Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging, Jessica J. Lee (2024) (EMPIRE LINES Live at Invasion Ecology)
EMPIRE LINES7 Nov 2024

Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging, Jessica J. Lee (2024) (EMPIRE LINES Live at Invasion Ecology)

In this special episode, writer Jessica J. Lee joins EMPIRE LINES live with visual artist and researcher Iman Datoo, to explore the languages of ‘natural’ history and invasive species through their book, Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging (2024).

Bringing together memoir, history, and scientific research, writer Jessica J. Lee considers how both plants and people come to belong - or not - as they cross borders. Born in Canada to a Taiwanese mother and a Welsh father, Jessica often draws on her own lived experiences to observe our world in motion, and close connections between seemingly distant places - sometimes, with shared tastes. Dispersals, their latest book of linked essays, journeys further still, exploring migrations, displacements, and the entanglements of the plant and human worlds, and the language we use to describe them.

Jessica references Richard Mabey’s Weeds, Mary Douglas, and Scottish plant hunter Robert Fortune, to expose our historic human and anthropocentric understanding of plant life. We discuss the everyday words and phrases concerning diasporas and diasporic identity, naturalisation, and invasive species relate to citizenship and migration law, and how human and more-than-human beings are mis/represented in the media, from giant hogweed in Victorian England, to eucalyptus, wakame kelp, seaweed, and Japanese knotweed. Drawing on their work across the South West of England, Iman Datoo shares their research into soils, potatoes, and tea. Bringing together Iman and Jessica’s works, installed at the exhibition, Invasion Ecology, at Southcombe Barn on Dartmoor, we also delve into the history of botanical illustrations and mapping as tools of colonialism - here reimagined by contemporary artists.

This episode was recorded live as part of the programme for Invasion Ecology, co-curated by Jelena Sofronijevic for Radical Ecology, and Vashti Cassinelli at Southcombe Barn, an arts space and gardens on Dartmoor. The central group exhibition, featuring Ingrid Pollard, Iman Datoo, Hanna Tuulikki, Ashish Ghadiali, Fern Leigh Albert, and Ashanti Hare, ran from 1 June to 10 August 2024.

Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging by Jessica J. Lee is published by Penguin, and available in all good bookshops and online.


Watch the full video online, via Radical Ecology: vimeo.com/995973173

Find all the links in the first Instagram post: instagram.com/p/C9hjlxrIcgo


PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.


Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠

And Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936⁠

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/empirelines

Avsnitt(164)

The Madras College of Arts and Crafts, India (1850-Now) (EMPIRE LINES x The Noble Sage, Brunei Gallery)

The Madras College of Arts and Crafts, India (1850-Now) (EMPIRE LINES x The Noble Sage, Brunei Gallery)

Jana Manuelpillai revisits the Madras College of Arts and Crafts, the first British colonial art school set up in India, through the post-independence practice and striking monochrome works of A.P. Sa...

25 Jan 202413min

Queer Feet, Osman Yousefzada (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Charleston)

Queer Feet, Osman Yousefzada (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Charleston)

Interdisciplinary artist Osman Yousefzada crafts stories of working-class migration experiences, unwrapping the influence of his mother and many other textile makers in his diaspora community in Birmi...

18 Jan 202413min

Learning from Artemisia, Uriel Orlow and Orchestre Jeunes Étoiles des Astres (2019-2020) (EMPIRE LINES x Eden Project)

Learning from Artemisia, Uriel Orlow and Orchestre Jeunes Étoiles des Astres (2019-2020) (EMPIRE LINES x Eden Project)

Curators Hannah Hooks and Misha Curson connect global environments and food practices, from guerrilla gardeners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to foragers in Palestine, challenging extractive, c...

11 Jan 202416min

White Zombie, Victor Halperin (1932) (EMPIRE LINES x Visions of Haiti, Barbican Cinema)

White Zombie, Victor Halperin (1932) (EMPIRE LINES x Visions of Haiti, Barbican Cinema)

Curator Matthew Barrington marks 220 years since the Haitian Revolution, the only successful slave uprising, unreeling how resistance continues with a series of films, from the first zombie horrors, t...

5 Jan 202417min

The Black Triangle, Armet Francis (1969) (EMPIRE LINES x Autograph)

The Black Triangle, Armet Francis (1969) (EMPIRE LINES x Autograph)

Photographer Armet Francis documents African diasporic cultures across ‘The Black Triangle’, and captures the co-founding of the Association of Black Photographers in London, now Autograph ABP, 35 yea...

28 Dec 202315min

Whites Can Dance Too, Kalaf Epalanga, translated by Daniel Hahn (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Kizomba Design Museum, Africa Writes 2023 at the British Library)

Whites Can Dance Too, Kalaf Epalanga, translated by Daniel Hahn (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Kizomba Design Museum, Africa Writes 2023 at the British Library)

Writer and musician Kalaf Epalanga moves between Angola, Portugal, and Brazil, sounding out colonial histories and contemporary migrant experiences through kizomba and kuduro music, in Whites Can Danc...

21 Dec 202315min

Where Worlds Meet, Maha Ahmed (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Leighton House)

Where Worlds Meet, Maha Ahmed (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Leighton House)

Contemporary artist Maha Ahmed reconnects Asian art forms along the Silk Road, migrating between traditional Mughal and Persian miniature paintings, Japanese woodblock prints, and imported Islamic cer...

14 Dec 202315min

Arcadia, John Akomfrah (2023) (EMPIRE LINES at 100 x The Box, Sharjah Biennial 15)

Arcadia, John Akomfrah (2023) (EMPIRE LINES at 100 x The Box, Sharjah Biennial 15)

For EMPIRE LINES’ 100th episode, we join artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah to journey the Columbian Exchange, connecting continents from the 15th century, and contemporary port cities from Plymouth t...

7 Dec 202313min

Populärt inom Samhälle & Kultur

en-mork-historia
podme-dokumentar
gynning-berg
p3-dokumentar
svenska-fall
mardromsgasten
skaringer-nessvold
aftonbladet-krim
creepypodden-med-jack-werner
spar
killradet
rattsfallen
hor-har
flashback-forever
aterforeningen-en-podcast-med-thorsten-och-richard-flinck-av-sigge-eklund
vad-blir-det-for-mord
historiska-brott
rss-sanning-konsekvens
larm-vi-minns
rysarpodden