities. The Race
Ingrid Pollard is a photographer, and Climate Justice group of the
media artist and researcher. Racial Justice Network (RCJ?RJN)
She is a graduate of the London is composed of Sibling individuals
College of Printing and PhD from and organisations whose focus is to
University of Westminster. Ingrid ensure that al initiatives concerned
has developed a practice concerned with environmental degradations
with representation, history and and climate catastrophes are
landscape with reference to race, understood and engaged with
difference and the materiality from a fair and just positioning
of lens based media. Her work is which we refer to as The 13th
included in numerous collections Recommendation Framework.
including the UK Arts Council and
This Framework at its core affirms
the Victoria & Albert Museum.
the centrality of Colonial Legacies
(coloniality); Internationalism and
The Racial Justice Network brings Active Solidarities as instrumental
together individuals, communities parts of Reparative and
and organisations from across the Transformative change in Global
region to proactively promote racial Climate Justice.
justice "holistic economic spiritual
and cultural repairs to end racial
injustice and address legacies of
colonialism". We listen and work
with communities on effective
25SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
Tabita Rezaire is infinity longing Malcolm Richards is a educator,
to experience itself. As an eternal researcher, author and bookseller.
seeker, her path as an artist, He is a graduate of the African
devotee, yogi, doula, and farmer Caribbean supplementary school
apprentice weaves healing arts movement. He is a former teacher,
and scientific systems through senior leader, and local authority
connections to the land, the advisor for schools across England.
ancestors, the songs. Her cross- Malcolm is currently a doctoral
dimensional practices envision researcher at the University of
network sciences - organic, Exeter, and member of Exeter
electronic and spiritual - as healing Decolonizing Network. He is also
technologies to serve the shift involved in a number of education
towards heart consciousness. organisations, projects and
Embracing digital, corporeal and initiatives in the South West and
ancestral memory, she digs into co-founder of Bookbag, a new
scientific imaginaries and mystical independent bookshop in Exeter.
realms to tackle the colonial
wounds and energetic imbalances
Imani Robinson is an
that affect the songs of our body-
interdisciplinary writer, artist,
mind-spirits. Tabita is based
editor and facilitator based in
in French Guiana, where she is
London. They are one half of the
birthing AMAKABA.
artistic and curatorial collaboration
Languid Hands, who are the
current Curatorial Fellows at Cubitt
(2020–22) and curators of the LIVE
programme for FRIEZE 2021.
Ru Davies grew up immersed in the
rich melting pot of music that is
West London, absorbing the myriad
of sounds from Notting Hill Carnival
26SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
to Bar Rhumba, tuning in religiously
to 90s pirate radio and legends like
Norman Jay and Giles Peterson. A
songwriter and producer under the
Maigret Jnr moniker, he now resides
in South Devon.
Mark Sanders has had a career
taking in many styles and genres,
this history informs his now
mainly free improvisation based
work, but he also works in theatre, Philippe Sands QC is Professor of
dance, contemporary classical Law at University College London
and conceptual art situations. He and a practising barrister at
works with with Evan Parker, John Matrix Chambers. He appears
Butcher, Elaine Michener, Xhosa as counsel before international
Cole and in many groups in the UK courts and tribunals, and sits as
and in Europe. He also has his own an international arbitrator. He is
group StaggerLee Wonders including author of Lawless World (2005) and
Black Radical Poetry and Prose, Torture Team (2008) and numerous
featuring Cleveland Watkiss and academic books on international
Robert Mitchell and Neil Charles. He law, and has contributed to The New
is in a longstanding duo with Sarah York Review of Books, Vanity Fair,
Gail Brand which has featured on the Financial Times, The Guardian
the BBC’s The Stuart Lee Show and and The New York Times. His latest
in the film Taking the dog for a Walk. books are East West Street: On the
Mark is a Lecturer specialising Origins of Crimes Against Humanity
in Improvisation at Leeds and and Genocide (2016) (awarded the
Birmingham Conservatoires and 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize, the 2017
as a guest tutor The Royal Academy British Book Awards Non-Fiction
of Music. Book of the Year, and the 2018 Prix
Montaigne) and The Ratline: Love,
Lies and Justice on the Trail of a
Nazi Fugitive (2020), also available
as a BBC podcast. His next book,
on Chagos and colonialism, will
be published in September 2022.
Philippe is President of English PEN
and a member of the Board of the
Hay Festival of Arts and Literature.
27SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
SERAFINE1369 (previously drummer Mark Sanders meet and
Last Yearz Interesting Negro) make music in the moment, of the
is the London based artist and moment. Each player values the
dancer Jamila Johnson-Small. others’ ability to dive in deep, and
SERAFINE1369 works with dancing demands that they each remain
as a philosophical undertaking, fully present to where the music
a political project with ethical needs to evolve next. The palette
psycho-spiritual ramifications for includes a mutual history in jazz,
being-in-the-world; dancing as elements of classical, folk and
intimate technology. Their practice pulling notes apart to allow sonic
is relational, cumulative and often textures to come into focus.
collaborative and they work in
various constellations, at different Libita Sibungu is an audio-visual
scales and in different roles to build artist manifesting environments
spaces for communing/attuning/ out of sound, text, print, and
communicating. They work with performance. Centring embodied
dancing, listening, text, darkness, research emerging out of contained
voice, video, bass to invite forms and living archives to explore sites
that emerge through the live of collective memory. Sibungu’s
unfolding of the tension between ongoing body of work; Quantum
things that produce meaning, Ghost (2019) connects Namibia and
towards making spaces that might England through extractive mining,
hold the complex, multiple and exile and a love story told through a
contradictory, spaces that consider poetic lament. Recent offerings have
movement and transformation as been with Sonsbeek, Netherlands,
inevitable. and Temple Bar Gallery, Ireland
(2021), Gasworks, and Spike Island,
Shifa (Pat Thomas, Rachel Musson UK (2019).
and Mark Sanders), from the Arabic
word for healing, is a new trio borne
Jason Singh is a sound artist,
out of old musical partnerships
nature beatboxer, producer, DJ,
from the ever shifting sands of the
facilitator and performer. His work
UK improvised music scene. Pat
is inspired by the natural world
Thomas, pianist extraordinaire
and includes: live performance,
whose eclectic motherboard pushes
sound installations, live film
the music in unexpected twists
accompaniment, radio shows,
and turns, suggested the name.
sound design, recorded music
The healing in this case is a raw,
and the sonic exploration of
unfettered musical space where he,
plant biodata, ceramics, textiles
saxophonist Rachel Musson and
and museum objects. Singh’s
28SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
collaborations and commissions Pooja Sivaraman is Bombay-
include a diverse range of born, London-based theatre-
organisations and artists including maker. Her work is influenced by
BBC, V&A Museum, Kew Gardens, contemporary Indian politics and
Chester Zoo, BFI, Celtic Connections, its colonial hangover. Her surreal,
RNLI, Music for Youth, National theatrical worlds aim to capture
Trust, Tate Britain, Yazz Ahmed, the audacious spirit of young South
Shabaka Hutchings, Sarathy Korwar, Asians in and outside the region.
Nitin Sawhney, Talvin Singh, Rokia Pooja’s plays include The Ostrich,
Traore to name but a few. Singh is The Grand March (long-listed for
an associate artist and creative Theatre Uncut’s political playwriting
consultant with Music For Youth award and Masterclass’s PYP
and resident artist at Bristol Music scheme), and Mosquitoes. She is
Trust. He is also visiting lecturer at currently a member of the Royal
the Guildhall Hall School of Music Court’s Intro Playwriting Group
and Drama and an awardee of the and a Master’s student in Applied
PRS New Music Biennial Award. Theatre at the Central School of
Speech and Drama.
Himali Singh Soin is a writer and
artist based between London
and Delhi. She uses metaphors
from outer space and the natural Matthew J. Smith is Professor of
environment to construct imaginary History and Director of the Centre
cosmologies of ecological loss and for the Study of the Legacies of
the loss of home, seeking shelter British Slavery. Previously he taught
somewhere in the radicality of love. at the University of the West Indies,
Her book ancestors of the blue moon Mona in Jamaica where he was
(2021), comprises flash fictions Professor of Caribbean History. His
from the perspectives of lost deities research is pan-Caribbean with
in the Himalayan canon. special interest in Haiti and
29SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
Jamaica. Among his publications Ali Tamlit was part of Plane Stupid
are Liberty, Fraternity, Exile: Haiti between 2015-2021. He is a trainer
and Jamaica After Emancipation and facilitator with the collective
(2014) and Red and Black in Haiti: Resist + Renew and lives in the
Radicalism, Conflict and Political valleys of South Wales. He enjoys
Change, 1934-1957 (2009). climbing rocks and listening to
anything from metalcore to
Jonas Staal is a visual artist cheesy pop.
whose work deals with the relation
between art, propaganda, and
democracy. He is the founder
of the artistic and political
organization New World Summit
(2012–ongoing). Together with
Florian Malzacher he co-directs
the training camp Training for the
Future (2018-ongoing), and with
human rights lawyer Jan Fermon
he initiated the collective action
lawsuit Collectivize Facebook Foluke Taylor is a psychotherapist,
(2020-ongoing). With writer and writer, teacher, parent, friend,
lawyer Radha D’Souza he founded inquirer. Interested in the
the Court for Intergenerational therapeutic potential of narrative
Climate Crimes (2021-ongoing) and sound and in exploring
and with Laure Prouvost he is co- antiphony as an essential practice
administrator of the Obscure Union. of therapeutic relation. Taylor is
Exhibition-projects include Art of the nourished and guided by love
Stateless State (Moderna Galerija, in many forms including Black
Ljubljana, 2015), After Europe (State feminist relational poethics, dub
of Concept, Athens, 2016), The (and version), and the enduring
Scottish-European Parliament (CCA, hospitality of West Africa’s Atlantic
Glasgow, 2018) and Museum as coastlands.
Parliament (with the Democratic
Self-Administration of Rojava,
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven,
2018-ongoing). Publications
include Steve Bannon: A Propaganda
Retrospective (Het Nieuwe Instituut,
2018) and Propaganda Art in the 21st
Century (The MIT Press, 2019).
30SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
Eddy Thacker, previously of Pat Thomas (born 27 July 1960)
grassroots collectives Grow is a jazz pianist from Oxford,
Heathrow – Transition Heathrow, England. He received a Paul Hamlyn
Plane Stupid, Rising Up, End Foundation Award for Artists in
Deportations, Detained Voices and 2014. Several of his recordings
Global Justice Rebellion. Eddy is were released in 2019: from the
currently undertaking a Masters ruminative post-bop piano trio
in Creative and Critical Writing at heard on BleySchool, the free
Birkbeck College. improv of the collective trio Shifa,
an exploratory trio with reedist John
The Otolith Group (TOG) was Butcher and drummer Ståle Liavik
founded by artists and theorists Solberg on Fictional Souvenirs
Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun and a stunning live solo piano set
in 2002. The anatomical entity of of Duke Ellington music available
the Otolith operates as a kind of digitally from London’s Cafe Oto.
figurative black box for withholding Thomas is part of the band Ahmed,
intention and calculating a quartet with Antonin Gerbal, Joel
discrepancy. Articulating the idea Grip and Seymour Wright inspired
of the Otolith with the idea of the by the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik;
Group alludes to the histories of their New Jazz Imagination was
collective practices invented by released by Umlaut in 2017 and was
artists that theorise and theorists followed by Super Majnoon (East
that practice art within and Meets West).
beyond the United Kingdom. The
post-cinematic practice of TOG is
informed by an aesthetics of the
essayistic that takes the form of
a science fiction of the present in
which their artworks explore the
intertemporal crises and interscalar
catastrophes that construct the
Racial Capitalocene. The TOG’s
work has been exhibited globally.
Their solo exhibition Xenogenesis
will next travel to the Sharjah Art
Foundation, Sharjah and Irish
Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in
2022.
Mama D Ujuaje of Community
Centred Knowledge has been
31SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
involved in developing the Race written for various outlets including
and Climate Justice work of the The Guardian, The Independent and
Racial Justice Network, which is Novara Media, and has published
rooted in the 13th Recommendation How to Change it: Make a Difference
Framework. With a background in with #Merky Books. As a facilitator
Food Justice and its EcoCultural and educator he works with
dynamics, Mama D supports collective Resist and Renew, and
the 13th Framework which is a independently with various cultural
reparatory initiative enshrining the initiatives and grassroots groups.
recognition that fundamental to
Environmental Justice is Systemic
and Structural Justice. The latter
cannot be achieved without
attention to a. Colonial Legacies
b. An Internationalist Perspective
and c. Establishment of Active
Solidarities. These form the basis of
the 13th Framework.
Vron Ware is a writer and
photographer. She writes about
gender, race, the social construction
of whiteness, national identity,
ecology, militarism and the cultural
heritage of war. Her books include
Beyond the Pale: white women, racism
Joshua Virasami is an artist and and history (Verso 1992/2015); Out of
political organiser. He is a member Whiteness: color, politics and culture
of climate justice collective (Chicago 2002), co-authored with
Wretched of the Earth and anti- Les Back); and Military Migrants:
racist organisation Black Lives Fighting for YOUR Country (Palgrave
Matter UK. As an activist and 2012). Her next book, Return of
organiser he has been involved a Native: Learning from the Land,
in a number of movements and addresses the politics of the English
campaigns, including the Occupy countryside and will be published
movement. As a writer he has by Repeater Books in March 2022.
32SENSING THE PLANET: BIOGRAPHIES
Ava Wong Davies is a writer from workshops and sound healing
London. As a theatre critic, she sessions for groups.
writes for The Independent, Exeunt
Magazine, and The Stage. In 2018 Carole Wright, founding member
she won the Harold Hobson Sunday of Blak Outside, is a creative urban
Times award for theatre criticism. activist, community gardener
As a playwright, she is an alumnus and beekeeper. Wright currently
of the Soho Theatre Writers Lab works with The White House
18/19, the Bush Theatre Emerging Dagenham, Tate Modern, Landscape
Writers Group 19/20, and the Royal Institute, Urban Tree Festival (UK)
Court Writers Group 20/21. In 2020, and Peabody Trust. Wright has
her play scum was shortlisted previously worked with Tate Britain,
for the Verity Bargate and Tony The Showroom, Whitechapel Art
Craze awards. Her first TV project Gallery and St Mungo’s to develop
is currently in development with creative community projects,
DNA Films and BBC Drama. She is lead workshops and walks. Wright
represented by Jessica Stewart at regularly works with primary and
Independent Talent. secondary school students, housing
estate residents and housing
managers, church users groups and
local councillors. Wright currently
manages two community gardens
in Southwark, South London and
is a fellow of the 2021 Support
Structures for Support Structures
programme at Serpentine.
Keiko Yamamoto is co-founder and
co-director of Cafe OTO and OTO
Projects CIC. Hamish Dunbar and
Keiko opened Cafe OTO in Dalston,
Hackney in London in 2008. Cafe
OTO provides a home for creative
Seah Wraye is a naturally gifted
new music that exists outside of
Diviner/Spiritual Consultant,
the mainstream with an evening
Shamanic Practitioner and Reiki
programme of adventurous live
Master who is passionate about
music seven nights a week. She
her work and her practice. She
lives in Littlehempston, Totnes,
facilitates readings and deep
Devon. www.cafeoto.co.uk
soul healing for clients on a one
to one basis as well as shamanic
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