Hydro Futures / Memory Ecologies
Water grounds our lives, from our beginnings in liquid, to our bodies as its containers. Hydro Futures / Memory Ecologies hold a space for research and investigation into our relationships with water through the frameworks of Afrofuturism and Black Geographies. The fields of Afrofuturism and Black Geographic study offer modes of thought and imagination that centre Black spatial thinking and agency. They critique both the erasure of Blackness within the whiteness and coloniality of geographical thought and analyse how the entanglements of race, class, gender, and sexuality determine patterns of habitation, denial, and resistance. (Re)thinking with water requires a fluid reimagining of time, as it serves as an archive of memory and of history - water is its own storyteller. In using Afrofuturism as a lens to creatively and critically view water with, its ecological position is expanded upon to consider its role in the past, present, and possible future(s).
Hydro Futures / Memory Ecologies is an offering that prompts a close listening to water’s retellings. The invited speakers bring together conversations about the mythical, political and personal value of water, as we ourselves connect across time and (non)place throughout the seminar series.
The speakers in this seminar series consider the influence of Afrofuturism and Black Geographies on their work in the fields of visual art, poetry, literature, queer and gender studies, and psychotherapy. We invite you to participate in these encounters where we hope to engage in important conversations to create more desirable futures.
In collaboration with the Institute for Postnatural Studies.
5 ONLINE SESSIONS
Every Tuesday from November 29th
17:30 - 19:30 (GMT)
150€ registration *
130€ for student
(sending a proof of enrolment)
*IPS does not receive regular funding and as such the seminar series is charged to support with organisational costs. We are able to offer 10 scholarships available for BPOC to attend the sessions.
Need-based scholarships are available, apply here.
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SPEAKERS
Natasha Thembiso Ruwona
Natasha Thembiso Ruwona is a Scottish-Zimbabwean artist, researcher, and creative programmer. They are interested in how Afrofuturism and ecology can meet through storytelling and by listening to the landscape. Using water as a method for thinking, Natasha investigates entwinements of Scottish history and Black Geographies via their transatlantic connections. Through their investigations, they are also seeking to understand how healing and improved well-being are impacted when we explore our relationships with our environment. In 2021, Natasha was one of the shortlisted artists for the Margaret Tait Award and arebyte’s hotel generation artist development programme. Recent commissions and presentations of their work include: Raumdeuter Radio Glasgow, Mis(sing) Information at Perth Museum & Art Gallery and Cinenova with Spike Island.
Deborah Jack
Deborah Jack (1970, Netherlands/ St. Martin) is an artist whose work is based in video/sound installation, photography, painting, and text. Her current work deals with trans-cultural existence, memory, the effects of colonialism and mythology through re-memory. As a multi-media artist, she engages a variety of strategies for mining sites of cultural memory and negotiating a global present. The resonance of traumatic historical events in her personal and cultural memory is at the core of her work. Deborah has published two poetry collections, The Rainy Season (1997) and skin (2006). Her poetry has appeared in The Caribbean Writer and Calabash and has recited her work in the Caribbean, United States, South Africa, Indonesia and the Netherlands. Deborah Jack is an Associate Professor of Art at New Jersey City University.
Clementine E. Burnley
Clementine E. Burnley is a feminist migrant mother, writer, and trainee psychotherapist. She lives between Edinburgh and the Hebrides. Her work has appeared or is upcoming in Magma, the Poetry Review, and Writer's Mosaic. She’s a 2021 Royal Society of Literature Sky Arts Award Winner, an alumnus of Obsidian Foundation, and a 2021 Edwin Morgan Second Life Grantee. Social media: twitter @decolonialheart, or IG @Ewokila
Rinaldo Walcott
Rinaldo Walcott is a writer, cultural critic and Full Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Institute; and a member of the Graduate Program at the Institute of Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. From 2002-2007 Rinaldo held the Canada Research Chair of Social Justice and Cultural Studies at OISE.
Rinaldo’s teaching and research is in the area of Black diaspora cultural studies and postcolonial studies with an emphasis on questions of sexuality, gender, nation, citizenship and multiculturalism. As an interdisciplinary Black Studies scholar Rinaldo has published in a wide range of venues. His articles have appeared in journals and books, as well as popular venues like newspapers, magazines and online venues, as well as other forms of media. His most recent books the Long Emancipation: Moving Toward Black Freedom from Duke University Press, 2021; and On Property (Biblioasis, 2021 which was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award and nominated for the Heritage Toronto Book Award). He was born in Barbados.