Image: Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, North Sea, 2017
Wednesday, October 23 2019 - 19:30
Last time we met, we became aware that forests are burning around the equator. On the raft of the Floating University we read about xapiri (images of mythological animal ancestors) trying to imagine a Yanomani worldview of the Brazilian Amazon. Why imagining an oceanic worldview? No forests could exist without the dust from the deserts, without the winds and oceans.
Like the movement of the ocean she’s walking on, coming from one continent/continuum, touching another, and then receding (‘reading’) from the island(s) into the perhaps creative chaos of the(ir) future. Kamau Brathwaite 1
Last month the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate was issued. It finds ocean warming and acidification, loss of oxygen and changes in nutrient supplies. It warns us that marine life is already affected in all areas. What does that mean for human life? Reading together we want to learn about the entanglements of human and non-human, of land and water, of forest and ocean. Healthy oceans are carbon sinks and are producing oxygen, playing a fundamental role in regulating global temperatures. Damaged marine ecosystems are no longer offering food, livelihoods, nor safe coastlines.
For the stone of this land to be bombed
by the wind & all this, all this water
wood
has become so useless, stripped wet,
fragile, broken, totally uninhabitable
with what we must still build
Kamau Brathwaite 2
In ‘Between Us and Nature – A Reading Club’ we read texts together related to natural sciences, art, anthropology, postcolonialism, and (post)anthropocene, chosen from a female perspective looking beyond disciplines. Those who would like to attend the reading session, please rsvp via email until 22nd of October to betweenusnature@gmail.com, and you’ll receive a selection of texts. At this reading group we will read passages together out loud and share our experiences and thoughts about the nature we live in, what it means to us, and will discuss different ways of engaging with the oceans and the world we inhabit.
PLEASE NOTE: IN TERMS OF SUSTAINABILITY WE WILL NOT PRINT OUT THE TEXT.
BRING YOUR COPY ON A DIGITAL DEVICE OF YOUR CHOICE OR PRINTED OUT! :-)
Come and join us with an open mind here:
What: The Reading Club is in English language
Where: Manteuffelstr. 73, 10999 Berlin Zabriskie Buchladen für Kultur und Natur
When: Wednesday October 23, 2019, 19:30 (sharp!)
Who: small group of lovely, people who would like to meet you (rsvp only, not suitable for children)
Why: to read together, be inspired and meet people
Note: Bring your copy of the text as print out or on a digital device
Hosts: Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, artist, and Sina Ribak, researcher for ecologies and the arts
References:
1 Kamau Brathwaite, ConVERSations with Nathaniel Mackey (New York: We Press, 1999); IN: Stefanie Hessler (ed.): Tidalectics - Imagining an oceanic worldview through art and science, TBA21-Academy, London, England, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2018.
2 Kamau Brathwaite, Shar: Hurricane Poem (Kingston, Jamaica: Savacou, 1990) quoted in Revisiting Tidalectics: Irma/José/Maria 2017 by Elizabeth DeLoughrey; IN: Stefanie Hessler (ed.): Tidalectics - Imagining an oceanic worldview through art and science, TBA21-Academy, London, England, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2018.
Image: Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, North Sea, 2017