“I mean none of us is going to move the earth one millimetre from its axis. But if we do what we need to be doing then we will leave something that continues beyond ourselves.”
Audre Lorde, quoted in Survival is a Promise by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
We established Radical Ecology as a space to explore how we might align the truth of our most intimate selves with the flow of our social and political existence and with the life of the living planet. We have been hugely inspired in this by the vision of Black feminist writer and poet Audre Lorde (1934-1992) - which is triumphantly celebrated in the new biography, Survival is a Promise (Allen Lane, 2024), released by our soul friend, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, into the world this summer. Now we find ourselves deepening our practice of walking, dreaming and listening together as we work to raise consciousness within ourselves of human life that is also geophysically situated with the time of the earth.
The work of Gaia theorist, James Lovelock (1919-2022) remains a seminal influence on this line of our inquiry and underpins ongoing research into Cinematics of Gaia and Magic that manifests this season as the 2-screen film installation, Can you tell the time of the running river?, by Radical Ecology Director Ashish Ghadiali. This newly commissioned work features in the group exhibition Dartmoor: A Radical Landscape at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter [Saturday 19 October 2024 until Sunday 23 February 2025] alongside existing works by pioneers of land art including Nancy Holt and Richard Long and contemporary trailblazers including Tanoa Sasraku, Sian Davey and Fern Leigh Albert.
In the meantime, new projects with Natural England should keep us busy well into 2025 as we get stuck into questions of arts-science collaboration with Natural England’s e-DNA monitoring team and of nature recovery in post-plantation ecosystems, considering the space between systems of capitalist value and deep ecology to ask how we can most meaningfully live in relationship with a world in which we are also always complicit as co-creators. Not unrelated, we also welcome new partners including Zebra Collective and Refugee Support Devon into the fold of our ongoing project, Diversity in Gardens, as we collaborate on the development of new strategies for tackling “the hostile environment” and advancing racial justice, through the facilitation of access to nature in landscapes as diverse as Hounds Tor and Grimspound and Mount Wise Neighbourhood Centre in Devonport.
Autumn 2024 has also shaped up for us as a time of homecoming too, as we take up residence in our new loft studio in Webbers Yard, Dartington, a space that we’ve been warming up with the first meetings of a Dream Ecologies collective that we have brought together through a call to co-facilitate a public space and an experimental space where we might investigate together the possible meanings that our dream-lives can bring to bear not just on the personal, but also on the social, political and ecological planes of our existence. We look forward to announcing the details of our first exhibition in this space very soon: a looped screening of A candid conversation between the Late Start collective and Audre Lorde (1985). And also to welcoming Late Start collective members including Ingrid Pollard, Pratibha Parmar, Shaheen Haq and Jackie Kay as well as Alexis Pauline Gumbs to Dartington in November. More on this below…
PLYMOUTH ART WEEKENDER
19 October 2024 at KARST, Plymouth
On 19 October, as part of the New Contemporaries public programme and Plymouth Art Weekender, Radical Ecology will bring cultural leaders from across Plymouth including Jabo Butera from Diversity Business Incubator, Alex Vessis from Devon and Cornwall Refugees Support, Marc Gardiner from Zebra Collective, Liliane Uwimama from Jabulani and Jemima Laing, Deputy Leader of Plymouth City Council to reflect on the summer’s events where far-right anti-immigrant protesters gathered in cities across the UK - including Plymouth - intent on violent confrontation with the state. We will be asking what the riots revealed about what’s going on in the city right now and we’ll be exploring the role of art and cultural strategy in addressing the collective challenges that we face.
The day will kick off at 9.30am at KARST with a session from our Dream Ecologies collective, followed by an open conversation, After The Riots (11am-1pm), after which lunch will be served by Jabulani. In the afternoon, the programme continues with a world premiere of Antonina Szram’s film, A Silent Walk (2.30-3pm), commissioned as part of the Black Atlantic weekend last year by Radical Ecology and Plymouth Culture and produced by Cine Sisters SW, followed by a conversation around contemporary creative practice (3-4pm) with Szram and New Contemporaries artist, Fergus Carmichael. Entry is free. Join us for all or part of the day and stay with us well into the evening as we head up to The House at Drake Circus for a night of experimental performance with our friends at Soak: Live Art for which tickets are available here.
DARTMOOR - A RADICAL LANDSCAPE
19 October 2024 to 23 February 2025 at RAMM, Exeter
Also on 19 October, a major new contemporary art exhibition, Dartmoor: A Radical Landscape, opens at RAMM demonstrating the moor’s allure to artists, including Radical Ecology’s Ashish Ghadiali.
Informed by a conversation with Gaia theorist James Lovelock, a year and a day before he died, and here reflected through a recorded conversation with Radical Ecology’s close collaborator, Professor Tim Lenton, Ghadiali was commissioned to create the 2-screen film installation, Can you tell the time of a running river? specifically for the exhibition. Through it, he explores new ways of living on the earth, recognising ‘different temporalities’ in the time of a river and the time of a human body.
On 12 February 2025, art historian Joy Sleeman will be in conversation with Ghadiali at RAMM talking about Dartmoor’s importance in the history of land art. Stay tuned for announcements of additional programming by Radical Ecology on 14 February 2025, included a guided walk with Ghadiali and Sleeman to Wistman’s Wood - following in the footsteps of the iconic land artist Nancy Holt.
A STORY OF BONES
17 November at Exeter Phoenix
Join us at 2pm on 17 November at Exeter Phoenix for a screening of the feature documentary, A Story of Bones by Joseph Curran and Dominic Aubrey de Vere where we will be joined by De Vere and other guests for a post-screening discussion of the film and its connections to the history of Rapparee Cove in Ilfracombe, North Devon. A Story of Bones centres the work of activist Annina van Neel advocating for the proper burial of the bones of around 9000 formerly enslaved people on St. Helena and a reckoning with the island’s colonial past and present.
Rupert’s Valley on St. Helena shares a history with Rapparee Cove in Ilfracombe: both are sites where the remains of enslaved people were discovered in mass graves. In each, debates ensued over how to properly honour these burial grounds, with concerns about the neglect of the lives of those interred. We look forward to following up on this screening and discussion with a walk at Rapparee Cove in the new year. Be sure to follow us on Instagram for further information.
SURVIVAL IS A PROMISE
22/23 November in Dartington & Plymouth
In partnership with The Box and The Green Table, it is our deepest joy to be welcoming Alexis Pauline Gumbs back to Devon, all the way from Durham, North Carolina, for a series of events in November aimed at celebrating Alexis’s publication of the new biography of Audre Lorde, Survival is a Promise, and for creating many opportunities for collective learning from the wisdom of Audre Lorde’s writing and for building community in a spirit of liberation and joy. Over these two days of programming in Dartington and Plymouth, there are many ways for you to get involved, including:
Survival is a Promise: A Celebration (7-11pm, 22 November at The Green Table, Dartington) where Alexis will be joined by members of the Late Start collective including Pratibha Parmar, Ingrid Pollard, Shaheen Haq, and Jackie Kay for a screening of A candid conversation between the Late Start collective and Audre Lorde (1985, 27 minutes), followed by a discussion of the enduring influence of Audre Lorde on Black feminism in Britain in the 1980s, and then food (included in the ticket price), and then a party. Tickets are available here.
In conversation with Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Ingrid Pollard (11am-1pm, 23 November at The Box, Plymouth) where we will be introducing Alexis and Ingrid Pollard, whose work is featured in The Box’s autumn exhibition programme, Land Sea Sky: Ingrid Pollard, JMW Turner & Vija Celmins. Here, Alexis will read from Survival is a Promise before we embark on a walking tour of the exhibition where Alexis and Ingrid will be joined by art curator Terah Walkup. Tickets are available here.
Writing workshop: Lessons for Liberation (2-5pm, 23 November at Radical Ecology, 1b Cedars Unit, Webbers Yard, Dartington) where participants will have the opportunity to work with Alexis on a set of writing activities inspired by her research into the life and art of Audre Lorde. Tickets are available here.
RADICAL ECOLOGY RECCOMMENDS:
In case you are looking for more reading material, here are some texts that are helping us to delve deeper into geology, water and liberation in the landscape:
Alexis Pauline Gumbs - Survival is a Promise: Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ critically acclaimed biography of Audre Lorde has been hailed as a masterpiece that immerses readers into the fullness of Lorde’s work, surfacing her “deep engagement with the natural world, the planetary dynamics of geology, meteorology, and biology…For [Lorde], ecological images are not simply metaphors but rather literal guides to how to be of earth on earth, and how to survive—to live the ethics that a Black feminist lesbian warrior poetics demands.”
Kathryn Yusoff - Geologic Life: In Geologic Life, Kathryn Yusoff theorizes the processes by which race and racialization emerged geologically. Examining both the history of geology as a discipline and ongoing mineral and resource extraction, Yusoff locates forms of imperial geology embedded in Western and Enlightenment thought and highlights how it creates anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, and anti-Brown environmental and racial injustices.
Jonathan Watts - The Many Faces of James Lovelock: Based on over eighty hours of interviews with Lovelock and unprecedented access to his personal papers and scientific archive, Jonathan Watts has written a definitive and revelatory biography of a fascinating, sometimes contradictory man.
Subscribe to our Newsletter here.