Research Network: Speculative Climate Stories
Event Information
Description
Join us for our first Research Network event in the More-than-Human Care series.
Angela Chan / Worm will present research on communicating climate change through contemporary Chinese speculative and science fiction, and explore the interconnected environmental and socio-economic issues in China today. Responding to Angela, writer, curator and artist Ama Josephine Budge will discuss speculative climate fiction from a West African perspective.
Reading excerpts from selected speculative climate stories, they will navigate how storytelling imaginatively and critically rejects climate colonialism. Whilst decentralising the Western ‘cli-fi’ discourse, they will also problematise the limited debate in Chinese ‘cli-fi’ on the growing political concerns over China’s expanding economic relations with African nations for natural resources.
Angela and Ama’s discussion will emphasise a positionality as global North diaspora, to collectively engage with speculative climate fiction in solidarity with global BIPOC-led climate justice activism.
Participants
Angela Chan is a creative climate change communicator and independently runs Worm, and art and climate change platform. Alongside engaging with the online community through curatorial projects, Worm gives talks and workshops on art and climate justice, most recently at Somerset House and ICA. Her research interests span climate and social justice, decoloniality and contemporary Chinese science fiction; she also writes cli-fi as algae-la.
Ama Josephine Budge is a speculative writer, artist, curator and pleasure activist whose work navigates intimate explorations of race, art, ecology and feminism. She is currently a PhD candidate in Psychosocial Studies with Dr Gail Lewis at Birkbeck. Her research takes a queer, decolonial approach to challenging climate colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa with a particular focus on inherently environmentalist pleasure practices in Ghana and Kenya.
Please note the event will take place at Chelsea College of Arts, Billiards Room, 45 Millbank, SW1P 4RQ.
If you have any access requirements, do get in touch at info@iniva.org or call 020 7630 1278 for more information.
Organiser Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts)
Organiser of Research Network: Speculative Climate Stories
Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) is an evolving, radical visual arts organisation dedicated to developing an artistic programme that reflects on the social and political impact of globalisation.
With the Stuart Hall Library acting as a critical and creative hub for our work, we collaborate with artists, curators, researchers and cultural producers to challenge conventional notions of diversity and difference. We engage a wide audience, particularly young people, in discourse and debate on issues surrounding the politics of race, class and gender.
Through our programme we work predominantly with British-born and British-based visual artists of African and Asian descent supporting them at different stages in their careers. We offer residencies, commission new work and promote existing practices enabling artistic ambition and development.
