TBA21 on st_age podcast

Fana Fraser

Born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, Fana Fraser is currently a U.S. based contemporary dance artist who explores the nature and essence of things within a framework of exploratory embodiment. Her short film, nesting (2023), was filmed both in and near water, at the intersection of physical and philosophical constructs of borders, urgency, and care. It enjoins us to consider the environment, our responsibilities, and our humanity, and, although the film was shot on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, it evokes a feeling of Caribbean consciousness and reality. 
 
Three artists who live and work in the Caribbean region—dance practitioners Sonja Dumas (host) and neila ebankhs, from Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica respectively, as well as Trinidad and Tobago poet Shivanee Ramlochan—examine the work in the context of the Caribbean’s relationship to its environment, the ache of its past, and musings on its future.

Sonja Dumas

Credits:
Contributors: Shivanee Ramlochan and neila ebankhs
Conducted by Sonja Dumas

Of History, Habitat, and The Shore: Framing a Caribbean Discourse around Fana Fraser’s “nesting”

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 country. This podcast sheds light on the state of environmental defenders in the Philippines through stories from a leader of a group monitoring the attacks and a daughter of a prominent activist who was assassinated nearly a decade ago. Together, their narratives paint a picture of what it means to strive to protect ecosystems in a time of planetary and human rights crises.

Research, interviews, and script by Jhesset Thrina Enano

Special thanks to Yeo Siew Hua, Dan Koh, Anna Lovecchio, and Luis Adrian Hidalgo.

Protectors in Peril: Environmental Defenders in the Philippines

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 exhibitions. They time-travel when necessary. They are the artistic directors of the Yokohama Triennale 2020. 

Mary Anne Mohanraj is the author of A Feast of Serendib (Mascot Books, 2020), The Stars Change (Circlet Press, 2013), Bodies in Motion (Harper Collins, 2006), and twelve other titles.

Nabla Yahya is an artist in flux. Her practice stems from an architectural education, and moves into the realm of the metaphysical. She is interested in celluloid, earth, and the ethereal.

Bishakh Som’s graphic novel Apsara Engine (2020) is out now from The Feminist Press. Spellbound: A Graphic Memoir (2020) was recently published by Street Noise Books.

Mario D’Souza is a curator and a writer based between New Delhi and Goa, India. He is presently Associate Curator for the 5th edition of Kochi Muziris Biennale, 2020.

The Future Can Be Excavated from the Past

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 well as the political implications of Chilean social organizing, have had on her practice.

Contributors: Alex Vicente (cultural journalist, El País), Rodolfo Andaur (visual arts curator and cultural manager), Lorena Donaire (national representative and spokeswoman of Mujeres MODATIMA) and Raquel González (rural school teacher and director of Las viudas del agua (The Widows of the Water)).

Patricia Domínguez: llamando a la Tierra (Calling Earth)

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 the written word, and to speak. An overarching dialogue with the Alexandria-based poet, translator, and writer Salma Raafat, weaves in responses by five young poets to the question of what it means to be an Arabic female poet in the world today. The host is Nour Hassan, an Egyptian writer and creative director. The podcast structure mirrors Awartani’s artwork: voices complete one another and almost overlap, they are both diverse and unified, they traverse nuances and taboos to cultivate meaning, presence, and discourse for Arab women universally. 

Contributors:

Salma Rafaat is an Egyptian writer, poetess, and performer. She started writing at the age of 11 and established Poetry Comes to Light, the first contemporary poetry club in Alexandria, in 2020. She “writes in the hope that one day people find their missing pieces in what I write, in the same way that I have become whole from what I have read.”

Other contributing poets in order of appearance:

Farida El Sayed

Haidy Zakaria

Yasmin Galal

Mai Mostafa

Nour Kamel

Podcast credits:

Produced by Nour Hassan.

Additional research by Nour Hassan.

Edited by Ana Esteve Reig.

Come Into The Light

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 the fight against discrimination and prejudice and to imagine a way towards a better future. This conversation is a call for integration and acceptance in a country whose cultural context largely refuses to accept and respect the humanity of those who do not fit heteronormativity.

Credits:
Journalist: Scaly Kep’na
Guests: Sirius T., Victor Bujirir and Junior Basosila 
Beat Maker: Didier V.D.

Give Difference Value (“fais de la différence une valeur”)

TBA21 on st_age is TBA21’s research and commissioning digital space. Based on long-term relationships of trust, it reaches out to bring a multiplicity of voices and contexts into conversation, supporting artist’s needs throughout both research and practice. 

TBA21 on st_age focuses on environmental and social contemporary artistic practices, and presents video, animation, sound, and text works, as well as projects specifically designed to be experienced online. These are accompanied by a series of contextual materials, which make both the work and the research behind it accessible to a broader audience. These materials include artist-curator conversations, editorial podcasts, research clusters, and calls to actions, as well as the backst_age series, which connects the different projects through conversations, video glossaries, and curated views. All featured works remain the property of the artists and authors.