“Monsoon as Method” Book Launch | Wednesday, June 8, 2022, 13:00-14:30 (BST) | Online event

Monsoon Assemblages will launch Monsoon as Method: Assembling Monsoonal Multiplicities (Actar 2022) online on 8 June, 13.00 – 14.30 (BST). Do join us to celebrate the publication of the book.

At the launch, Lindsay Bremner, Christina Geros, Harshavardhan Bhat, Anthony Powis and John Cook will be joined by Edd Wall, Alfredo Ramirez, Karen Coelho, Pamila Gupta and Jonathan Cane to discuss the book and its methods.

To attend, register using the Eventbrite.

Monsoon [+ other] Grounds – Full Programme_Thursday 21st and Friday 22nd of March,

Monsoon [+ other] Grounds is the third in a series of symposia convened by the Monsoon Assemblages project. It will comprise a key-note address, inter-disciplinary panels, and an exhibition. The event will bring together scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines to engage in conversations about geologies, soils, histories, spatialities, and modifications of monsoon [+ other] grounds.

The confirmed keynote speaker is:

Tim Ingold, Professor and Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. His early work involved ethnographic research amongst the Skolt Saami of northeast Finland. This led to a more general concern with human-animal relations. Most recently, he has been working on the connections between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture, conceived as ways of exploring the relations between human beings and the environments they inhabit, as mutually enhancing ways of engaging with our surroundings. Ingold is author of numerous books, anthologies and essays, including, most recently, The Life of Lines (Routledge, 2015) and Anthropology: Why it Matters (Polity Press, 2018).

Event Programme

Thursday 21 March

15.30 Registration / Tea

15.45 Welcome: Simon Joss, University of Glasgow

16.00 – 17.00 Exhibition walk-about led by John Cook

Exhibitors: Alexandra Arenes, Matt Barlow, Blue Temple, Hari Byles, Corinna Dean, DS18 students, Tumpa Fellows, MONASS, Ben Pollock

17.00 – 18.00 [multi]grounds

Chair: Ed Wall, University of Greenwich

Lindsay Bremner, MONASS: On sediment as method

Ifor Duncan, Goldsmiths College: Sedimentary Witness

18.30 Keynote Lecture: Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen

Chair: Lindsay Bremner

Friday 22 March

09.45 Registration / Coffee

10.00 Welcome + introduction: Lindsay Bremner, MONASS

10.15 – 11.30 [over]ground matters

Chair: Godofredo Pereira, Royal College of Art

Alexandra Arenes, University of Manchester: Mapping the Critical Zones

Christina Leigh Geros, MONASS: Here be Dragons

Avi Varma, Goldsmiths College: Unjust Intonations

11.30 – 11.45 Tea

11.45 – 13.00 [inter]ground matters

Chair: Kirsten Hastrup, University of Copenhagen

Owain Jones, Bath Spa University: Monsoon + Tide

Jonathan Cane, University of the Witwatersrand: Permeability, Ocean, Concrete

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch: Convivial Grounds

14.00 – 15.00 [under]ground matters

Chair: Tim Waterman, The Bartlett UCL

Anthony Powis, MONASS: The Materiality of Groundwater: Leaking, Seeping, Swelling, Cracking

Matt Barlow, University of Adelaide: Floating (under) ground

15:00 – 16:00 [in]ground matters

Chair: Alfredo Ramirez Galindo, AA

Eric Guibert, University of Westminster: Architectural Soils

Harshavardhan Bhat, MONASS: About a Monsoon Forest

16.00 – 16.15 Tea

16.15 – 17.30 [with]ground matters

Chair: Radha D’Souza, University of Westminster

Naiza Khan, Goldsmiths College: Sticky Rice and Other Stories

Beth Cullen, MONASS: Brick

Labib Hossain, Cornell University: Wetness and the City: A Critical Reading of the Dry and Permanent Ground Through the Practice of Muslin Weaving in Bengal

17.30 – 17.45 Closing Remarks: David Chandler

17.45 -19.00 Drinks

Expanded Territories Reading Group: “Unruly Waters” by Sunil Amrith, Tuesday, March 12, 18:00, M330

The next Expanded Territories Reading Group will be held on Tuesday 12th of March at 18.00 in M330, Marylebone Campus, University of Westminster NW1 5LS.

Anthony Powis will introduce Sunil Amrith’s Unruly Waters.

Asia’s history has been shaped by her waters. In Unruly Waters, historian Sunil Amrith reimagines Asia’s history through the stories of its rains, rivers, coasts, and seas–and of the weather-watchers and engineers, mapmakers and farmers who have sought to control them.

Suggested future titles are:

Amitav Gosh (2016). The Great Derangement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cadena, M. de la and Blaser, M., eds. (2018). A world of many worlds. Durham: Duke University Press.

Viriasova, I. (2018). At the limits of the political: affect, life, things. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield International.