Kinship: Islands
As our relational interdependencies are thrown into ever-greater relief as a result of the global ‘metacrisis’, the metaphor ‘world as archipelago’ offers us an intriguing way to look at our interconnected amphibious existence. Expanding on (and challenging) the notion of the ‘global village’, an archipelagic outlook acknowledges both our connections and separations as foundational to our relationships, all the while inviting our oft-forgotten ocean kin into our awareness.
hosted by Hannah Close
Hannah is a writer, photographer, curator and researcher exploring philosophy, ecology, culture and being alive in a world of relations.
Module 1Leny Strobel & Andreas Weber
We begin our journey exploring time, place, and interconnectedness. In her talk, 'An Islander Adrift on a Continent' Leny discusses longing for home and the disconnection to place caused by colonisation. In Andreas' session, the concept of islands is used as a metaphor to highlight the interconnectedness o...
Module 2Anna Arabindan-Kesson, David Whyte & Maureen Penjueli
In module two, we explore interconnectedness, hidden histories, and the transformative power of poetry. Anna Arabindan-Kesson examines the global plantation within the British Empire, delving into its entanglements and visual cultures. David Whyte discusses how poetry allows us to uncover and express our h...
Module 3Iain McGilchrist & Himali Singh Soin
Iain McGilchrist and Himali Singh Soin explore perception, cultural synthesis, and the celebration of difference. In the first session, Iain discusses the balance between sameness and difference in perception, drawing on his research into hemisphere differences in the brain. Next, Himali shares a mythopoet...
Module 4Bathsheba Demuth & Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq
In module four, we consider relationships with the more-than-human and the significance of kinship. Bathsheba Demuth describes the changing dynamics of human-whale relationships, from Indigenous hunters to commercial whaling ships, and Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq discusses the importance of unity and acceptance...
Module 5Craig Santos Perez & David Gange
This module explores archipelagos, islands, and local cultures. Craig Santos Perez focuses on the significance of archipelagos in Pacific Islander literature, highlighting kinship, traditional knowledge, and decolonisation. David Gange examines the interconnectedness of island spaces through small family b...
Module 6Alastair McIntosh & Kailea Frederick
To close our journey, Alastair McIntosh reflects on the interconnectedness and interdependence of living on the island of Lewis, highlighting the value of nurturing the soul and creating positive change. Kailea Frederick emphasises the importance of bridging worlds and identities in a divided society, usin...
hosted by Leny Strobel
Leny Strobel is a Kapampangan from Central Luzon in the Philippines.
hosted by Dr Andreas Weber
Dr. Andreas Weber is a biologist, philosopher, nature writer, and mystic. He focuses on a re-evaluation of our understanding of the living.
hosted by Anna Arabindan-Kesson
Anna is an Associate Professor of Black Diasporic art at Princeton University.
hosted by David Whyte
David is an internationally renowned poet and author. Behind these talents lies a very physical attempt to give voice to the wellsprings of human identity, human striving and, most difficult of all, the possibilities for human happiness. He makes his home in the Pacific Northwest, where rain and changeable skies remind him of the other, more distant homes from which he comes: Yorkshire, Wales and Ireland. He speaks to the suffering and joy that accompany revelation, and the necessity of belonging to families, people and places.
hosted by Maureen Penjueli
Maureen was born on the island of Rotuma but spent most of her schooling life in Lautoka, Fiji.
hosted by Dr Iain McGilchrist
Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist and writer. He is committed to the idea that the mind and brain can be understood only by seeing them in the broadest possible context, that of the whole of our physical and spiritual existence, and of the wider human culture in which they arise – the culture which helps to mould, and in turn is moulded by, our minds and brains. Iain is interested in a wide range of psychiatric conditions, including depression, psychosis, personality disorders (especially borderline personality disorder), anxiety disorders, chronic low self-esteem, phobias, alcohol and drug abuse, as well as neuropsychiatry.
hosted by Himali Singh Soin
Himali is a writer and artist based between London and Delhi.
hosted by Bathsheba Demuth
Bathsheba is writer and environmental historian specialising in the lands and seas of the Russian and North American Arctic.
hosted by Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq
Angaangaq is a shaman, traditional healer, storyteller and carrier of the Qilaut (wind drum).
hosted by Craig Santos Perez
Craig is an indigenous Chamoru (Chamorro) from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam). He is a poet, scholar, editor, publisher, essayist, critic, book reviewer, artist, environmentalist, and political activist.
hosted by David Gange
David is a writer and Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Birmingham.
hosted by Alastair McIntosh
Alastair is one of the world’s leading environmental campaigners, distinguished in his ability to join together the outer and inner life. His book Spiritual Activism explores such paths of reconnection of the inner and outer worlds, which he argues is nothing less than learning how to sustain the flow of life. If we don’t do this, he states, “then our work will fall on stony ground, we’ll burn out or we’ll sell out.”
hosted by Kailea Frederick
Kailea (she/her) is a mother of Tahltan, Kaska and Black American lineage.
We inhabit a world of islands…Our pale blue dot; a constellation of archipelagos buoyed amidst an even greater cosmos of celestial atolls. Like the billowing ocean tides, our terraqueous isle undulates toward the sun, moon and stars, impelling the transformation of matter at each turn, our planetary tidewrack visible in the fallen leaves and glacial floes.
Despite our separations, cosmic and interpersonal, we are all intimately connected. The poet John Donne famously said ‘no man is an island’, and while the biotic world relies on the creative expression of our individuality, our own ‘islandness’, in order to manifest itself, beneath the surface we discover, like islands, that we are inextricably joined.
We are joined at the oceanic root, at the depths of the seabed, and by the salt-stippled space between us. The seas of relation that meditate our entanglements are, in the same breath, domains of impasse traversed only through building arks and yielding to the winds that carry our words and wares in sensuous exchange, or by diving courageously into the unbroken fathoms between and among us.
Rally together as crew as we explore our earthly relations and the liquescent spaces that connect us. Each module, we will navigate towards a unique island of inquiry, mapping counter-cartographies of relationship along the way. Through tentacular engagement with self, other, and the more-than-human, we'll challenge colonial and essentialist notions of relationship so that we might orient ourselves towards healthier ways of being together, ways that honor our profound entanglements with our elemental home.
We'll reflect on the thresholds, boundaries and borders that mediate our belonging, seeking to unflatten the map through 'tidalectic' perspectives that offer welcome anchorage in a world adrift.
