Resist, Persist: Gender, Climate and Colonialism
A collaboration with the Barbican, this multi-day symposium used the themes of the RE/SISTERS exhibition to explore the bonds between gender and environmental justice. The full programme can be viewed here.
The symposium was interested in the intersections of ongoing colonial histories and feminist and queer ecologies. Bringing together artists, scholars and curators, the symposium explored how women, gender non-conforming and marginalised communities are often placed at the forefront of advocating and caring for the planet, and more broadly how womanist politics have consistently resisted the mechanical, patriarchal order that is organised around the exploitation of natural resources and the oppression of ‘othered’ bodies.
This symposium connected thinking from the Barbican’s exhibition, RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology and the Paul Mellon Centre's multi-year project, Climate & Colonialism.
Day 1
Session 1: Ways of Knowing and Sensing
Chair: Sria Chatterjee (Paul Mellon Centre)
Greta LaFleur, Gender, Colonial and Decolonial
Resist, Persist: Gender, Climate and Colonialism, Day 1: Greta LaFleur
Shelly Rosenblum, The Score: Performing, Listening and Decolonization, and Susanne Winterling, Planetary Sensing as a Deciphering Practice
Resist, Persist: Gender, Climate and Colonialism, Day 1: Shelly Rosenblum, Susanne Winterling
Session 2: Resist: Art and Justice
Chair: Astrida Neimanis (University of British Columbia)
Chrys Papaioannou, Wetlands Know No Genders, Know No Nations: For an Ecofeminism Beyond Borders, and Syrus Marcus Ware, Irresistible Revolutions: Systems Change, Speculative Fiction and Dreaming into Freer Futures
Resist, Persist: Gender, Climate and Colonialism, Day 1: Chrys Papaioannou, Syrus Marcus Ware
Day 2
Welcome and Session 1 : Gender, Climate and Colonialism: Introductions
Sria Chatterjee and Astrida Neimanis, Introductions, and Katherine Fein, Of Bodies and Land: Continental Allegories Then and Now
Resist, Persist: Gender, Climate and Colonialism, Day 1: Sria Chatterjee, Astrida Neimanis, Lucy Bradnock, Katherine Fein
Session 2: Ways of Being and Making (Online Session)
Chair: Susan Reid (University of Sydney)
Camila Marambio, Sandcastles: A Queerfemme Proposition on Cancer Ecologies
Resist, Persist: Gender, Climate and Colonialism, Day 2: Susan Reid, Camila Marambio
Session 3: Metabolic and Bodily Processes
This session is available on request.
Session 4: Intergenerational Flows
Chair: Bindi Vora (Autograph)
Saba Khan, Water Machines; Buhle Francis, Grandmothers of the Sea: Stories and Lessons from Five Xhosa Ocean Elders; and Imani Jacqueline Brown, Our first name for this region was 'Home': Bringing other worlds into being in 'Cancer Alley', Louisiana
Resist, Persist: Gender, Climate and Colonialism, Day 2: Saba Khan, Buhle Francis, Imani Jacqueline Brown