The next reading group, the last Thursday of February, is led by visual artist and researcher Risk Hazekamp who suggested the essay Fires, Fogs, Winds written by Elizabeth Povinelli. Povinelli is a critical theorist, a filmmaker and a Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University.

The reading sessions are moderated by a Tilburg-based artist Michaela Davidova, design materials are prepared by designer Jinhye Lee. Together with the team of SEA Foundation we invite you to join every last Thursday of the month at 7pm.

Fires, Fogs, Winds

Fires, Fogs, Winds is an essay on the elements of desire and toxicities that stimulate nostalgia and the sensory rememberings of home. In the essay, Povinelli brings the reader to her childhood spent in Louisiana’s small town called Shreveport. She describes memories of forest fires and of her brothers with whom she would play running games – chasing and escaping the fog from trucks emitting pesticides. All for fun, and from desire to play with the flames; all to challenge life, because what makes them alive is on fire.

Fire is a state of transformation, it is a change in oxidation, but as Povinelli writes, it is not only what we see and sense but also what is not visible. To make something on fire means to combine substances that ignite and spread with winds. As we continue reading the essay, it blow us over a thousand kilometres away from Povinelli’s home to Rochester in New York where the photographic film company Eastman Kodak polluted the vast lands, and to Australian chemically contaminating swamps that affect the livelihoods of Indigenous communities who deal with the toxic sovereignty of power.

The essay does not seek suggestions on erasing or cleaning toxicities that have already infiltrated into soils, air, and bodies, into the socio-political structures, it lets us critically engage with the intoxicating effects (or desires) that combust us. Because when it all burns down, something else must and will be re-born from/with fire.

Elizabeth Povinelli

Elizabeth Povinelli is a critical theorist and filmmaker researching colonialism, language, politics and art at the Department of Anthropology of Columbia University in New York. Her critical writing has focused on developing a critical theory of late settler liberalism that would support an anthropology of the otherwise. As a filmmaker, she is a member of the Karrabing Film Collective, an – all but one (Povinelli) – Indigenous media group with approximately thirty members. They approach filmmaking as a mode of self-organisation and a means of investigating contemporary social conditions of inequality.

Lectures, Readings and Conversations Elizabeth Povinelli

Risk Hazekamp

Risk Hazekamp (they/them) is an interdependent visual artist, researcher, and an art educator. Their work has revolved around the complex and constantly changing relationship between body and image. Gender has been a central element, not only as a subject, but also as a theoretical framework. Through a combination of personal activism, decolonial practices and analogue (organic) photography, visual intersectional processes are developed to change existing systems. In doing so, Hazekamp takes on the position of a student as often as possible, currently through their more-than-human relationality ‘nearby’ Cyanobacteria.

As of April 2023, Hazekamp will begin with their Professional Doctorate with a focus on Unlearning Photography at CARADT – expertise centre of Avans University of Applied Sciences. Risk Hazekamp was presenting their work at SEA Foundation in 2015. You can read the accompanying text of the exhibition There is Anarchy in Our Midst here.

Website Risk Hazekamp

The programme of reading sessions:

26.01.2023 reading with Gladys Zeevaarders
in fold VI. on Reimagining

27.10.2022 reading with Anna Zvyagintseva
05.10.2022 reading with Jun Zhang
25.08.2022 reading with Christopher van Ginhoven Rey
in fold V. on Awakening

02.12.2021 reading with Laura Castro
18.11.2021 reading with Sophia Holst
16.09.2021 reading with Amy Franceschini
in fold II. on Commons

08.07.2021 reading with Sheng-Wen Lo
17.06.2021 reading with Katarina Jazbec
20.05.2021 reading with Mari Kesi-Korsu
in fold I. on Empathy

More any suggestions for reading? Check out the Reimagining recommended booklist