TBA21 on st_age

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 (CS...

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 imp...

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 scienti...

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. Co...

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 an...

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 dynami...

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 part...

‘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...

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....

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 Jupite...

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,...

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 utop...

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...

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 cutt...

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 cutti...

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...

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 t...

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 hu...

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 wel...

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 exhibit...

‘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,...

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...

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...

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 countr...