The word “tamaas” in Arabic means “connection." Since 2004, Tamaas has worked transnationally among various artistic disciplines in the U.S., Morocco, and France. Through our new branch, Earth Arts Justice, comes Invitation to the Species, a podcast series in which we ask guest speakers to think about what their grandparents and parents’ ways of living bring to the present moment, and how their own work connects in specific ways to collective eco-systems and our climate. Invited guests respond through interviews, readings and performances.
The conversation you’re about to hear, “The Positive Twist,” was held between Allison Cobb, Sarah Riggs and Jérémy Robert. Cobb starts by reading the preface to Plastic: An Autobiography, the book she published with Nightboat Books in 2021, where she describes plastic as the epitome of the Anthropocene, and its damages on a personal and global level. She elaborates on her relationship with genres and her environmental engagement. She talks about the togetherness of lived experiences when she documented her failure to communicate with the inhabitants Mossville, Louisiana, once dubbed “the most toxic town” in the United States. She walks us through the three stages of apology, the creative meanderings of fiction and imagination, as well as the joyous and sustainable strength that can stem from our understanding of the plastic tragedy, and how literature, in its own way, can fend off resentment and help locate the strength to take action.
13 Jun 2021
Youmna Chlala and Mónica de la Torre: The tenses of cultural differences
The conversation you’re about to hear, “The Tenses of Cultural Differences,” was
held between Monica de la Torre, Youmna Chlala, Sarah Riggs, and Alisha
Mascarenhas in April 2021.
Monica and Youmna interrogate the past to investigate complex present times and
simultaneous states of reality. They contemplate the future as a place of potential
rather than collapse. Together with Sarah and Alisha, they question the notion of
heritage and the limits of empathy. They wonder how equivalences and differences
rather than same-same structures – in translation, art, film, and among people – can
better address the pressures of the present.
In the conversation, you’ll hear Monica and Youmna read from their own works.
Monica will read an excerpt from Repetition Nineteen, published by Nightboat in
2020, as well as an unpublished poem, while Youmna will tell us more about The
Paper Camera, the book she published, in 2019, with Litmus Press.
24 May 2021
Mirene Arsanios and Celina Su: What kind of language are we left with?
The conversation you’re about to hear, “What kind of language are we left with” was held between Mirene Arsanios and Celina Su, and recorded in February 2021.
With Mirene and Celina, both “motherless mothers without mother tongues,” we discuss the lineages of their languages, liminal subjectivities and the impossibility of “we” in light of differentially distributed access to resources. Together we consider how our social relations are being rewritten and disrupted in a time of ongoing crisis and disaster. We talk about alternative economies, how zoom killed the classroom. We contend with loneliness and the limits of the nuclear family, and what it means to be part of an amorphous, and constantly changing collective.
Following our conversation, you’ll also hear readings by Mirene and Celina from their own work. From Mirene you’ll hear an excerpt from Notes on Mother Tongues, published with Ugly Duckling Presse in 2020, and “A Collage in Progress” by Celina, also published in 2020, and which can be found in full at thepoetryfoundation.org.
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