Serpentine Podcast: REWORLDING

Episode 1: Reimagining

In what ways can fiction and imagination offer tools to question and remake reality? What possibilities emerge when we imagine our world differently? REWORLDING opens with the perspectives of artists and writers who engage dreams and visions, and use them to formulate new worlds.

Featuring Tai Shani, Irenosen Okojie and Kostas Stasinopoulos, with sound works by Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen, Libby Heaney & Nabihah Iqbal, and Perez & Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster.

I’ve been thinking, what is imagination? Any language that you create as an artist is a form of worldmaking and creativity comes into play in many ways – in everyday tasks, all the time. Everyone dreams. Everyone has dreams, and that also is a process of worldmaking. – Tai Shani

Episode 2: Remembering

How can looking back alter our perceptions of what we wish for the future? What does it mean to creatively engage with myths, historical artefacts, life stories, and monuments? In this episode, we hear from artists and researchers who are questioning accepted histories, drawing out underrepresented elements of cultural memory, and re-approaching the past in order to open up space in the present.

Featuring Samson Kambalu, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Zing Tsjeng, and Yesomi Umolu, with a performance by Etel Adnan & Gavin Bryars, and sound art by KMRU.

For me, remembering is like a creative exercise – to try to get back to the present moment by the way of the past. It’s not so much about being remembered in history, but how remembering structures the present. A good piece of history can empower. – Samson Kambalu

Episode 3: Replaying

How can the way we play change the way we live? How are creativity, collaboration, and change adaptation related, and why do these activities help people to thrive? In the third episode of REWORLDING, we discuss why artists and architects are choosing to create new possibilities through work with play spaces, games, and playable digital realities. This episode explores what these can teach us about the world to come, and how we will navigate it.

Featuring Gabriel Massan, Alvaro Barrington, Maria Lisogorskaya (Assemble), Material Institute, Penny Wilson & Assemble Play attendees, and Tamar Clarke-Brown, with sound by LYZZA.

Play is as important as oxygen, nutrition and love. It’s because of the play process that we kickstart everything that makes us unique as individuals and as a species. Play is endangered: we’ve got to release it again so it can have its own place in human existence. – Penny Wilson

Episode 4: Regenerating

How do we co-create our world with other species, and how are artists working with these beings in response to ecological instability? This episode reflects on the need for reconnection, healing and regeneration, and showcases art that celebrates our connection to a wider web of life and plays an active role in nurturing other lifeforms.

This episode features: Dr Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, and Sarah Hamed; audio from Hans Ulrich Obrist & guest fauna; music by Sulafa Elyas; 12 Dreams as Coral Hair, a sound work by Yussef Agbo-Ola; Es Devlin and Apichatpong Weerasethakul reading their contributions to 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth, and contributions from Yube Huni Kuin and Mashã Huni Kuin, agroforestry agents with AMAAIAC (from Maria Thereza Alves’s Back to Earth project, To See the Forest Standing).

I see how this organism fits into another, and that’s deep space and time happening in front of me. I want humans to recognise that the living world is completely sublime, and to experience seeing how extraordinary everything around us is. – Dr Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

Episode 5: Relating

How can relationships transform us, and our world? The final episode of the series explores how artists are actively collaborating with communities to change their daily realities, and how they are engaging collective dreaming and challenging their own ways of connecting to others.

Featuring Rory Pilgrim, Richard Sennett, Sumayya Vally, Amal Khalaf, and both live performances and interviews with performers from Rory Pilgrim’s RAFTS: LIVE.

So much of our social systems are failing individuals, peoples needs are not being met. And if there’s anything which I hope will carry further, it’s that we think about a way of supporting people which is just based on listening. – Rory Pilgrim

Episode 6: Reflecting [Bonus Episode]

What changes can we carry forward from our REWORLDING journey – and how has it changed us? In this bonus episode, our host Gaylene Gould shares personal reflections on REWORLDING, connecting the moments that moved her with projects, ideas and understandings that have emerged following the series. This moment to pause and look back is also a chance to look forward, as we reveal exciting news about our next series.

Ultimately it’s not just about what we make in the world, it’s the ways in which we remake ourselves that transforms the world around us. – Gaylene Gould

Credits

REWORLDING is presented by Gaylene Gould, and curated by Hanna Girma and Fiona Glen.  It was produced by Katie Callin at Reduced Listening, with production support from Nada Smiljanic and executive production by Jesse Lawson. The theme music was conceived and produced by KMRU, the visual identity is by the unloved, and sound mixing is by Arlie Adlington.

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