The
Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage online symposium is the culmination of a year-long artist research residency and the commissioning of three “
Texts of Repair” it will take place over nine sessions across two weeks between the 20th and 29th of January 2025.
Week one will see
Zahra Malkani,
Nombuso Mathibela,
Sibonelo Gumede, and
Gabriela De Matos, present the artist research that they have undertaken as part of the year-long
Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage residency alongside presentations from
Alexis Pauline Gumbs,
T.J. Demos and
Farhana Sultana introducing the “Texts of Repair” that they developed throughout 2024.
Week two will see themed panel discussions during which the artists in residence, commissioned critical thinkers and Loss and Damage experts will explore the critical links between the
Loss and Damage discourse and themes already being widely explored within the arts and humanities in response to the combined climate, human rights, and environmental crisis, and the drive towards decolonization.
Find the registration links under the description of each online session below. Find the PDF schedule for the Symposium
here. Session #1 :
January 20th 2025 | 17:00 - 18:00 GMT
In this session, award-winning writer on contemporary art, global politics, and ecology
T.J. Demos will present the text “
Gaza Genocide, Climate Colonialism, and Survival Media: What it would Mean to Repair Loss and Damage” which brings a critical analysis to Loss and Damage discourse by focusing on the aesthetics and politics of experimental artistic practices that connect harm and reparation to care and transformation in the context of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza with the intention of extending the horizon of flourishing ecological futurity beyond green capitalist solutionism.
Register for this online session
here.
Session #2 :
January 21st 2025 | 14:00 - 15:00 GMT
In this session, Queer Black Troublemaker, Black Feminist Love Evangelist,award-winning writer and poet
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, will present the text
“Tell the Others.” which is guided by the last works of the poet and environmentalist Audre Lorde. In
“Tell the Others” Gumbs has created a written ceremony in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl that that meets us at the shoreline of loss, the swell of grief, the multi-life form convergence of disaster, with questions, offerings and provocations that support us in finding a collective way forward in the details of our survival.
Register for this online session
here.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings. Her work in this lifetime is to facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice. Her
poetic work in response to the needs of her cherished communities has held space for multitudes in mourning and movement. Alexis is the author of
Survival Is a Promise : The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024).
Session #3 :
January 22th 2025 | 14:00 - 15:00 GMT
In this session, interdisciplinary scholar, speaker, and author
Farhana Sultana will present the text “
Decolonizing Climate Knowledge: Repairing Epistemic Injustice and Loss in the Era of Climate Change”, which draws on insights from various Global South and Indigenous scholars and argues for the urgent need to decolonize the institutions that govern climate science and policy. Highlighting the significant, yet often overlooked epistemic injustice of as a form of climate injustice, she calls for a fundamental rethinking of how climate knowledge is created, shared, and used, centering the voices and expertise of those who have been most affected by climate change but least empowered to shape its trajectory.
Register for this online session
here.
Dr. Farhana Sultana is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary scholar in water governance, climate justice, political ecology, and international development. She is Professor of Geography at Syracuse University, USAFind out more about Dr. Sultana’s work
here.
Session #4 :
January 23th 2025 | 14:00 - 15:00 GMT
In this session, multidisciplinary artist
Zahra Malkani will present her artist research project
“A Ubiquitous Wetness”, which explores musical and oral traditions that bring together devotion and dissent, poetry and protest as forms of remembrance and resistance against environmental devastation, dispossession and erasure. Engaging with these sounds as intimate and embodied teaching tools packed with deep ecological wisdom offering practices that survive, adapt and endure, she brings forth the rich and situated ecological knowledges and the revolutionary spirit contained in these sounds as a kind of eco-pedagogy.
Register for this online session
here.
Zahra Malkani is a multidisciplinary artist. Collaboration, research and pedagogy are at the heart of her practice, exploring sound, dissent and devotion against militarism and infrastructural violence.
Session #5 :
January 24th 2025| 13:00 - 14:00 GMT
In this session, cultural worker, educator, researcher and vinyl selector
Nombuso Mathibela and urbanist and cultural worker
Sibonelo Gumede will present their artist research project
“Phoshoza” which is an ongoing sound-based archival transgenerational artistic research project that explores Princess Constance Magogo Sibilile Mantithi Ngangezinye kaDinizulu’s ugubhu traditional sound and photographic family archive. The project aims to position Princess Magogo's music and cultural production as an ecological practice by engaging with the bow instrument as an ecosphere. An approach intended to facilitate an examination of the intangible Loss and Damage inflicted by the climate crisis on cultural heritage and identity as well as its connection to colonial modernity in South Africa.
Register for this online session
here.
Session #6 :
January 24th 2025| 17:00 - 18:00 GMT
In this session, architect, urban planner, researcher, professor, and curator
Gabriela De Matos, will present her artist research project
“Candomblé terreiros: Sacred Shields Against Salvador’s Climate Crisis” that explores how terreiros —the sacred spaces of the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion— through their ancestral knowledge and their relationship with nature preservation, could address the loss and damage being caused by the climate crisis in the city of Salvador, Brazil. By documenting construction techniques and spatial arrangements, De Matos demonstrates the terreiros' microclimatic influence and their role in enhancing local living conditions in urban spaces in relation to climate intensified events such as heat waves.The project is part of Gabriela’s ongoing research on Afro-Brazilian architecture examined through an intersectional lens of race, culture, and environmental justice.
Register for this online session
here.
Gabriela De Matos is an architect, urban planner, researcher, professor, and curator. Gabriela’s background is in Sustainability and Management of the Built Environment.
Session #7 :
January 27th 2025 | 17:00 - 18:00 GMT
In this panel discussion award-winning writer on contemporary art, global politics, and ecology
T.J. Demos, artist, storyteller, researcher and conservationist
Vivien Sansour, cultural worker, educator, researcher and vinyl selector
Nombuso Mathibela, urbanist and cultural worker
Sibonelo Gumede and one other speaker will bring a critical analysis to Loss and Damage discourse through the consideration of music and cultural production as an ecological practice and and the aesthetics and politics of experimental artistic practices that connect harm and reparation to care and transformation. This discussion will center upon the following key topics: Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, the extension of the horizon of flourishing ecological futurity beyond green capitalist solutionism, intangible Loss and Damage inflicted by the climate crisis on cultural heritage and identity and its connection to colonial modernity in South Africa.
Register for this online session
here.
Session #8 :
January 28th 2028 | 13:00 - 14:00 GMT
In this panel discussion Queer Black Troublemaker, Black Feminist Love Evangelist, award-winning writer and poet
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, writer, historian, and activist
Rebecca Solnit and multidisciplinary artist
Zahra Malkani, will consider how musical and oral traditions and ceremonies that bring together devotion and dissent, poetry and protest as forms of remembrance and resistance against environmental devastation, dispossession and erasure can meet us at the shoreline of loss to support us in finding a collective way forward in the details of our survival in this era of loss and damage from climate change. This discussion will center upon the following key topics: ecological wisdom and situated ecological knowledges, the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, the musical and oral traditions in Pakistan.
Register for this online session
here.
Session #9 :
January 29th 2025 | 13:00 - 14:00 GMT
In this panel discussion interdisciplinary scholar, speaker, and author
Farhana Sultana, architect, urban planner, researcher, professor, and curator
Gabriela De Matos, and the founder and executive director of
Climate Refugees,
Amali Tower, will consider why, in the context of Loss and Damage, a fundamental rethinking of how climate knowledge is created, shared and used is needed, one centering the voices and expertise of those who have been most affected by the climate crisis yet are the least empowered to shape its trajectory.This discussion will center upon the following key topics: Afro-Brazilian architecture examined through an intersectional lens of race, culture, and environmental justice, climate induced migration and displacement, and the urgent need to decolonize the institutions that govern climate science and policy.
Register for this online session
here.