Foreshadowing Public Launch

Programme Details

10:00-10:15 Arriving
Welcome and Housekeeping (Erin Li)

10:15-10:45 Entering
Opening up the collective space (Chiara Famengo)
Ecological grief as climate interrogation and interspecies solidarity (Youngsook Choi)

10:45-11:15
Holding Memories (Khanysile Mbongwa)
A cleansing ritual for the ground of decolonial gathering in the form of sonic meditation.

11:15-11:30 tea/coffee break

11:45-12:45
River Witnessing (Wen Di Sia and Linh Le)
Wen Di shares ‘When Rivers Get Enclosed’ – endangered spiritual practices around river systems in Peninsular Malaysia’s forests, and Linh shares ‘Remembering through River’- archiving as witnessing the Saigon River.

12:30-13:30 lunch

13:30-14:00
Exploring Transnational Solidarity and Activism (Paul Goodwin and Hannah Davey, moderated by Jess Wan)
Hannah shares her transnational experiences supporting artists into activism, and her collaborative climate justice organising as part of Liberate Tate and Greenpeace UK, reflected by Paul through his long-term research on transnational solidarity and the socio-political potential of ‘worlding’.

14:00-15:15 Interspecies Solace (parallel programmes)
Let the algae speak (Chiara Famengo, first floor library)
A listening and tea-tasting session with and for the communities at the lagoon’s edges—algae. A moment to reflect on the role they have played in the Venetian Lagoon, their responses to stillness and change, and the futures they might shape.

Dismantling Total Station (Youngsook Choi and Jess Wan, ground floor)
Staying close to the stories of the elephant’s diaspora in the ever-shrinking Malaysian rainforest, this session attempts collective poetry reading/writing on interspecies grief with slow reflective sips of Liu Pao, a.k.a. the miner’s tea in Taiping.

15:15-15:30 tea/coffee break

15:30-16:00
Grief with bots (WT) (Dennis Dizon, moderated by Erin Li)
Dennis shares their research on the Intersection between ecological affection and networked media, exploring the thanatechnology and the future of artificially-intelligent grief bots.

16:00-17:30
Listening sticks (Hannah Davey and Emily Gee)
Co-creation workshop exploring intersections between art, activism and climate justice. Wrapping material gathered up by the Foreshadowing members, and reflections from the room via Emily Gee’s third ear, onto a base of hazel cut wooden staffs coppiced from Hannah’s woodland. Hazel is typically used for dowsing, so our carrying of Listening Sticks during the eco-grief procession will pull through the flows of conversation from the day.

17:30 onwards
Eco-grief procession with Listening Sticks to St. James Park.
A picnic for further informal conversation on how to get involved in eco-grief.

Contributors

Youngsook Choi instigates grief as the process of climate interrogation that scrutinises structural conditions intersecting human tragedy and environmental loss. In Every Bite of the Emperor (since 2021), her ongoing body of works on colonial exploitation engaging North England post-mining towns, Malaysian rainforest and Vietnamese hydrosphere is in tandem with this inquiry. Emphasising collective investigation and imagination, Youngsook founded the transnational eco-grief council Foreshadowing.

Hannah Davey is exploring re-enchantment methodologies to support herself and other artists to nourish activist practices. She is part of Liberate Tate; a guest lecturer on The Dutch Art Institute’s roaming MA; and the in-house art-activism specialist at Greenpeace UK, working on climate justice. Her projects challenge public, corporate and political spaces – usually without permission.

Dennis Dizon is an artist and writer, currently pursuing a doctoral research in Existential Psychotherapy (NSPC, Middlesex University). They interrogate intersections of technology and ecology through intertextual, transmedia and discursive work. Their practice focuses on queering and decolonising media and techno-science beyond the white cube, playing with rhetoric, humour and irony. Deconstructing pillars of existential philosophy—from death and isolation, to freedom and meaninglessness—Dennis constellates evolving techno-ecologies and psychosocial conditions, embracing slippage, the awkward, and comedies of error.

Chiara Famengo is a Venetian curator and researcher based in London, working at the intersection of art and ecology, often beyond traditional exhibition formats. She curates for Arts Council England’s Three Rivers programme and is a guest researcher at NICHE, Venice. She has contributed to international art programs with Ocean Space, Venice Design Biennial, Royal College of Art, Phytology, amongst others. She is co-convener of the How Like a Reef collective.

Emily Gee is interested in how we live otherwise; in the cracks and gaps where we can find each other, in the processes of sharing the worlds we live through, and the ones we might move towards. As a senior producer at Heart of Glass, an agency for collaborative, community and social arts practice based in Merseyside, UK, she looks after the organisation’s commissions and residencies including long-term projects In Every Bite of the Emperor led by artist Youngsook Choi and The Suicide Chronicles led by artist Mark Storor.

Linh Lê is an independent curator and researcher from Saigon, Vietnam. Her work investigates the changing landscapes and ecologies of Saigon and other parts of Vietnam under the pressure of modernisation and urbanisation. Since July 2024, she started Đo Đạc, a site-responsive curatorial project that attempts to survey the impact of forced resettlement in Thủ Thiêm peninsula, Sài Gòn. She is currently a Curatorial Board member of Á Space (Hà Nội).

Paul Goodwin is a curator, researcher, and educator, focusing on Black British Art, African diaspora art since 1980, and transnationalism in contemporary art production. His multidisciplinary work explores the creative potential of cities and exhibitions as sites for aesthetic, socio-cultural, and political intervention. Goodwin is Director of the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity & Nation (TrAIN) at the University of the Arts London. He is the Co-Principal Investigator for Worlding Public Cultures, an international research initiative examining the potential of ‘worlding’ as a critique of globalization.

Erin Li is Curator at Delfina Foundation, London, leading on the delivery of residencies, exhibitions, and public programming. Her recent curatorial practice centres around embodiment and liveness, from street dance and live art, live culture in fermentation, to transforming everyday relations, processes and vulnerabilities into transdisciplinary art projects.

Khanysile Mbongwa is a Cape Town-based independent curator whose practice emerges as Curing & Care, using the creative to instigate spaces for emancipatory practices, joy and play. Khanyisile was the chief curator of Stellenbosch Triennale 2020 and the curator of Liverpool Biennial 2023 ‘uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things’, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cape Town, focusing on spatiality, radical black self-love and imagination, and black futurity.

Wen Di Sia is the co-founder, writer, and researcher of Gerimis Art, a collaborative artistic and archiving collective that co-produces cultural content with indigenous Malaysian (Orang Asli–OA) communities. She will explore how enclosure disrupts the deep connections between OA and their customary territories, threatening the survival of intergenerational Indigenous knowledge and governance systems.

Jessica Wan Ka Po is a curator and writer working to create culturally hybrid spaces that platform diasporic and transnational narratives. Jessica is currently a member of the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) and an associate lecturer at the Chelsea College of Arts. She has produced projects with institutions including iniva, Photofusion, Tate and the Sarabande Foundation.