Son[i]a #268

Black feminist writer, organiser, and thinker Lola Olufemi's political and creative work has been shaped by over a decade of feminist activism—both within institutions and far beyond them. In this podcast, she invites us to embrace non-linearity, atemporal connections, and fragmentation—both in our organising and in how we write and research. She reflects on feminist legacies, the need to think beyond binaries of success and failure, and how imagination is not a luxury but a political necessity. We also explore the ethics of solidarity, the material conditions of care, and the radical power of listening—to each other, to the past, and to the unheard.

In this podcast, researcher, curator, and organizer Vaida Stepanovaitė guides us through some of the intricate lineages of past and present trade unions in the post-Soviet Baltic states, while also drawing inspiration from international movements such as the Art Workers’ Coalition and W.A.G.E., as well as from recent collective efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. She reflects on the devaluation of labour and people within the context of “uber-economics” or the gig economy, on the toll, precarity takes on the tired bodies of workers, and on the need for radical action to foster new forms of collectivization. The struggle against inhospitable working conditions and the gaps in the social safety net affecting art workers, serves as a starting point for devising better models for arts institutions and building new solidarities in the quest for a good life.

In this podcast, Lebanese artist, researcher, and filmmaker Marwa Arsanios unpacks the many conversational tactics embedded in her modes of working in the gaps between art and activism, in the intersection between ecological thinking, land struggles, and feminist politics. We talk about reading groups, the film object, solidarity as a practice, and using the art economy to bring communities and movements together.

In this podcast we talk to environmental historian, researcher and writer Troy Vettese about veganism, ecology and geoengineering and about neoliberalism and the environmental crisis. We look at past examples of vegan socialist experiences and understand the urgency of including animal rights in radical thought. We also examine the tension between nature and the market, accepting the impossibility of dealing with the climate crisis through eco-modernist techno-solutions.

Kristin Ross reflects on the power of subjectivity in addressing history, and on oral memory and first-person accounts. She examines the subversive potential of today’s environmental struggles as forms of activism capable of generating a new ecological, social, and political intelligence, and she recaptures the associative and cooperative spirit of the Paris Commune, explores the needs to move beyond official national fictions, and defends solidarity as a political strategy.

In this podcast, Singaporean organizer, writer, and scholar Charmaine Chua shares her research on the containerization of global logistics from the vantage of the Global South. Her journey begins aboard a container ship, embodying ethnographic observation and field work, as well as a radical rereading of the naval archive records of the colonial project. The mix of methodologies, experiences and data highlights the incongruities and the environmental, legal, and labour abuses that appear in the capitalist wet dream of efficiency in global trade.    

We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Olivia Plender that we were unable to include the first time around.

Artist and researcher Olivia Plender talks about productivity and care, about suffragettes and museums, and about adolescence and schools. She looks at groups without charismatic leaders, embodied education, and the possibility of transforming errors in honest discussions.

We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Jodi Dean that we were unable to include the first time around.

We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Angela Dimitrakaki that we were unable to include the first time around.

Angela Dimitrakaki talks about the new feminist critique, the limits of democracy, the wiles of post-capitalism, and the ambivalence of the commons. We also touch on the notions of radical curating and collaborative practices.