Below the Radar

In this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Damla Tamer, a visual artist and sessional lecturer at UBC whose work explores the affective conditions of labour under late capitalism, and the evolution of forms of civil protest within the contemporary political history of Turkey. Damla is also a founding member of the Art Mamas artist collective, which aims to create support networks for artist caregivers, while critically exploring the place of motherhood and care work within the dominant culture of art production. Am and Damla discusses her recent exhibition at Access gallery, which explored the aftermath of the Gezi protests in Turkey through textile works, her work with housing co-ops in False Creek South, and why she thinks it’s ok for students to express love for a work of art. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/258-damla-tamer.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/258-damla-tamer.html Resources: Art Mamas CBC Article: https://www.cbc.ca/arts/exhibitionists/art-mamas-meet-the-vancouver-collective-that-creates-community-for-mothers-in-the-arts-1.5129578 Art Mamas | Access Gallery: https://accessgallery.ca/programming/artmamas art/mamas: Intermedial Conversations on Art, Motherhood and Caregiving https://criticalmediartstudio.iat.sfu.ca/artmamas/?page_id=291&fbclid=PAAaYDby0LbG_w1ZkyIsEjU61ZIV3FfuBCa25TBFHLHuMn9XUUmJqpUro5pPU UBC Profile: https://ahva.ubc.ca/profile/damla-tamer/ Bio: Damla Tamer (born in Istanbul, Turkey) is a visual artist and educator living on the unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories. Her practice engages with the intersections of textile crafts and contemporary studio practices, with a special focus on weaving. Her work is heavily invested in searching for a new ethics of temporality through the relationships between aesthetics and politics. Her most recent work focuses on tracing the rise of neoliberal authoritarianism in Turkey and its relation to global movements, the evolution of forms of civil protest and resistance, and the capacities and limits of language and representation in locating oneself in a world that is rife with shifts. She does social-collaborative work as part of various artist collectives and co-operatives. She is a founding member of the artist mothers collective A.M. (Art Mamas) and has organized extensive public programming and co-published a book on motherhood, caregiving and social reproduction in relation to art and labour at large. She teaches at The University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and Emily Carr University of Art+Design. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “Art Mamas — with Damla Tamer.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, December 17, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/258-damla-tamer.html. Tags: SFU, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, Simon Fraser University, Am Johal, Below the Radar, Damla Tamer, Art Mamas, Gezi, Vancouver Podcast

In this episode of Below the Radar, host Am Johal sits down with Mena El Shazly, a visual artist specializing in moving image creation, curation, and programming. Her practice speculates on notions of presence and transcendence in the digital world, exploring how processes of decay provide alternative forms of transformation and regeneration. They discuss her approach to time-based media, how the collaborative Death Spells project explores the ancient Egyptians afterlife obsessions, the Sudanese Crystalist movement, and how a teenage visit to Dracula’s castle unexpectedly waylaid her tennis career, steering her toward a life in art. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/257-mena-el-shazly.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/257-mena-el-shazly.html Resources: Mena El Shazly: https://substantialmotion.org/profile/mena-el-shazly The Crystalist Manifesto: https://post.moma.org/modern-art-in-the-arab-world-primary-documents-the-crystalist-manifesto/ The Motion of the Image: https://thecinematheque.ca/films/2024/motion-image The Lind Biennial: https://thepolygon.ca/exhibition/the-lind-biennial/ Stir ‘Splainer: 5 artists at The Lind Biennial exhibition at the Polygon Gallery: https://www.createastir.ca/articles/lind-biennial-stir-splainer Small File Media Festival: https://smallfile.ca/ Bio: Mena El Shazly is a visual artist who works with analogue video, embroidery and performance. Her practice speculates on notions of presence and transcendence as informed by the internet culture and ancient rituals, and explores practices of cultivating decay to arrive at alternative forms of transformation and regeneration. Exhibitions of her work include Polygon Gallery, Vancouver (2024), Grand Egyptian Museum, Cairo (2024), and House of World Cultures, Berlin (2015). She was a fellow of the Home Workspace Program at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut (2015). El Shazly is based in Vancouver on unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ First Nations. She obtained an MFA from the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver (2023) and a BA from the American University in Cairo (2013). El Shazly also has a well-established curatorial practice. She is the Artistic Director of the Cairo Video Festival organized by Medrar and a programmer at the Small File Video Festival. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “On Crystals, Tennis and Vampires — with Mena El Shaly.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, December 3, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/257-mena-el-shazly.html. Tags: SFU, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, Simon Fraser University, Am Johal, Below the Radar, Mena El Shazly

In this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Véronique Sioufi, the Researcher for Racial & Socio-economic Equity at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC Office, and a doctoral candidate in geography at Simon Fraser University. Am and Véronique discuss what brought her to her doctoral work and her interest in issues of labour inequality, as well as how her position at the CCPA was created in order to look at structural racism in BC and fill in major data gaps. They also talk about how she and her colleagues in the CCPA approach questions of decolonisation in their work. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/259-veronique-sioufi.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/259-veronique-sioufi.html Resources: Véronique Sioufi: https://www.policyalternatives.ca/people/veronique-sioufi/ Véronique's Doctoral Research: https://www.sfu.ca/geography/about/our-people/profiles/veronique-emond-sioufi.html CCPA BC: https://www.ccpabc.ca/ Bio: Véronique is the CCPA-BCs Researcher for Racial & Socio-economic Equity, a data-driven, intersectional initiative that investigates structural racism and socio-economic inequalities in BC. An interdisciplinary researcher, Véronique critically examines the social and political structures affecting the ability of the working class to thrive. She brings a rich blend of expertise and work experience in labour, economic geography, critical data studies, critical race theory and communication. Currently a doctoral candidate in geography at Simon Fraser University, her SSHRC-funded study delves into crowdwork in Canada and Tunisia, particularly how platforms rely on and reproduce precarity and the uneven distribution of that precarity across gender, race, class and geography. Véronique also holds an MA in Communication from SFU, where she explored the tensions in Canadian unions' use of privately owned social media platforms for collective organizing. Véronique is proud of her Palestinian roots, which make her particularly sensitive to the geographies of politics and power. She is passionate about community-driven, collaborative and hopeful research. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “Racial Equity in Policy Making — with Véronique Sioufi.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, January 14, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/259-veronique-sioufi.html.

This week on Below the Radar, we’re joined by Tina Sikka, Reader in Technoscience and Intersectional Justice in the School of Arts and Culture at Newcastle University. Tina discusses her research and writing on topics such as consent, justice, and feminist science studies, as well as her work in EDI at the university. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/256-tina-sikka.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/256-tina-sikka.html Resources: Tina Sikka: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/sacs/people/profile/tinasikka.html Sex, Consent and Justice: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-sex-consent-and-justice.html Health Apps, Genetic Diets and Superfoods: https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/health-apps-genetic-diets-and-superfoods-9781350202030/ Disrupted Knowledge Book: https://brill.com/display/title/64108?language=en Disrupted Knowledge Podcast: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/disruptedknowledge Bio: Dr. Tina Sikka is Reader in Technoscience and Intersectional Justice in the School of Arts and Culture at Newcastle University, UK. Her current research includes the critical and intersectional study of science, applied to climate change, bodies, and health, as well as research on consent, sexuality, and restorative justice. Dr. Sikka also works in the areas of decolonisation, bordering practices, and DEI.  Dr. Sikka’s book, Health Apps, Genetic Diets, and Superfoods: When Biopolitics Meets Neoliberalism (Bloomsbury, 2023), uses autoethnography, science and technology studies, and new materialism to examine what constitutes ‘good health’ and explore possibilities for enacting health justice. Her previous book, Sex, Consent, and Justice: A New Feminist Framework (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) offers a novel approach to sexual ethics and transformative forms of justice using case studies from #MeToo, while her first book, Climate Technology, Gender, and Justice: The Standpoint of the Vulnerable (Springer, 2019), draws on feminist science studies to explore the science underpinning solar climate engineering. Dr. Sikka’s work on EDI, and current role as Director of EDI in The School of Arts and Cultures at Newcastle University, has led to invitations to lead workshops and she acts as a consultant on race, gender, and the workplace, cancel culture, and equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in the public and private sectors. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “Technoscience and Intersectional Justice — with Tina Sikka.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, November 19, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/256-tina-sikka.html.

Filmmaker Brett Story and labour organizer Chris Smalls join us this week on Below the Radar. Brett is the co-director of UNION, a documentary film that follows the efforts of the Amazon Labor Union and their campaign to unionize the first Amazon warehouse in American history. The movement was spearheaded by Chris, a former Amazon warehouse supervisor who was fired in 2020 after organizing a protest against Amazon’s lack of COVID-19 safety protocols. Brett and Chris chat about the process of making the film, the state of organizing in the contemporary moment, and the international reception of UNION. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/255-brett-story-chris-smalls.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/255-brett-story-chris-smalls.html Resources: Brett Story: https://brettstory.ca/ Chris Smalls: https://www.instagram.com/chris.smalls_/?hl=en Amazon Labor Union: https://www.amazonlaborunion.org/ UNION: https://www.unionthefilm.com/ DOXA Documentary Film Festival: https://www.doxafestival.ca/ Bio: Bretty Story: Brett Story is an award-winning filmmaker and writer based in Toronto. Her films have screened in theatres and festivals internationally, including at CPH-DOX, SXSW, True/False, and Sheffield Doc/Fest. She is the director of the award-winning films The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) and The Hottest August (2019), and author of the book Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power Across Neoliberal America. The Hottest August was a New York Times Critics’ Pick and was called one of the ten best documentary films of 2019 by over a dozen publications, including Variety, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Brett has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Sundance Institute, and was named one of Variety’s 10 Documentary Filmmakers to Watch. In 2020 she was nominated for a Cinema Eye Award for Best Director. She holds a PhD in geography and is currently an assistant professor of Media Praxis at the University of Toronto. Her most recent film, UNION, co-directed with Stephen Maing, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024. Chris Smalls: Christian Smalls is the founder of the Amazon Labor Union, an independent, democratic, worker-led labor union at Amazon in Staten Island. He is also the founder of The Congress of Essential Workers (TCOEW), a nationwide collective of essential workers and allies fighting for better working conditions, better wages, and a better world. Smalls was formerly an Amazon warehouse supervisor, helping open three major warehouses in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut during his five years with the company, but he was fired in 2020 after organizing a protest against the company’s unsafe pandemic conditions. Smalls has been profiled by media outlets worldwide, including The New York Times, USA Today, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, CBC Radio, Salon, and Jacobin. He lives in Hackensack, New Jersey. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “ Union Power — with Brett Story and Chris Smalls.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, November 5, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/255-brett-story-chris-smalls.html.

On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Hank Bull, an artist and curator whose administration and advocacy work has greatly contributed to artist-run culture in Canada. Hank discusses his work with the Western Front and Centre A, and he also brought along some props to give us a taste of what his past radio art sounded like! Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/254-hank-bull.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/254-hank-bull.html Resources: Hank Bull: https://hankbull.ca/ The HP Show: https://wavefarm.org/ta/archive/works/vae2da Western Front: https://westernfront.ca/ Centre A: https://centrea.org/ Vancouver Art Gallery: https://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/ Bio: Hank Bull was born in 1949 in Moh’kins’tsis/Calgary and grew up in Toronto and small towns in southern Ontario. He became interested in art and music at an early age, mentored by a librarian, Graham Barnett, and encouraged by high school instructors Paavo Airola and David Blackwood. After travels in Europe in 1968, he studied drawing and photography in Toronto under Robert Markle and Nobuo Kuobota. In 1973, he moved to xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam)/Vancouver to join the newly formed artist-run centre Western Front. In this interdisciplinary setting, he was exposed to mail art, poetry, ceramics, improvised music and video. He produced a weekly radio broadcast, cabaret performances, shadow theatre and telecommunications projects. During the 1980s he travelled in Asia, Africa and Europe, organized international exchanges and helped to develop a Canadian network of artist-run centres. He has worked in collaboration with a wide range of artists, including Kate Craig, Glenn Lewis, General Idea, Robert Filliou, William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Michael Snow, Mona Hatoum, Antoni Muntadas, Steve Lacy, Tari Ito, Rebecca Belmore, Germaine Koh, Khan Lee, Cornelia Wyngaarden and many others. He has filled a variety of roles as artist, curator, writer, organizer and administrator. Throughout his career, he has continued an individual practice of painting, music, photography, video, sound and sculpture. He lives at the Western Front and spends a fair amount of time in swiya, territory of shíshálh Nation, as a member of the Storm Bay Art and Conservation Society. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “The World Accordion To Hank — with Hank Bull.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, October 22, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/254-hank-bull.html.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and artist, joins us on this week’s episode of Below the Radar. Am Johal and Leanne chat about her creative process, the significance of Nishnaabeg thought and practice in her work, and some upcoming projects including her newest book Theory of Water, set to be published in Spring of 2025. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/253-leanne-simpson.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/253-leanne-simpson.html Resources: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson: https://www.leannesimpson.ca/ Leanne Simpson: Listening in Our Present Moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VhckgLYX3k Episode 122: Theory of Ice — with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/122-leanne-betasamosake-simpson.html Dancing On Our Turtle’s Back: https://arpbooks.org/product/dancing-on-our-turtles-back/ As We Have Always Done: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517903879/as-we-have-always-done/ Bio: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg musician, writer and academic, who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her work breaks open the boundaries between story and song—bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity. Leanne has performed in venues and festivals across Canada with her sister singer songwriter Ansley Simpson and guitarist Nick Ferrio. Leanne’s second album, f(l)light, was released in 2016 and is a haunting collection of story-songs that effortlessly interweave Simpson’s complex poetics and multi-layered stories of the land, spirit, and body with lush acoustic and electronic arrangements. Her EP Noopiming Sessions combines readings from her novel Noopiming with soundscapes composed and performed by Ansley Simpson and James Bunton with a gorgeous video by Sammy Chien and the Chimerik Collective. It was produced during the on-going social isolation of COVID-19 and was released on Gizhiiwe Music in the Fall of 2020. Leanne is the author of seven books, including This Accident of Being Lost, which won the MacEwan University Book of the Year; was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Trillium Book Award; was long listed for CBC Canada Reads; and was named a best book of the year by the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and Quill & Quire. Her new novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies was released by the House of Anansi Press in the fall of 2020 and in the US by the University of Minnesota Press in 2021 and was named one of the Globe and Mail’s best books of the year and was short listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction. A Short History of the Blockade was released by the University of Alberta Press in early 2021. Her new project with Robyn Maynard, Rehearsals for Living will be released in 2022 by Knopf Canada. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “Theory of Water — with Leanne Simpson.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, October 8, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/253-leanne-simpson.html.

On this episode of Below the Radar, we’re joined by Miwa Matreyek, an animator, designer, performer and Assistant Professor in Theatre Production and Design at SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts. Am and Miwa discuss how she got into making interdisciplinary artwork and some of her recent projects that combine animation and live performance. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/252-miwa-matreyek.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/252-miwa-matreyek.html Resources: Miwa Matreyek: https://miwamatreyek.com/ SFU Theatre Production and Design: https://www.sfu.ca/sca/programs/theatre-production---design.html Infinitely Yours: https://miwamatreyek.com/#/infinitelyyours/ Cloud Eye Control: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cloud-eye13-2009oct13-story.html Bio: Miwa Matreyek is an animator, designer, and performer. Coming from a background in animation, Matreyek creates live, interdisciplinary performances that integrate projected animations at the intersection of cinematic and theatrical, fantastical and physical, and the hand-made and digital. Her work exists in a dreamlike visual space that makes invisible worlds visible, often weaving surreal and poetic narratives of conflict between humanity and nature as embodied performed experiences. She has presented her work internationally, including animation/film festivals, theater/performance festivals, art museums, science museums, tech conferences, and universities. A few past presenters include TED, MOMA, SFMOMA, New Frontier at Sundance Film Festival, PUSH festival, Lincoln Center, Walker Art Center, and many more. Her newest solo piece, Infinitely Yours, was awarded the grand prize for Prix Arts Electronica’s Computer Animation category. She is a 2013 Creative Capital award recipient. She is the co-founder and core collaborator of Cloud Eye Control. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “Infinitely Yours — with Miwa Matreyek.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, October 1, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/252-miwa-matreyek.html.

This week on Below the Radar, we’re joined by Ghinwa Yassine, a Lebanese anti-disciplinary artist whose work confronts the ideological and patriarchal systems that she grew up in, while exploring collective feelings and what it means to be a marked body. Ghinwa discusses her recent multi-media installations and ongoing artistic research into gestural agency and freedom. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/251-ghinwa-yassine.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/251-ghinwa-yassine.html Resources: Ghinwa Yassine: https://www.ghinwayassine.com/ How Far Can a Marked Body Go? : https://www.ghinwayassine.com/how-far-can-a-marked-body-go KickQueen: https://www.ghinwayassine.com/kickqueen MENA Film Festival: https://www.menafilmfestival.com/ When You Pour Something, It Carries the Memory of its Mold: https://www.ghinwayassine.com/when-you-pour-something-it-carries-the-memory-of-its-mold Bio: Ghinwa Yassine is an anti-disciplinary artist based on the land of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people, so-called Vancouver. Her work uses various media, including film, installation, performance, text, and drawing. Yassine’s work confronts the ideological and patriarchal systems that she grew up in while exploring collective feelings and what it means to be a marked body. She seeks a radical historicizing of individual and collective traumas where embodied memories are put into question. Using hybrid forms of storytelling, where story manifests as somatic experiencing, ritual, and gesture, her projects are portals to factual/fictional dimensions that activate collective memory. Yassine holds an MFA in Contemporary Art - Interdisciplinary Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, an MA in Digital Video Design from the University of the Arts Utrecht, and a BA in Graphic Design from the American University of Science and Technology in Beirut. Her works have been exhibited in the Netherlands, Lebanon, UAE, Canada, Iran, and Croatia. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “How Far Can A Marked Body Go? — with Ghinwa Yassine.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, September 24, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/251-ghinwa-yassine.html.

On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Wendy Brown, distinguished American political theorist and Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of California Berkeley. Together they discuss Wendy’s writing on the emergence of and critical responses to identity politics, physical border controls as performative expressions of sovereignty, the replacement of democratic values with neoliberal values of free market competition and individualism, and her forthcoming work on expanded notions of democracy that account for the past, future, human and non human. They also discuss the 2024 American presidential race, and as this episode was recorded in May, before President Joe Biden announced that he would not run for re-election, some comments are out of date, though still relevant to larger conversations around electoral politics. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/250-wendy-brown.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/250-wendy-brown.html Resources: Wendy Brown: https://www.ias.edu/sss/wendy-brown States of Injury: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691029894/states-of-injury Walled States, Waning Sovereignty: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781935408031/walled-states-waning-sovereignty Undoing the Demos: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781935408543/undoing-the-demos Bio: A political theorist who works across the history of political thought, political economy, Continental philosophy, cultural theory and critical legal theory, Wendy Brown is the UPS Foundation Chair in the School of Social Science. Prior to her appointment at the Institute, she was Class of 1936 First Chair at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a prize-winning teacher and scholar. Drawing from Nietzschean, Weberian, Marxist, Foucauldian, feminist and postcolonial angles of vision, Professor Brown writes about the subterranean powers shaping contemporary EuroAtlantic polities, with particular attention to the political identities, subjectivities and expressions they spawn. The author/co-author of a dozen books in English, she is best known for her interrogation of identity politics and state power in States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (1995); her critical analysis of tolerance in Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (2006); her account of the inter-regnum between nation states and globalization in Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (2010); and her study of neoliberalism’s assault on democratic principles, institutions and citizenship in Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (2015) and In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West (2019). Across her work, Brown aims to illuminate powers unique to our era and the predicaments they generate for democratic thought and practice. These predicaments range from rule by finance, to the de-democratization of political culture, to the nihilistic depletion of truth, values and conscience. Currently, Brown is exploring how political freedom can be salvaged from its historical imbrication with regimes of class, race and gender subjection and be made responsive to the climate crisis. Her driving question is whether and how political freedom can be reformulated in light of both. She is also extending and revising for publication her 2019 Yale Tanner Lectures, “Politics and Knowledge in Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber.” Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “States of Injury — with Wendy Brown.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, September 17, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/250-wendy-brown.html.

On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Ranjit Hoskote, poet, translator, art critic, and curator. Together they discuss Bombay’s political and cultural milieu in the 1980s and 90s, from which Ranjit began to experiment with art making, artistic and curatorial responses to an emergent neo-colonial Indian state. They also discuss the crisis of cultural politics, Ranjit’s poetic responses to humanity’s demise in this moment of ecological crisis, and the promise he sees in interstitial spaces. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/249-ranjit-hoskote.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/249-ranjit-hoskote.html Resources: Ranjit’s linktree: https://linktr.ee/rhoskote Icelight: https://www.weslpress.org/9780819500557/icelight/ Hunchprose: https://www.penguin.co.in/book/hunchprose/ Jonahwhale: https://www.penguin.co.in/book/jonahwhale/ PEN International: https://www.pen-international.org/ Bio: Ranjit Hoskote is an Indian poet, theorist, and curator whose influential work centres on the complex history and presence of cultural pluralism from the local to the global. His eight books of poetry—including Icelight (2022), Jonahwhale (2018), and a translation of a fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic-poet, I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Dĕd (2011)—engage with themes of identity, displacement, and transformation through time. His acclaimed 2012 book Confluences: Forgotten Histories between East and West (with Ilija Trojanow) traced the rich history of intercultural and interreligious encounter that has shaped—and continues to shape—the contemporary world. Hoskote has curated more than 50 showcases of Indian and global art over the past three decades, including India’s first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “The Politics of Art — with Ranjit Hoskote.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, September 10, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/249-ranjit-hoskote.html.

This week on Below the Radar we’re joined by Michael Hardt, political theorist and Professor at Duke University. Am and Michael discuss the political concept of love, Michael’s research on revolutionary movements in the 1970s, as well as his past writing with the late Tony Negri, and how they continue to think together. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/248-michael-hardt Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/248-michael-hardt Resources: Michael Hardt: https://scholars.duke.edu/person/hardt The Subversive Seventies: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-subversive-seventies-9780197674659 Michael’s Talk at SFU: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/library/2023/michael-hardt-the-subversive-seventies.html Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674006713 Bio: Michael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is co-author, with Antonio Negri, of the Empire trilogy and, most recently, Assembly. He is co-director with Sandro Mezzadra of The Social Movements Lab. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “The Politics of Love — with Michael Hardt.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, August 27th, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/248-michael-hardt.html.

As the seasons change, Below the Radar is back to our regularly scheduled programming featuring a dynamic range of local and international voices. We’re thrilled to bring a host of critically acclaimed writers, theorists, and artists across disciplines to share conversations on the politics of love, the crisis of neoliberalism, and artmaking through political shifts. We also have graduates and faculty of our very own SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts to discuss their practice and pedagogy. Our Fall season will begin on August 27, 2024, with new episodes on Tuesdays. This season is also a celebration of Below the Radar’s milestone 250th episode, featuring political theorist Wendy Brown. As we head into our sixth year, we’re so grateful for your continued listenership, and we have lots of exciting projects and partnerships coming up ahead. As always, thank you for listening and we’re looking forward to sharing these conversations with you. Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/btr-trailer-fall-2024.html

This episode of Below the Radar is a special live recording from SFU School for the Contemporary Arts’ 2023 Re-Orientation Day, an all-day event designed to welcome SCA students, faculty, and staff back to campus for the fall semester. The 2023 theme was on “Place,” and the Vancity Office of Community Engagement convened a panel of speakers across the arts, academia, and community engagement to speak on community engaged practices in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Our host Am Johal is joined by Wendy Pedersen of the Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative, SFU Professor of Geography Nick Blomley, musician and facilitator Khari Wendell McLelland, dancer, choreographer and now SCA faculty Justine Chambers, and Vancity Office of Community Engagement staff Julia Aoki, Kathy Feng and Samantha Walters. Enjoy the episode! Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/247-re-orientations.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/247-re-orientations.html Resources: DTES SRO Collaborative: https://srocollaborative.org/ Nick's work: https://www.sfu.ca/geography/about/our-people/profiles/Nicholas-Blomley.html Khari’s website: https://khariwendellmcclelland.com/ Justine’s website: https://justineachambers.com/ About Julia: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/about/updates/all-updates/meet-julia-aoki.html Samantha’s website: https://samanthawalters.com/ Kathy’s website: https://kathyfeng.info/ Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “PLACE: SCA Re-Orientation Day 2023.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, August 20, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/247-re-orientations.html.

This week on Below the Radar, we’re joined by Zool Suleman, co-founder and editor of Rungh Magazine. Zool discusses Rungh’s founding as a national South Asian focused cultural initiative in the 90s, and how the magazine has since evolved into a platform for Indigenous, Black and racialized artist conversations. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/246-zool-suleman.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/246-zool-suleman.html Resources: Rungh Magazine: www.rungh.org Stop Racial Profiling: www.stopracialprofiling.ca Zool Suleman: www.sulemanco.com Bio: Zool Suleman is a lawyer, writer, journalist, and cultural collaborator. He is the Editor of Rungh Magazine. He co-founded Rungh (1991), as a national South Asian focused arts initiative and relaunched Rungh in 2017 as a creative platform for Indigenous, Black and racialized artist conversations. In addition to his engagements as a cultural connector, he advocates for immigrants and refugees and has been active in national and local civil society initiatives against racism, racial profiling and Islamophobia, as the Executive Director of MARU since 2004. His work has been recognized by the City of Vancouver, the Attorney General of British Columbia, the BC Museum Association, and the Canadian Association of Journalists. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “Archiving Counter-Histories — with Zool Suleman.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, July 23, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/246-zool-suleman.html.

On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Ellie Anderson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Pomona College, and co-host of the Overthink podcast. Ellie joins us to discuss how she got into philosophy and contemporary readings of Simone de Beauvoir’s work. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/245-ellie-anderson.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/245-ellie-anderson.html Resources: Ellie Anderson: https://www.ellieandersonphd.com/ Ellie Anderson’s work: https://pomona.academia.edu/EllieAnderson Overthink podcast: https://overthinkpodcast.com/ Bio: Ellie Anderson is a philosopher with expertise in feminist theory, existentialism, phenomenology, and philosophy of race. She is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Pomona College and co-host of Overthink podcast. An internationally recognized specialist on love, dating, sexual consent, ethical non-monogamy (including open relationships and polyamory), and selfhood, Ellie is published in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Hypatia, Continental Philosophy Review, Forge Magazine, and more. She is currently working on a book. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “Reading Simone de Beauvoir — with Ellie Anderson.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, July 9, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/245-ellie-anderson.html.

Our host Am Johal is joined by Ian Angus, Professor Emeritus from the Department of Global Humanities at Simon Fraser University. Together, they chat about Ian’s academic career, his engagement with the work of Husserl, and his most recent book, Groundwork of Phenomenological Marxism: Crisis, Body, World (Lexington Books, 2021). Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/244-ian-angus.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/244-ian-angus.html Resources: Ian Angus: https://www.sfu.ca/globalhumanities/human-dir/emeritus/i-angus.html Groundwork of Phenomenological Marxism: Crisis, Body, World: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793640918/Groundwork-of-Phenomenological-Marxism-Crisis-Body-World Ian’s work: https://sfu.academia.edu/IanAngus/ Bio: Ian Angus is Professor Emeritus from the Department of Global Humanities at Simon Fraser University. He has published in the areas of contemporary philosophy, Canadian Studies, and communication theory. A Festschrift on his work has been edited by Samir Gandesha and Peyman Vahabzadeh: "Crossing Borders: Essays in Honour of Ian H. Angus, "Beyond Phenomenology and Critique" (Arbeiter Ring, 2020). His most recent book is "Groundwork of Phenomenological Marxism: Crisis, Body, World" (Lexington Books, 2021). Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “Groundwork of Phenomenological Marxism — with Ian Angus.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, June 18, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/244-ian-angus.html.

Artist and curator Germaine Koh joins our host Am Johal on this week’s episode of Below the Radar. Together, they chat about some of Germaine’s work—including her ongoing project League—and the incorporation of sport into art. Germaine also shares stories about receiving a 2023 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, the importance of unproductivity, and her projects on Salt Spring Island. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/243-germaine-koh.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/243-germaine-koh.html Resources: Germaine’s website: https://germainekoh.com/ Home Made Home: http://homemadehome.ca/ League project site: http://league-league.org/ Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency: https://thebluecabin.ca/ Interview with Shadbolt Fellow and Governor General's Award winner Germaine Koh: https://www.sfu.ca/fass/news/2023/12/germaine-koh-shadbolt-fellow.html Bio: Germaine Koh is a Canadian artist and curator based on the west coast of Turtle Island, in traditional Coast Salish territories. Her work adapts familiar situations, everyday actions and common spaces to encourage connections between people, technology, and natural systems. Her ongoing projects include Home Made Home, an initiative to build and advocate for alternative forms of housing, and League, a participatory project using play as a form of creative practice. From 2018 to 2020 she was the City of Vancouver’s first Engineering Artist in Residence, and was Koerner Artist in Residence at the University of British Columbia for 2021. In 2023-24 she was a Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University. Koh was awarded a 2023 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “League — with Germaine Koh.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, June 4th, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/243-germaine-koh.html.

On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Srećko Horvat, a philosopher, author, and co-founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025. Am and Srećko discuss the journey behind launching the Island School of Social Autonomy on the Adriatic island of Vis. ISSA is a place for imagining, experimenting with and cultivating forms of knowledge-production and knowledge-sharing for the “age of extinction”.. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/242-srecko-horvat.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/242-srecko-horvat.html Resources: Srećko Horvat: https://sreckohorvat.org/ Island School of Social Autonomy: https://issa-school.org/ Subversive Festival: https://subversivefestival.com/ Democracy in Europe Movement 2025: https://diem25.org/en/ The Radicality of Love: https://sreckohorvat.org/the-radicality-of-love/ After the Apocalypse: https://sreckohorvat.org/after-the-apocalypse/ Bio: A Croatian philosopher and author who produced a blizzard of political works – with several books published when he was barely into his thirties. Nowadays he is known as a fiery voice of dissent in the Post-Yugoslav landscape. If you aren’t familiar with Horvat’s work, you can probably recognise a lot of people who are. He is friends with the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis; had regular visits with Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, an organisation that publishes news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. He is also a staunch friend of Slavoj Žižek, the maverick Slovenian celebrity academic with whom Horvat co-wrote a book in 2013 entitled “What Does Europe Want?”. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel. Aside from co-founding DiEM25, which campaigns to reform the EU into a “realm of shared prosperity, peace and solidarity”, he is a founder of the Subversive festival, an annual jamboree in Zagreb of radical thought that has featured the likes of Oliver Stone and Antonio Negri. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “Island School of Social Autonomy — with Srećko Horvat.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, May 21, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/242-srecko-horvat.html.

On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Seth Klein, Team Lead and Director of Strategy of the Climate Emergency Unit, a 5-year project of the David Suzuki Institute that Seth launched in early 2021. Am and Seth discuss how he and his team are working to mobilise Canada for the climate emergency, including their latest project evaluating how the CBC reports on climate. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/241-seth-klein.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/241-seth-klein.html Resources: Seth Klein: https://www.sethklein.ca/ Climate Emergency Unit: https://www.climateemergencyunit.ca/ A Good War: https://ecwpress.com/collections/books/products/a-good-war CBC Climate Emergency Campaign: https://www.climateemergencyunit.ca/cbc-climate-emergency-campaign Bio: Seth Klein is the Team Lead and Director of Strategy of the Climate Emergency Unit (a 5-year project of the David Suzuki Institute that Seth launched in early 2021). Prior to that, he served for 22 years (1996-2018) as the founding British Columbia Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a public policy research institute committed to social, economic and environmental justice. He is the author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency (published by ECW press in 2020) and writes a regular column for Canada’s National Observer. He is an adjunct professor with Simon Fraser University’s Urban Studies program, an honorary research associate with the University of British Columbia’s School for Public Policy and Global Affairs, and remains a research associate with the CCPA’s BC Office. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “The Politics of Climate Emergency Mobilization — with Seth Klein.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, May 7, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/241-seth-klein.html.