Weekly – Friday 17.11.23
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Friday is weekly: a digest of what the team has seen, read and listened to, and wants to share with you.
There are no more seasons
‘What would our lives be like if we did nothing to stop the climate crisis?’ It is this question, a relevant one, all things considered, that the bubbly French humourist Swann Périssé is looking to provide an answer to with a new podcast, launched at the beginning of October, named Y a plus de saisons (“There are no more seasons”). You know, this set phrase which we love to come up with at the slightest opportunity. To do so, she has teamed up with Tilt, a digital media which hosts articles, podcasts, comic strips and videos focusing on the major societal issues.
The concept could be summarized thusly: making the end of the world an amusing show. Except that it’s a bit more complex than that… In front of a cardboard urban-bucolic set Swann invites an environmental expert onto the stage and interviews them for over an hour: ‘are we all going to become vegetarians?’, ‘how does the GDP impact on our lives?’, ‘Will Netflix die out?’ are just some of the questions asked by a presenter who has no qualms in describing herself as a ‘militant humourist’.
Owing to a decidedly nonchalant yet exquisite tone, punctuated with roaring laughter, a teasing playfulness and unfiltered ripostes, Swann has the art of making her guests feel totally at ease. In playing the mockery card, without for all that denying the ongoing urgency, these interviews literally bring to the stage major subjects whilst making them accessible. They help us understand the world we live in, whilst overturning certain supposed self-evident truths and preconceptions at the same time, and even manage to make concepts such as sobriety sexy.
An episode comes out every three weeks in video format on Swann Périssé’s YouTube channel, and as a podcast on BingeAudio.
Ugur Gallenkus and his powerful collages
What role can art play when horror takes possession of the world? Can it contribute to a better future? It is that in any event to which Ugur Gallenkus aspires, being a digital artist based in Istanbul, who turns his work into both an educational and a political tool.
It all began in 2015 with the sad media coverage of the photo of the body of Aytlan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian child, found washed ashore on a Turkish beach at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. From this visual shock emerged a raising of awareness, and then a project. On his Instagram account, Ugur regularly publishes photomontages dealing with the disparities within the world and the social injustices which arise from them.
War, child exploitation, pollution, famine, global warming… On these collages are juxtaposed journalistic photos, album covers, paintings and religious icons to highlight the various planetary crises. Each publication is accompanied by an explanatory text and a powerful message. Through his images and his words, the artist, who draws his inspiration from our universal culture, appeals to our empathy by inviting us to place ourselves in the skin of the other.To contemplate this ode to tolerance, make your way to Alsace to see the exhibition Parallel Universes, which is being held from September 1 to December 31 at the Schweitzer centre in Kaysersberg.
Hacking operation to support the queer Palestinians of Gaza
On October 27, the activist collective The Dyke Project, which campaigns for the visibilisation of trans, cis, non-binary, lesbian and queer people, carried out a hacking operation on the London transport network. It pasted the testimonies of queer Palestinians living in Gaza onto around a hundred or so advertising billboards. These stories have emerged from queeringthemap, an interactive map collecting and archiving the experiences of LGBTQ2IA+ people across the world.
Through this action, the collective has demonstrated its support for the Palestinians of Gaza and is asking for an end to the occupation of territory by Israel whilst denouncing the impact of colonialism and the violence perpetrated by the State. It also demands an end to the funding of the Israeli army by the British government.
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