All in Interviews
An interview with Lagi-Maama Academy and Consultancy consisting of the dynamic team of Kolokesa Uafā Māhina-Tuai MNZM, Toluma’anave Barbara Makuati-Afitu and Hikule‘o Fe‘aomoeako Melaia Māhina. We learned about their mediating and educational work with Moana Oceania communities as well as how their work has made a difference in how Indigenous knowledge and ‘art’ is understood, documented, and interpreted. We can consider their work as a form of cross-cultural weaving.
This is a transcript of a podcast interview conducted on September 15, 2024, for Season 2, Episode 1 of the Embodied Worlds Podcast in which Dr. Urmila Mohan interviewed Prof. Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Anthropologist, University of Cape Town. We are grateful to Dr. Lindsay Crisp, Lecturer, Open University, London, and Emily Levick, our Editorial Project Manager, for researching Prof. Nyamnjoh’s work on incompleteness and providing some of the questions in this interview. Francis’ philosophy of conviviality and collaboration is part of his framework of ‘incompleteness’ and he discussed its use in contexts of ecology, healing systems, and knowledge making. We have started our podcast’s second season with this interview of 50 mins. because Francis’ voice and actions embody our values of interdisciplinary engagement, imagination, and acknowledging incompleteness-in-motion as the state of our common world.
Sedekah Benih is a collaborative and urban environmental practice initiated by an urban farming activist, Dian Nurdiana (Mang Dian), and artist Vincent Rumahloine in 2020 in one of the dense urban neighborhoods in Cibogo, Bandung, West Java. It aims to share and exchange knowledge of urban farming more widely and build a community of “tiis leungen” (Sundanese for “cold arms”), a term comparable to the English “green thumbs”. Drawn from a localized Arabic word and concept of صدقة (sadaqah), which means “righteousness” and refers to the giving of charity, Sedekah Benih aims to share seeds of everyday staple plants that can be grown in dense community spaces and used for local and domestic needs. It encourage collaborators to share the seeds of plants they received with others from their communities, growing connected communities.
Urmila Mohan interviews Priya Krishnamoorthy, Founder and CEO of 200 Million Artisans, and Aparna Subramanyam, Partner at 200 Million Artisans, an ecosystem enabler reimagining the potential of India’s artisan economy. 200 Million Artisans is a social enterprise catalysing self-reliance and responsible innovation in India’s artisan economy by providing access to knowledge, resources, and networks that empower artisan-producers and impact entrepreneurs.
Interview with Sophie Bjork-James, Author of “The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism’s Politics of the Family”. Dr. Bjork-James is Assistant Professor of the Practice in Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. She has engaged in long-term research on both the US-based Religious Right and the white nationalist movement.
An interview with Chilkat and Ravenstail weaver Lily Hope that focuses on her Chilkat Protector mask series and her experience as an artist living, producing, and teaching during the Covid-19 global pandemic.
Meekyoung Shin discusses her extraordinary soap sculptures, inspired by Classical art. Her work often uses Greco-Roman imagery to explore themes of translation, transience, and the movement of people and artefacts across cultural boundaries.
Led by UCLA anthropologist Jason de León, the Undocumented Migration Project is changing the way we think about the U.S.-Mexico border. Using a fusion of archaeological, ethnographic, visual, museological, and forensic perspectives, the project is fostering conversation and understanding about the human impacts of American immigration policies. Through an exhibition, field school, and ongoing interdisciplinary research, de León and his team are making the tangible, material traces of migration visible.
An interview with Chandan Bose about his latest book “Perspectives on Work, Home, and Identity From Artisans in Telangana: Conversations Around Craft”. In this interview, the author discusses some of the core ideas in his ethnographic analysis of ritual scroll painters in South India.
Dorina Miller Parmenter approaches the book as object, inspired by her material explorations as a former book artist as well as a desire to understand why and how the book has come to be so important in religion, especially the Judeo-Christian tradition.
