Fugitive Terrain

<p class="p1">This episode explores the dichotomous tension of swamps, rivers, and other water bodies as contested sites of catastrophe, conflict, and violence, but also as frontiers of freedom and retreat.</p> <p class="p1">Aurora Levins Morales reads the preface of <i>SILT </i>that threads together other segments throughout the episode. Galerie Lelong partner, Mary Sabbatino talks about Cuban artist Ana Mendieta’s work on the occasion of the 2013 exhibition <i>Ana Mendieta—Late Works: 1981-85</i>. Artist Jota Mombaça and art critic Harry Burke discuss Mombaça’s 2023 exhibition <i>A CERTAIN DEATH/THE SWAMP</i> at CCA Berlin, which Harry reviewed for e-flux. Cultural theorist Fred Moten explains the poetic narratives of Black fugitivity in a conversation originally recorded for the Boston Ujima Project. Artist Dala Nasser and architect and sound artist Mhamed Safa discuss the complex history of the Wazzani River, which runs through Lebanon into Northern Israel and whose waters are at the center of major tensions in the region, in relation to their project <i>Red in Tooth</i>. Curator Mariam Elnozahy presents <i>The Great Man-Made River</i>, her project about what was the largest irrigation project in the world, promising Libyans and Africans water independence, abundance, and freedom from foreign control. Seba Calfuqueo talks at Art Basel earlier this year about their performance work <i>Ko ta mapungey ka (Water is also territory)</i>, which seeks to question the historical links between water and the Mapuche people in relation to the violent neoliberal extractivism present in Chile. Lastly, we listen to a part of <i>Skeletal Water-Xray Water Part 1</i>, from the long-form spoken word and sound composition album <i>Fugitive Equation</i>, by poet Nathaniel Mackey and the Creaking Breeze Ensemble.</p>