WEBVTT
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My name is competition meditation.
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Sound music language.
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Everyone, welcome.
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I have with me a dear friend, Andreas Philippopoulos Mehalopoulos, an amazing guy, wonderful colleague.
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I escaped academia.
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He hasn't.
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He's a professor of law and theory at Westminster, but he's spending a lot of time doing performance art.
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He's a fiction writer.
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He's an incredibly creative thinker, and he's an absolutely adorable human being.
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And it's lovely to have you here, Andreas.
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And Andreas and I are just going to basically play together, Combat Exploration style, conversational exploration, and see where it goes.
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Andreas, where would you like to go first?
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I love that.
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You know what?
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I wanted to pick up on the interlapping.
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It's been with me for a while.
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Interlapping is for context, is something that you used in your recent podcast.
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Um, and you're trying to put together, I think, different practices.
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And of course, you can talk a bit more about what it is exactly and how you mean it.
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But the reason for which I love it is because it brings a very aquatic feel to it.
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Of course, I'm I I love lapping waves, wavelets.
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I don't like huge waves.
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I don't like I'm fascinated by them.
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Everyone is fascinated by tsunamis, etc.
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But what I'm really interested in is this kind of slow overlapping, but as you say, interlapping, because these are not different matters, they're the same matter moving and creating layers and surfaces which come and and interplay.
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And to me, the maybe maybe because it's it's a very soft Monday and I'm feeling it, but that's how I feel the world today.
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I feel it very nicely, slowly lapping.
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And of course, there's crisis and horrors, but there's also the possibility of just finding little pulsating moments of of being where you you become one with the surrounding waves, the little interlapping um materiality that you co-create, of course, you know, you co-generate.
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Yeah.
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I I kind of think that we are a form of interlapping.
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You know, I I feel like we're a kind of complex generative material cascade of intelligences, some of which are millennia older than even the human form, speaking some of the earliest languages of the planet, you know, dark and light and movement.
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Um, but I also love the idea of interlapping as a metaphor for perhaps somewhere where socially and politically we as a species need to move towards in an imaginary to move us away from hierarchies and centrisms, which as we look out across the world and we look at what's happening now, and we look at the kind of as a kind of an inflection point that we're reaching with you know the neoliberal removal of the ceiling on inequality and the accumulation of unaccountable levels of wealth in some and the concomitant predatory pressure that goes with that intrinsically, it's intrinsically anti-democratic characteristics.
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I think this idea of interlapping is very invitational in terms of thinking of how consciousness shifts become, how we as human collectives, as communities, might start to imagine a different way of co-creating worlds that we want to live in, worlds otherwise to the current one world world, which is so destructive.
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And I'd love your thoughts on that because I know that your work is also highly politically relevant.
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Thank you.
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The the way I'm I've been trying to think through this is through um, you know, I suppose what one could call some sort of elemental thinking.
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And I'm I'm really in the past, I've used air quite a lot, and now I've decided that I can finally succumb to my artistic practice passion, which has always been water, and move it into the academic.
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Well, at the same time, it's not really academic, because I think part of my mission, I think Anna, your mission as well, when you were in academia, but I think still from without there's a there's a implicit or explicit mission to change academia as well, an academic discourse.
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And I think greatly what I'm trying to do is do that.
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So when people say, is this an academic test text, or even worse, when people say, is this is this law being in the law school, it's always, I mean, it's it's increasingly a source of frustration.
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Um, but and I I I you know my patience is getting a bit limited now.
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But at the same time, that's also a good reaction in the sense that, you know, yes, of course it is, and you know, just open your eyes and see what it is and see the necessity of accepting it.
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So then in this book, the Hydro Justice book, I um have tried to bring in what I've called um way writing.
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So it's uh it's a way of writing which also often is dictated by the text itself rather than by the whatever it is, a superior rationality that dictates and directs the text.
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So very much in a way of it's and indeed it's not a metaphor, is it's the way that one lets oneself be carried by the waves of the text and and how the the various concepts and and and perhaps it's not a stream of conscience, but it's it's the way that the the need to say something is coming and taking over.
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So that's the first act of politics, in the sense of for me, it to to find ways of coming to touch with with a need, and then the need to to express and perhaps find a way to express it, that uh that it's it's it's loyal to to the subject and to the um and to the substance of what it is that I'm trying to say.
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So in that very broad sense, I think it's really very important to keep a practice that is faithful to the matter, and that we cannot separate the two.
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So the politics of hydro justice are politics of horizontality.
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That means is essentially what you said earlier about non-centrism and non-hierarchies.
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And I I try to talk about how um horizontal rather verticality has been the main maybe the sort of the it's been a few centuries now, which has been the main human impetus, you know, to go higher, to go, to stand upright, or to go deeper.
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But whatever it is, like either this or that.
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And what I'm thinking of is how precisely those surface movements, the horizontal movement of the water, um, the surface movement of the ice, the way that the fog sort of caresses the various surfaces.
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Um, these are the ways in which I'd like to think of organization, of being next to one another.
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So I I've been talking about, I've been talking for a long time about this need for confluence through and against each other, but in different elements.
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So the previous one was about air, now it's very much about the the complexity of water and then the complexity of the water cycle and how water has so many forms and it's not just liquid.
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I'm very aware of it.
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I still am interested in the look it because there is where you can see those things much more readily.
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And the precisely that thing of, and we'll use the word again, interlapping, where there is there is a a sort of a movement to uh to cover the upper surface, but at the same time without relinquishing the fact that there is a commonality of of matter, whatever the surface or wherever this thing is moving towards.
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And so that's the second um perhaps moment of politics and hydro justice.
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It's it's to practice the both this this connection between the matter and the practice, that is horizontally, without distinguishing between practice and matter, and without without trying to build uh a hierarchy of concepts or a hierarchy of meaning.
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And that's particularly difficult because of course we are constantly required to create a hierarchy of meaning, that is, you know, bullet one, bullet point two, da-da-da-da-da-da.
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This is so much easier.
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It's like it's the kind of stuff that people like to read, and you know, I'd like to read it sometimes too, but that was not the purpose of the book.
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And so then I think the other thing that I try to do is think of um of my connection to auto, auto ethnographically.
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And that's that I think is perhaps the the most interesting part of writing.
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So to be able to write about oneself without necessarily talking about oneself, yes, sometimes yes, sometimes no.
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But being aware of the fact that whatever you do, you just talk about, you write about yourself.
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And and it's um and the self is the thing that contains everything else, as well as being contained by everything else.
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So the self is dilutable, it's gone, and and that's the practice of it.
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So to allow the text to come and flood, flood the self, and and still come up with some sort of bubble of I wouldn't say coherence, but perhaps of uh bubble of roundness.
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Of what?
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Roundness.
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Yeah.
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There's so much that comes up as I listen to you there.
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I mean, I think the you know, this point about materiality and the point about the kind of Morvan conscious openness to the significance of materiality itself in the writing is really stunning because I think particularly as Westerners, we tend to privilege a very narrow cognitive frame.
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And it goes with the horizontal um, with the hierarchical and the sense of orderingness.
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You know, the minute we put something in a line and say one, two, three, and prioritize, we're creating a kind of a tunnel, right?
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Whereas your horizontality, when you combine it with the liquidity of the materiality you're talking about, water can kind of go anywhere.
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It's rhizomatic in the sense that it moves laterally, but it's not only on the surface because it seeps below it.
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It it water has a way of finding channels in the most unexpected places.
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And as a kind of political metaphor, I find it really intriguing because I remember years ago reading Yupendra Baxie, who claimed that there was no outside to neoliberalism.
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That you know, we were kind of if you found an interstices, you were kind of that was great, but there was no outside.
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But when you start thinking politically with water, water is kind of undefeatable in some amazing sense, because even when you contain it, you can't guarantee that it's going to remain contained over time.
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There's something extraordinarily resilient about water, even if it even in its most gentle formation, its most gentle expression, it it is always somehow has this intrinsic possibility of exceeding the boundaries of the assumed.
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And I I love that because it really ties in with the idea of the hypnotic.
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So stay with me here.
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But sometimes when you work with a client, what you're really interested in is not giving them any new particular thing.
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What you're really interested in is destabilizing a present certainty that is counterproductive for them, that they experience themselves as a form of auto-limitation, whether or not they're aware of it.
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And I feel that politically we're in the same kind of position where we've got a collective set of auto-limitations, things that we take as given, kind of reality tunnels that we're inhabiting together that operate a kind of closure, but thinking rhizomatically and thinking even more fluidly than a rhizome with water, which isn't even constrained to a kind of root route, but can expand beyond even lateral root relationships, um, I think is a lovely idea of a kind of flooding, a kind of swarming, a kind of overwhelming of the closures that is intrinsically invitational to an otherwise without dictating what that otherwise would be.
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And that's where the co-negotiation, the interlapping that you mentioned, the multiplicity of surfaces, the foldings, the engagement, the necessity of maybe Don Haraway would say, of staying with the trouble, of staying together in these moments where we're challenging the closure and the certainty that keeps us so limited.
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So that was just stuff that was just coming to me, listening to you.
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Beautiful.
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And as you say, I mean, water is precisely the embodiment of the way that Deleuze and Getterie have interpreted Spinoza's affect, that is the thing that exceeds the body of its emergence.
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And it's so beautiful to think of something that, yes, it has a body and it has a thing in which it emerges, but then in its own practice emergence is rather ex uh the excess is is included.
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And as you say, you can never contain water, and the water will find a way out, and etc.
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And all will, you know, will evaporate or will solidify, or you know, whatever.
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So it's uh will seep.
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And it's uh it's just this is stunning because at the same time it really defies pretty much the quite a lot of the the way that the Western, especially logic, has been has been operating.
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And of course, in order to study and understand water, we've always placed it in tubes and uh you know boxes and things and lab conditions.
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Um, but that's that misses out on on the mad creativity of water and how it keeps on you know becoming like it never is, it's it's always this mad becoming.
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And I think that that that probably applies to all elements, but the reason for which I'm particularly interested in water as well is because um there's a I'm not being nostalgic about the you know, this uh this idea of water is where we came from, not in a geological sense perhaps, but I would like to place it in in precisely a planetary context.
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And it's very interesting how in English we uh have settled on the name Earth, but we all know that it's much more water than Earth, etc.
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etc.
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We also have discovered that right in the core of the planet there is water and in in some form, and I I go with uh there's a Greek word which I think is is exceedingly beautiful, and it's called hydrogyos, and it's hydra and gare, you know, the the earth at the same time.
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So it's almost like there's yes, there's an earth, but it's hydra, and it's it's it's it's almost like a it's a flooded earth, it's you know the big blue, etc.
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And in that sense, there's a nostalgia, you know.
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When currently as we speak, I think Artemis, this um is the Artemis 2, I think, is the spaceship that is sent by NASA, and they've been sending photographs and and there is this classic moment of seeing the big blue sphere from from a distance, and they say it's it's so beautiful, and there is this thing about okay, beauty and the aesthetics, but apart from that, it is it is that is water that is held in space by itself, uh, and nothing spilled.
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It's just so fantastic, it's just so so extremely beautiful, and in that sense, there comes a nostalgia of the womb and and and the need to go back to a certain liquid safety where you could breathe within the water and within the amniotic fluid and how this connects perhaps for futurity, a way that we can imagine humanity is very different to how we understand it now.
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So, I'm really interested in also in in in in the speculative exploration of different forms of humanity.
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So you mentioned hypnotism, and I think it's it's just a wonderful way of sort of you know listening and vibing with the waves that exceed you.
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And if one manages to to do that, then I think you know one should be very happy.
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Yeah.
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Well, the thing is, I I think we are so ourselves tidal, and I think this gets forgotten.
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You know, we I think in the West, and I work a lot, as you know, with people with complex chronic fatigues, and in that whole world, there's a discourse of recovery, which again has like political, metaphorical, broader implications for how we think about what we do collectively now as we face this planetary moment where our linearities and our hierarchies and our artifices of control have actually brought us to a point where we are looking at ecological crises of multiple interconnected kinds, because of course it's all one entangled planetary whole.
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But um that linearity of expectation that people can have when they're thinking about chronic illness, and the necessity to understand that we pulse as beings, that we are tidal, that there is no linearity, there is no linear return.
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We're always multiple becomings, multiple floods and flows and trickles and seeps at different levels of unimaginable complexity and intelligence, like trillions and trillions of mitochondria, you know, that are.
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I think Jane Bennett talks about the it in the eye, the kind of more than humanness of the human.
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And when you say, when you start to talk about reimagining the human, like different modes of doing humanity, I think the more than human, you know, the the kind of humility to recognize the more-than-human nature of the human, the quintessential earthingness of us as critters, and our wateriness as critters.
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I mean, we're an extraordinary amount of you know, water, actually, of different kinds, different fluids of different kinds.
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Um, there's such an invitation here to expand our imaginary of what it actually even means to be.
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A human being, and what it actually even means to be human communities.
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And I'd love your thoughts on hydro justice in relation to water shortage, which we know is, you know, you know, people have been predicting that water wars are going to be the key wars of the fairly imminent future, and we're already looking down that reality tunnel.
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So I'd love your thoughts on hydro justice as it speaks to that, that particular tension that we're facing at the planetary level.
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Yeah.
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I love I love thinking about water shortage on the same horizontality as excessive flooding and uncontrolled water disasters.
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Because I think both of these things work on a very anthropocentric, of course, basis.
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So water shortage doesn't mean that there is no water, it means that there's no specific kind of water.
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And and flooding doesn't mean that it just means that, as you said earlier, water finds its way and and that's all it does.
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So, yes, of course, cities are in the way, but it's because of the way that everything else surrounding those cities and the cities themselves have been built.
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So I think it's it's really I think it's really important to see it as a as as two, not even extremes, as two parts of a spectrum.
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And and understand that we we are all complicit in what is happening, and we we are trying to, you know, the various various ways and various technologies that are trying to, or technological propositions that are trying to um to suggest ways out.
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And um, and I think that's that's that's very much part of the problem.
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I mean, I you know I one, we embrace technology and and we know that we cannot live without it, but we also know that who knows how much what I don't know how much water we're actually spending now while we're talking.
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We're gonna be talking for about you know in the whole half an hour and God knows how many hundreds of liters of water have been will be washed um through.
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So I think that's our complicity to both these conditions, to the spectrum of the conditions, is is uh uh is huge.
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I'm not saying that everything is equally, everyone is equally uh responsible, but I'll say that currently it's very difficult to understand the divisions of a humanity that's already so entrenched in in such um such self-detrimental practices.
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And I think what we what we also have now is as opposed to say, I don't know, Middle Ages or Renaissance, where there was just before Renaissance, let's say, where there was no need to to think of horizontality.
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You know, things were vertical, you know, theological, um, regal, blah, blah, blah.
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But now we we we can't.
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We don't want to do that.
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We cannot, we cannot, we cannot comprehend, uh, well, in at least in some rationalities, we cannot comprehend how these things can still be plausible.
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And therefore, we have situations which might have been, you know, objectively maybe better than what was happening in the 1500s, uh, in terms of accumulation of of wealth or or what have you.
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But instead, what we do now, what we have now, is a very, very strong political conscience that does not allow, we have tasted horizontality of some sort, and we don't want to let this go.
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We cannot, we cannot accept it.
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And I think that's that's the way to do it, that's the way to go, and then that's the way to carry on.
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With with with this kind of form of resistance, but then resistance takes so many different um forms, and I don't I still don't think that we can we can think of you know the this solitary hero or something like that.
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We need to think of waves, waves of action that are happening, and we just ride that wave, and we are part of the wave, and we become the wave, and things change.
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But there's also a temporality with it, just like floods, just like water shortages, there's a there's a temporality, and and that's something we cannot do much about.
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There's a there's a thing that we if we uh if we do believe in, if we do give ourselves to the practice of waves and that change only comes through waves, then we sometimes we cannot even enforce that change.
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We have to wait until that that horrible, and that that's perhaps the thing that I say to myself, that I I draw some sort of hope precisely of this from this sense that things go into cycles, and then because of social media, because of you know the the way that life has sped up, hopefully this horrible cycle politically and and in terms of uh world violence will will go a bit faster, and then and then we'll go to another another another arch of the of the cycle.
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Hydrojustice isn't the way that I've imagined it, isn't trying to give answers.
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Yes, sure.
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It's opening up a space where questions are being questions are being asked.
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And what it tries to do at the same time is is give hope, but but not in a very traditional sense, because what I'm trying to think of in terms of hydro justice is the way that um justice and hydro justice in particular, although I don't differentiate between the two, justice and hydro justice anymore, um, has always been here and is always here.
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So there's nothing, in a sense, there's nothing we can do to achieve hydro justice.
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The planet lives in a in a state of hydro justice.
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So we we have obscured it, we have placed things on top of it, we have um we've buried it under the debris of accumulation and capitalism and neoliberalism, extractivism and and colonialism, but hydro justice hasn't gone away and it's there.
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So when I spoke about the womb in relation to the planet, these are the temporalities that we're talking about.
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And this temporality in here is hydro justice.
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Hydro justice is there.
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So, of course, there are moments of of intense hydro injustice.
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It's we're surrounded by it everywhere.
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Like the fact that we can switch on our tap and water comes out is an instance of hydro injustice, considering the people in Central Africa have to walk for 15 kilometers a day in order to get some water, and that water is is probably not potable.
00:29:29.920 --> 00:29:47.200
So the scales are very very anguishing, but at the same time calming if we remove ourselves from the preciousness of what the human, the way we understand it now, is.
00:29:47.759 --> 00:30:08.480
So I'm in a and this is this comes from my speculative fiction, where I'm imagining a world where the human is changing and he's becoming closer to what I've called hydrohuman, and whatever that is, and there's so many ways of one can imagine that.
00:30:08.640 --> 00:30:25.279
But I think on on a on a molecular level, there is a uh there's there can there might be a change that will respond or will precipitate the big planetary changes that we're we will be witnessing and we are witnessing.
00:30:25.440 --> 00:30:34.720
We you know coming into some sort of flow with the planetary hydro justice moment that hasn't hasn't left even for a second.
00:30:35.839 --> 00:30:44.799
So would you argue then, Andreas, or is your sense that verticality is no longer sustainable?
00:30:45.440 --> 00:31:08.799
That that verticality itself has gone too far, you know, that it's too, I mean, the verticality of, for example, the billionaire trillionaire now class, you know, one trillion trillionaire, but you know, a significant one, one with a very verticality-driven agenda, shall we say, um, that's hugely problematic.
00:31:09.519 --> 00:31:22.480
But verticality generally, maybe in the sense that we've always, as communities thought, in terms of specific leaders, people who inspire, right, people around whom we cluster.
00:31:23.359 --> 00:31:28.240
Um, and there's a sense in which that can be transformative.
00:31:28.720 --> 00:32:32.400
But my sense for a long time has been that we need to move to a more distributed intelligence, to a much, much more collective, not even necessarily communitarian, but collective, distributed way of addressing the challenges that we face, because that allows for multiple kinds of horizontal dynamics, non-centralized, but potentially with enormous capacity to communicate with each other from within a shared framework of epistemic equality, say, if we could imagine such a thing, and the capacity to unfold iteratively place sensitive, located particular, sometimes unique responses to challenges that may be refracted in terms of yes, there are commonalities, but there are also distinctions.
00:32:32.480 --> 00:32:37.440
And and here I think again there's a an interesting analogue to water.
00:32:37.759 --> 00:32:43.759
Because um I think it is it Jamie Linton who talks about the problem with the idea of a global water supply.
00:32:43.920 --> 00:33:06.559
Like in in kind of like institutional um World Health Organization or other global level organizations, there's this notion of a global water supply which flattens out all the mad excesses and localized expressivenesses of waters of many kinds in many different situations.
00:33:06.720 --> 00:33:22.720
As you said, there are topologies, there are geographies, there are relations, there are, you know, there'll be atmospheric dimensions in any given topology that are unique to that particular interaction between land, mass, air, and water.
00:33:23.200 --> 00:33:58.400
And I kind of feel that there's a metaphor there for how we might aspire to stay with the trouble we're in, and how we might aspire as humans who are happy to ask different questions without necessarily finding emphatic answers, to explore a way forward together, to generate multiple kinds of responses that that are exquisitely apt, exquisitely apt for the situation in which they emerge.
00:33:59.039 --> 00:34:05.599
Um, I think we just need a much more horizontal politics, really, from what you're saying.
00:34:05.759 --> 00:34:14.639
I mean, if I'm understanding you correctly, and I'm hearing a really important critique of verticality and where it's led us in what you're saying.
00:34:14.960 --> 00:34:15.599
Would you agree?
00:34:15.760 --> 00:34:16.800
Have I misheard you?
00:34:17.119 --> 00:34:18.079
No, no, you haven't misheard.
00:34:18.400 --> 00:34:18.639
Thank you.
00:34:18.800 --> 00:34:22.719
Thank you for uh thank you for hearing very uh attentively.
00:34:22.880 --> 00:34:44.800
Um I think it's I think the moment where we hail as the beginning of humanity and Homo sapiens is also a way of I'm not saying anything wise or new, but it's a is a moment of alienation.
00:34:45.360 --> 00:35:14.639
And and while I'm not advocating a return, I'm trying to push forth an awareness of of that distance between um between something that we used to be and something that we are now, and how this has been driven to um quite kitsch excesses, such as you know, massive skyscrapers or fracking.
00:35:16.079 --> 00:35:40.400
These somehow these things are um very uh related to me because they they explore the arrogance of uh I mean, okay, and then we can think of it very very figuratively as you know of the the phallic erection, and it's the the you know the erection of the building.
00:35:41.920 --> 00:35:59.280
And and if one wanted to use biblical metaphors, of course, one can go very easily to the Tower of Babel and and think of it as precisely that moment of where, okay, there's a limit to your verticality, you know, do it, play with it, but don't take it too seriously.
00:35:59.519 --> 00:36:04.480
Like understand that you it's not that you belong somewhere, it's not about belonging.
00:36:04.559 --> 00:36:15.840
It's that it's not it's not even a crisis of verticality in the sense that we haven't reached that moment where we kind of say, okay, it's difficult to to go more vertical.
00:36:16.400 --> 00:36:25.920
It can carry on being vertical, but the point is this that the more we do that, the more we pushed out of you know this planet's edge.
00:36:26.159 --> 00:36:32.639
We are we we we're tilting, we're off balance, and and that's a fact.
00:36:32.800 --> 00:36:51.119
I mean, it's nothing to with these, it's it's not, it's it's not even a um, it's not a it's not an ethical suggestion, it's a very factual moment of yeah, we we are in very deep trouble, and there's nowhere else to stay to to go but to stay with this trouble.
00:36:51.360 --> 00:37:10.639
Um, and I'm not it's it's a I I live in some sort of uh schizo moment where in in my mind where I'm both optimistic and and very pessimistic at the same time, and I think yes, thank you for nodding, because I think a lot of us share precisely this.
00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:32.079
And I'm it's not that I find optimism in the small, some might have called romantic gestures of of um of return or or or of uh of origin, but it's more about I I find solace in the grandeur of of precisely this cycle.
00:37:32.320 --> 00:38:17.280
And that's why I uh when I in the the the final part of the book, I um propose um a hydra contract, and that is a speculative contractual text written in quite I think quite strict legalees, uh but but it brings in bodies of water uh together with one another and works through some of the movements of of how we can expect to flow with and against each other, because as you said, it's not just about coming together in unison as waters, but but there is there's difference in water.
00:38:17.440 --> 00:38:21.920
There's a term um by well, several philosophers.
00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:40.079
Um I'm using um I'm using Deleuze's way of thinking about the Klineman, um, which is and also very interestingly, the is it's sort of the same route as clines in ocean waters where they come together and they flow together, but they remain different.
00:38:40.159 --> 00:38:45.360
And I adore this this slight, soft, smooth sliding of difference.
00:38:45.760 --> 00:38:47.920
And I think we need to preserve that.
00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:52.000
And in the contract, what I'm trying to do is accept.
00:38:52.239 --> 00:39:12.000
Um, I've also called it the polyamorous ethics of shared flow, and that is that you receive and you give love in the sense of positioning yourself responsibly in relation to someone else, to everyone else.
00:39:12.239 --> 00:39:24.400
And you respect distances and propinquities, you respect the need for hidden alcoves, as well as the the desire for open breathing spaces.
00:39:24.719 --> 00:39:30.559
And um and that's that's all through this this contract unto Hydro Justice.
00:39:30.800 --> 00:39:59.440
And what I um I'm having quite a lot of fun with is that I one of the performances that I've devised around the book Hydro Justice is something that has to do with also my um my visual art production, which um works with folds and flows, but uh actually an actual material concertina um sort of blocks of paper.
00:39:59.679 --> 00:40:50.880
But at the same time, I'm I'm using this as part of um of an expression of the contract, which is a chanting expression of the contract where I go through the motions and and and the articles, and and there is a point and that I give everyone uh a long piece of string that starts from a box filled with water, and then it's very important for me that the string does the whole round and brings in almost everyone, if possible, absolutely not every almost, absolutely everyone in the room, and and and it's it's the the the string is still a little wet, and so everyone has to hold it, and pretty much I'm hoping that they're holding for the rest of the performance.
00:40:51.039 --> 00:41:16.000
And it creates a very interesting space, it creates almost like a in in Jewish um orthodox tradition, there's uh this practice of the airov, um, the the the string that they place around an area in the Shabbat uh during the Shabbat so they can freely move and and do some of a some semblance of natural uh life, a bit of sort of everyday regular life.
00:41:16.480 --> 00:41:24.079
And in a sense, that creates a bit of a sense of safety, but also a sense of of pulsing community uh around me.
00:41:24.719 --> 00:41:36.559
And I love that moment where there is a little bit of a wave created on the basis of something as simple as as a bit of wet strain.
00:41:36.880 --> 00:41:37.760
That's wonderful.
00:41:37.920 --> 00:41:43.760
I know that you said you had to go at this particular point in time, so we'll have to end it here.
00:41:43.840 --> 00:41:47.920
But I feel like we've got so much more to explore here, Andreas.
00:41:48.320 --> 00:41:58.719
Um, have you got by any chance a link to a film of that performance that I could make available for people listening to the podcast or watching this on YouTube?
00:41:59.360 --> 00:42:04.320
Uh I think there's there's some filming that has been done, and so I can send it to you, yes.
00:42:04.480 --> 00:42:05.360
That would be amazing.
00:42:05.519 --> 00:42:07.440
I I think people might appreciate that.
00:42:07.519 --> 00:42:10.960
And thank you so much for giving up your time this afternoon.
00:42:11.280 --> 00:42:13.440
And you are there in the city of water.
00:42:13.760 --> 00:42:14.639
I am in Venice.
00:42:14.880 --> 00:42:20.719
So enjoy Venice, Andreas, and I very much look to continuing this conversation with you at some future point soon.
00:42:21.039 --> 00:42:21.920
I would love to.
00:42:22.079 --> 00:42:22.880
Thank you, Anna.
00:42:23.119 --> 00:42:24.559
All right, take good care.
00:00:13.839 --> 00:00:24.640
My name is competition meditation.
00:00:28.719 --> 00:00:30.480
Sound music language.
00:01:03.439 --> 00:01:04.400
Everyone, welcome.
00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:11.280
I have with me a dear friend, Andreas Philippopoulos Mehalopoulos, an amazing guy, wonderful colleague.
00:01:11.760 --> 00:01:13.200
I escaped academia.
00:01:13.359 --> 00:01:14.159
He hasn't.
00:01:14.400 --> 00:01:19.120
He's a professor of law and theory at Westminster, but he's spending a lot of time doing performance art.
00:01:19.200 --> 00:01:20.560
He's a fiction writer.
00:01:20.719 --> 00:01:24.719
He's an incredibly creative thinker, and he's an absolutely adorable human being.
00:01:24.799 --> 00:01:26.719
And it's lovely to have you here, Andreas.
00:01:26.799 --> 00:01:34.319
And Andreas and I are just going to basically play together, Combat Exploration style, conversational exploration, and see where it goes.
00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:36.799
Andreas, where would you like to go first?
00:01:37.120 --> 00:01:37.920
I love that.
00:01:38.079 --> 00:01:38.640
You know what?
00:01:38.719 --> 00:01:41.280
I wanted to pick up on the interlapping.
00:01:41.359 --> 00:01:42.640
It's been with me for a while.
00:01:42.799 --> 00:01:48.400
Interlapping is for context, is something that you used in your recent podcast.
00:01:48.879 --> 00:01:52.079
Um, and you're trying to put together, I think, different practices.
00:01:52.159 --> 00:01:55.599
And of course, you can talk a bit more about what it is exactly and how you mean it.
00:01:55.840 --> 00:02:03.359
But the reason for which I love it is because it brings a very aquatic feel to it.
00:02:03.519 --> 00:02:09.919
Of course, I'm I I love lapping waves, wavelets.
00:02:10.080 --> 00:02:11.599
I don't like huge waves.
00:02:11.759 --> 00:02:13.759
I don't like I'm fascinated by them.
00:02:13.840 --> 00:02:16.240
Everyone is fascinated by tsunamis, etc.
00:02:16.560 --> 00:02:32.639
But what I'm really interested in is this kind of slow overlapping, but as you say, interlapping, because these are not different matters, they're the same matter moving and creating layers and surfaces which come and and interplay.
00:02:33.120 --> 00:02:45.039
And to me, the maybe maybe because it's it's a very soft Monday and I'm feeling it, but that's how I feel the world today.
00:02:45.199 --> 00:02:48.879
I feel it very nicely, slowly lapping.
00:02:49.280 --> 00:03:14.639
And of course, there's crisis and horrors, but there's also the possibility of just finding little pulsating moments of of being where you you become one with the surrounding waves, the little interlapping um materiality that you co-create, of course, you know, you co-generate.
00:03:15.199 --> 00:03:15.840
Yeah.
00:03:16.240 --> 00:03:19.680
I I kind of think that we are a form of interlapping.
00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:37.360
You know, I I feel like we're a kind of complex generative material cascade of intelligences, some of which are millennia older than even the human form, speaking some of the earliest languages of the planet, you know, dark and light and movement.
00:03:37.919 --> 00:04:28.000
Um, but I also love the idea of interlapping as a metaphor for perhaps somewhere where socially and politically we as a species need to move towards in an imaginary to move us away from hierarchies and centrisms, which as we look out across the world and we look at what's happening now, and we look at the kind of as a kind of an inflection point that we're reaching with you know the neoliberal removal of the ceiling on inequality and the accumulation of unaccountable levels of wealth in some and the concomitant predatory pressure that goes with that intrinsically, it's intrinsically anti-democratic characteristics.
00:04:28.240 --> 00:04:55.920
I think this idea of interlapping is very invitational in terms of thinking of how consciousness shifts become, how we as human collectives, as communities, might start to imagine a different way of co-creating worlds that we want to live in, worlds otherwise to the current one world world, which is so destructive.
00:04:56.000 --> 00:05:02.000
And I'd love your thoughts on that because I know that your work is also highly politically relevant.
00:05:02.879 --> 00:05:03.839
Thank you.
00:05:05.199 --> 00:05:15.439
The the way I'm I've been trying to think through this is through um, you know, I suppose what one could call some sort of elemental thinking.
00:05:15.600 --> 00:05:29.680
And I'm I'm really in the past, I've used air quite a lot, and now I've decided that I can finally succumb to my artistic practice passion, which has always been water, and move it into the academic.
00:05:30.160 --> 00:05:46.959
Well, at the same time, it's not really academic, because I think part of my mission, I think Anna, your mission as well, when you were in academia, but I think still from without there's a there's a implicit or explicit mission to change academia as well, an academic discourse.
00:05:47.120 --> 00:05:50.879
And I think greatly what I'm trying to do is do that.
00:05:51.120 --> 00:06:05.040
So when people say, is this an academic test text, or even worse, when people say, is this is this law being in the law school, it's always, I mean, it's it's increasingly a source of frustration.
00:06:05.199 --> 00:06:09.839
Um, but and I I I you know my patience is getting a bit limited now.
00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:19.360
But at the same time, that's also a good reaction in the sense that, you know, yes, of course it is, and you know, just open your eyes and see what it is and see the necessity of accepting it.
00:06:20.079 --> 00:06:29.439
So then in this book, the Hydro Justice book, I um have tried to bring in what I've called um way writing.
00:06:29.600 --> 00:06:42.480
So it's uh it's a way of writing which also often is dictated by the text itself rather than by the whatever it is, a superior rationality that dictates and directs the text.
00:06:42.720 --> 00:07:05.759
So very much in a way of it's and indeed it's not a metaphor, is it's the way that one lets oneself be carried by the waves of the text and and how the the various concepts and and and perhaps it's not a stream of conscience, but it's it's the way that the the need to say something is coming and taking over.
00:07:06.319 --> 00:07:32.480
So that's the first act of politics, in the sense of for me, it to to find ways of coming to touch with with a need, and then the need to to express and perhaps find a way to express it, that uh that it's it's it's loyal to to the subject and to the um and to the substance of what it is that I'm trying to say.
00:07:32.720 --> 00:07:48.480
So in that very broad sense, I think it's really very important to keep a practice that is faithful to the matter, and that we cannot separate the two.
00:07:48.879 --> 00:07:53.680
So the politics of hydro justice are politics of horizontality.
00:07:53.920 --> 00:07:59.920
That means is essentially what you said earlier about non-centrism and non-hierarchies.
00:08:00.720 --> 00:08:21.519
And I I try to talk about how um horizontal rather verticality has been the main maybe the sort of the it's been a few centuries now, which has been the main human impetus, you know, to go higher, to go, to stand upright, or to go deeper.
00:08:21.759 --> 00:08:24.079
But whatever it is, like either this or that.
00:08:24.319 --> 00:08:40.960
And what I'm thinking of is how precisely those surface movements, the horizontal movement of the water, um, the surface movement of the ice, the way that the fog sort of caresses the various surfaces.
00:08:41.360 --> 00:08:50.320
Um, these are the ways in which I'd like to think of organization, of being next to one another.
00:08:50.559 --> 00:08:59.840
So I I've been talking about, I've been talking for a long time about this need for confluence through and against each other, but in different elements.
00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:14.000
So the previous one was about air, now it's very much about the the complexity of water and then the complexity of the water cycle and how water has so many forms and it's not just liquid.
00:09:14.080 --> 00:09:15.039
I'm very aware of it.
00:09:15.200 --> 00:09:22.960
I still am interested in the look it because there is where you can see those things much more readily.
00:09:23.279 --> 00:09:46.480
And the precisely that thing of, and we'll use the word again, interlapping, where there is there is a a sort of a movement to uh to cover the upper surface, but at the same time without relinquishing the fact that there is a commonality of of matter, whatever the surface or wherever this thing is moving towards.
00:09:46.799 --> 00:09:53.600
And so that's the second um perhaps moment of politics and hydro justice.
00:09:53.840 --> 00:10:15.039
It's it's to practice the both this this connection between the matter and the practice, that is horizontally, without distinguishing between practice and matter, and without without trying to build uh a hierarchy of concepts or a hierarchy of meaning.
00:10:15.279 --> 00:10:25.519
And that's particularly difficult because of course we are constantly required to create a hierarchy of meaning, that is, you know, bullet one, bullet point two, da-da-da-da-da-da.
00:10:25.679 --> 00:10:26.559
This is so much easier.
00:10:26.639 --> 00:10:33.600
It's like it's the kind of stuff that people like to read, and you know, I'd like to read it sometimes too, but that was not the purpose of the book.
00:10:33.759 --> 00:10:44.399
And so then I think the other thing that I try to do is think of um of my connection to auto, auto ethnographically.
00:10:44.639 --> 00:10:50.240
And that's that I think is perhaps the the most interesting part of writing.
00:10:50.320 --> 00:10:55.759
So to be able to write about oneself without necessarily talking about oneself, yes, sometimes yes, sometimes no.
00:10:55.919 --> 00:11:00.399
But being aware of the fact that whatever you do, you just talk about, you write about yourself.
00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:08.399
And and it's um and the self is the thing that contains everything else, as well as being contained by everything else.
00:11:08.480 --> 00:11:13.919
So the self is dilutable, it's gone, and and that's the practice of it.
00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:34.799
So to allow the text to come and flood, flood the self, and and still come up with some sort of bubble of I wouldn't say coherence, but perhaps of uh bubble of roundness.
00:11:35.519 --> 00:11:36.159
Of what?
00:11:36.799 --> 00:11:37.759
Roundness.
00:11:38.320 --> 00:11:38.960
Yeah.
00:11:40.159 --> 00:11:43.600
There's so much that comes up as I listen to you there.
00:11:44.000 --> 00:12:04.639
I mean, I think the you know, this point about materiality and the point about the kind of Morvan conscious openness to the significance of materiality itself in the writing is really stunning because I think particularly as Westerners, we tend to privilege a very narrow cognitive frame.
00:12:04.720 --> 00:12:11.120
And it goes with the horizontal um, with the hierarchical and the sense of orderingness.
00:12:11.519 --> 00:12:20.559
You know, the minute we put something in a line and say one, two, three, and prioritize, we're creating a kind of a tunnel, right?
00:12:21.039 --> 00:12:31.120
Whereas your horizontality, when you combine it with the liquidity of the materiality you're talking about, water can kind of go anywhere.
00:12:31.360 --> 00:12:41.440
It's rhizomatic in the sense that it moves laterally, but it's not only on the surface because it seeps below it.
00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:47.759
It it water has a way of finding channels in the most unexpected places.
00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:59.759
And as a kind of political metaphor, I find it really intriguing because I remember years ago reading Yupendra Baxie, who claimed that there was no outside to neoliberalism.
00:12:59.840 --> 00:13:06.799
That you know, we were kind of if you found an interstices, you were kind of that was great, but there was no outside.
00:13:07.039 --> 00:13:24.639
But when you start thinking politically with water, water is kind of undefeatable in some amazing sense, because even when you contain it, you can't guarantee that it's going to remain contained over time.
00:13:24.960 --> 00:13:44.000
There's something extraordinarily resilient about water, even if it even in its most gentle formation, its most gentle expression, it it is always somehow has this intrinsic possibility of exceeding the boundaries of the assumed.
00:13:44.320 --> 00:13:50.240
And I I love that because it really ties in with the idea of the hypnotic.
00:13:50.480 --> 00:13:51.840
So stay with me here.
00:13:52.159 --> 00:13:59.759
But sometimes when you work with a client, what you're really interested in is not giving them any new particular thing.
00:13:59.919 --> 00:14:13.200
What you're really interested in is destabilizing a present certainty that is counterproductive for them, that they experience themselves as a form of auto-limitation, whether or not they're aware of it.
00:14:13.360 --> 00:14:58.480
And I feel that politically we're in the same kind of position where we've got a collective set of auto-limitations, things that we take as given, kind of reality tunnels that we're inhabiting together that operate a kind of closure, but thinking rhizomatically and thinking even more fluidly than a rhizome with water, which isn't even constrained to a kind of root route, but can expand beyond even lateral root relationships, um, I think is a lovely idea of a kind of flooding, a kind of swarming, a kind of overwhelming of the closures that is intrinsically invitational to an otherwise without dictating what that otherwise would be.
00:14:58.639 --> 00:15:20.960
And that's where the co-negotiation, the interlapping that you mentioned, the multiplicity of surfaces, the foldings, the engagement, the necessity of maybe Don Haraway would say, of staying with the trouble, of staying together in these moments where we're challenging the closure and the certainty that keeps us so limited.
00:15:21.200 --> 00:15:24.720
So that was just stuff that was just coming to me, listening to you.
00:15:25.279 --> 00:15:25.600
Beautiful.
00:15:25.679 --> 00:15:41.039
And as you say, I mean, water is precisely the embodiment of the way that Deleuze and Getterie have interpreted Spinoza's affect, that is the thing that exceeds the body of its emergence.
00:15:41.279 --> 00:16:00.000
And it's so beautiful to think of something that, yes, it has a body and it has a thing in which it emerges, but then in its own practice emergence is rather ex uh the excess is is included.
00:16:00.320 --> 00:16:05.759
And as you say, you can never contain water, and the water will find a way out, and etc.
00:16:06.080 --> 00:16:10.559
And all will, you know, will evaporate or will solidify, or you know, whatever.
00:16:10.720 --> 00:16:12.480
So it's uh will seep.
00:16:12.639 --> 00:16:25.759
And it's uh it's just this is stunning because at the same time it really defies pretty much the quite a lot of the the way that the Western, especially logic, has been has been operating.
00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:35.679
And of course, in order to study and understand water, we've always placed it in tubes and uh you know boxes and things and lab conditions.
00:16:35.840 --> 00:16:49.519
Um, but that's that misses out on on the mad creativity of water and how it keeps on you know becoming like it never is, it's it's always this mad becoming.
00:16:49.840 --> 00:17:20.960
And I think that that that probably applies to all elements, but the reason for which I'm particularly interested in water as well is because um there's a I'm not being nostalgic about the you know, this uh this idea of water is where we came from, not in a geological sense perhaps, but I would like to place it in in precisely a planetary context.
00:17:21.200 --> 00:17:33.920
And it's very interesting how in English we uh have settled on the name Earth, but we all know that it's much more water than Earth, etc.
00:17:34.079 --> 00:17:34.319
etc.
00:17:34.559 --> 00:17:58.640
We also have discovered that right in the core of the planet there is water and in in some form, and I I go with uh there's a Greek word which I think is is exceedingly beautiful, and it's called hydrogyos, and it's hydra and gare, you know, the the earth at the same time.
00:17:58.799 --> 00:18:08.960
So it's almost like there's yes, there's an earth, but it's hydra, and it's it's it's it's almost like a it's a flooded earth, it's you know the big blue, etc.
00:18:09.519 --> 00:18:13.359
And in that sense, there's a nostalgia, you know.
00:18:13.519 --> 00:18:49.119
When currently as we speak, I think Artemis, this um is the Artemis 2, I think, is the spaceship that is sent by NASA, and they've been sending photographs and and there is this classic moment of seeing the big blue sphere from from a distance, and they say it's it's so beautiful, and there is this thing about okay, beauty and the aesthetics, but apart from that, it is it is that is water that is held in space by itself, uh, and nothing spilled.
00:18:49.279 --> 00:19:19.440
It's just so fantastic, it's just so so extremely beautiful, and in that sense, there comes a nostalgia of the womb and and and the need to go back to a certain liquid safety where you could breathe within the water and within the amniotic fluid and how this connects perhaps for futurity, a way that we can imagine humanity is very different to how we understand it now.
00:19:19.599 --> 00:19:29.039
So, I'm really interested in also in in in in the speculative exploration of different forms of humanity.
00:19:29.279 --> 00:19:42.319
So you mentioned hypnotism, and I think it's it's just a wonderful way of sort of you know listening and vibing with the waves that exceed you.
00:19:42.480 --> 00:19:48.079
And if one manages to to do that, then I think you know one should be very happy.
00:19:48.400 --> 00:19:48.720
Yeah.
00:19:48.880 --> 00:19:55.599
Well, the thing is, I I think we are so ourselves tidal, and I think this gets forgotten.
00:19:55.680 --> 00:20:37.039
You know, we I think in the West, and I work a lot, as you know, with people with complex chronic fatigues, and in that whole world, there's a discourse of recovery, which again has like political, metaphorical, broader implications for how we think about what we do collectively now as we face this planetary moment where our linearities and our hierarchies and our artifices of control have actually brought us to a point where we are looking at ecological crises of multiple interconnected kinds, because of course it's all one entangled planetary whole.
00:20:37.519 --> 00:20:57.680
But um that linearity of expectation that people can have when they're thinking about chronic illness, and the necessity to understand that we pulse as beings, that we are tidal, that there is no linearity, there is no linear return.
00:20:57.839 --> 00:21:13.440
We're always multiple becomings, multiple floods and flows and trickles and seeps at different levels of unimaginable complexity and intelligence, like trillions and trillions of mitochondria, you know, that are.
00:21:13.920 --> 00:21:20.319
I think Jane Bennett talks about the it in the eye, the kind of more than humanness of the human.
00:21:20.799 --> 00:21:45.200
And when you say, when you start to talk about reimagining the human, like different modes of doing humanity, I think the more than human, you know, the the kind of humility to recognize the more-than-human nature of the human, the quintessential earthingness of us as critters, and our wateriness as critters.
00:21:45.279 --> 00:21:53.359
I mean, we're an extraordinary amount of you know, water, actually, of different kinds, different fluids of different kinds.
00:21:53.599 --> 00:21:59.759
Um, there's such an invitation here to expand our imaginary of what it actually even means to be.
00:22:00.400 --> 00:22:06.240
A human being, and what it actually even means to be human communities.
00:22:06.480 --> 00:22:24.240
And I'd love your thoughts on hydro justice in relation to water shortage, which we know is, you know, you know, people have been predicting that water wars are going to be the key wars of the fairly imminent future, and we're already looking down that reality tunnel.
00:22:24.400 --> 00:22:33.039
So I'd love your thoughts on hydro justice as it speaks to that, that particular tension that we're facing at the planetary level.
00:22:33.519 --> 00:22:33.920
Yeah.
00:22:34.160 --> 00:22:45.599
I love I love thinking about water shortage on the same horizontality as excessive flooding and uncontrolled water disasters.
00:22:45.920 --> 00:22:54.079
Because I think both of these things work on a very anthropocentric, of course, basis.
00:22:54.240 --> 00:23:00.160
So water shortage doesn't mean that there is no water, it means that there's no specific kind of water.
00:23:00.480 --> 00:23:08.880
And and flooding doesn't mean that it just means that, as you said earlier, water finds its way and and that's all it does.
00:23:09.039 --> 00:23:18.079
So, yes, of course, cities are in the way, but it's because of the way that everything else surrounding those cities and the cities themselves have been built.
00:23:18.880 --> 00:23:27.519
So I think it's it's really I think it's really important to see it as a as as two, not even extremes, as two parts of a spectrum.
00:23:27.839 --> 00:23:50.079
And and understand that we we are all complicit in what is happening, and we we are trying to, you know, the various various ways and various technologies that are trying to, or technological propositions that are trying to um to suggest ways out.
00:23:50.240 --> 00:23:54.400
And um, and I think that's that's that's very much part of the problem.
00:23:54.559 --> 00:24:08.400
I mean, I you know I one, we embrace technology and and we know that we cannot live without it, but we also know that who knows how much what I don't know how much water we're actually spending now while we're talking.
00:24:08.559 --> 00:24:18.079
We're gonna be talking for about you know in the whole half an hour and God knows how many hundreds of liters of water have been will be washed um through.
00:24:18.400 --> 00:24:27.519
So I think that's our complicity to both these conditions, to the spectrum of the conditions, is is uh uh is huge.
00:24:27.680 --> 00:24:48.079
I'm not saying that everything is equally, everyone is equally uh responsible, but I'll say that currently it's very difficult to understand the divisions of a humanity that's already so entrenched in in such um such self-detrimental practices.
00:24:48.880 --> 00:25:06.960
And I think what we what we also have now is as opposed to say, I don't know, Middle Ages or Renaissance, where there was just before Renaissance, let's say, where there was no need to to think of horizontality.
00:25:07.039 --> 00:25:13.119
You know, things were vertical, you know, theological, um, regal, blah, blah, blah.
00:25:13.440 --> 00:25:15.680
But now we we we can't.
00:25:15.839 --> 00:25:17.519
We don't want to do that.
00:25:17.599 --> 00:25:28.799
We cannot, we cannot, we cannot comprehend, uh, well, in at least in some rationalities, we cannot comprehend how these things can still be plausible.
00:25:28.960 --> 00:25:40.640
And therefore, we have situations which might have been, you know, objectively maybe better than what was happening in the 1500s, uh, in terms of accumulation of of wealth or or what have you.
00:25:40.960 --> 00:25:51.519
But instead, what we do now, what we have now, is a very, very strong political conscience that does not allow, we have tasted horizontality of some sort, and we don't want to let this go.
00:25:51.599 --> 00:25:53.519
We cannot, we cannot accept it.
00:25:53.599 --> 00:25:58.799
And I think that's that's the way to do it, that's the way to go, and then that's the way to carry on.
00:26:01.680 --> 00:26:17.200
With with with this kind of form of resistance, but then resistance takes so many different um forms, and I don't I still don't think that we can we can think of you know the this solitary hero or something like that.
00:26:17.279 --> 00:26:27.519
We need to think of waves, waves of action that are happening, and we just ride that wave, and we are part of the wave, and we become the wave, and things change.
00:26:27.839 --> 00:26:37.839
But there's also a temporality with it, just like floods, just like water shortages, there's a there's a temporality, and and that's something we cannot do much about.
00:26:38.079 --> 00:26:52.240
There's a there's a thing that we if we uh if we do believe in, if we do give ourselves to the practice of waves and that change only comes through waves, then we sometimes we cannot even enforce that change.
00:26:52.319 --> 00:27:30.400
We have to wait until that that horrible, and that that's perhaps the thing that I say to myself, that I I draw some sort of hope precisely of this from this sense that things go into cycles, and then because of social media, because of you know the the way that life has sped up, hopefully this horrible cycle politically and and in terms of uh world violence will will go a bit faster, and then and then we'll go to another another another arch of the of the cycle.
00:27:30.799 --> 00:27:40.160
Hydrojustice isn't the way that I've imagined it, isn't trying to give answers.
00:27:40.559 --> 00:27:41.359
Yes, sure.
00:27:41.680 --> 00:27:48.480
It's opening up a space where questions are being questions are being asked.
00:27:48.799 --> 00:28:16.319
And what it tries to do at the same time is is give hope, but but not in a very traditional sense, because what I'm trying to think of in terms of hydro justice is the way that um justice and hydro justice in particular, although I don't differentiate between the two, justice and hydro justice anymore, um, has always been here and is always here.
00:28:16.400 --> 00:28:22.240
So there's nothing, in a sense, there's nothing we can do to achieve hydro justice.
00:28:22.480 --> 00:28:27.200
The planet lives in a in a state of hydro justice.
00:28:27.519 --> 00:28:49.440
So we we have obscured it, we have placed things on top of it, we have um we've buried it under the debris of accumulation and capitalism and neoliberalism, extractivism and and colonialism, but hydro justice hasn't gone away and it's there.
00:28:49.519 --> 00:28:55.519
So when I spoke about the womb in relation to the planet, these are the temporalities that we're talking about.
00:28:55.599 --> 00:28:58.240
And this temporality in here is hydro justice.
00:28:58.400 --> 00:28:59.680
Hydro justice is there.
00:28:59.920 --> 00:29:04.640
So, of course, there are moments of of intense hydro injustice.
00:29:04.720 --> 00:29:07.039
It's we're surrounded by it everywhere.
00:29:07.200 --> 00:29:28.000
Like the fact that we can switch on our tap and water comes out is an instance of hydro injustice, considering the people in Central Africa have to walk for 15 kilometers a day in order to get some water, and that water is is probably not potable.
00:29:29.920 --> 00:29:47.200
So the scales are very very anguishing, but at the same time calming if we remove ourselves from the preciousness of what the human, the way we understand it now, is.
00:29:47.759 --> 00:30:08.480
So I'm in a and this is this comes from my speculative fiction, where I'm imagining a world where the human is changing and he's becoming closer to what I've called hydrohuman, and whatever that is, and there's so many ways of one can imagine that.
00:30:08.640 --> 00:30:25.279
But I think on on a on a molecular level, there is a uh there's there can there might be a change that will respond or will precipitate the big planetary changes that we're we will be witnessing and we are witnessing.
00:30:25.440 --> 00:30:34.720
We you know coming into some sort of flow with the planetary hydro justice moment that hasn't hasn't left even for a second.
00:30:35.839 --> 00:30:44.799
So would you argue then, Andreas, or is your sense that verticality is no longer sustainable?
00:30:45.440 --> 00:31:08.799
That that verticality itself has gone too far, you know, that it's too, I mean, the verticality of, for example, the billionaire trillionaire now class, you know, one trillion trillionaire, but you know, a significant one, one with a very verticality-driven agenda, shall we say, um, that's hugely problematic.
00:31:09.519 --> 00:31:22.480
But verticality generally, maybe in the sense that we've always, as communities thought, in terms of specific leaders, people who inspire, right, people around whom we cluster.
00:31:23.359 --> 00:31:28.240
Um, and there's a sense in which that can be transformative.
00:31:28.720 --> 00:32:32.400
But my sense for a long time has been that we need to move to a more distributed intelligence, to a much, much more collective, not even necessarily communitarian, but collective, distributed way of addressing the challenges that we face, because that allows for multiple kinds of horizontal dynamics, non-centralized, but potentially with enormous capacity to communicate with each other from within a shared framework of epistemic equality, say, if we could imagine such a thing, and the capacity to unfold iteratively place sensitive, located particular, sometimes unique responses to challenges that may be refracted in terms of yes, there are commonalities, but there are also distinctions.
00:32:32.480 --> 00:32:37.440
And and here I think again there's a an interesting analogue to water.
00:32:37.759 --> 00:32:43.759
Because um I think it is it Jamie Linton who talks about the problem with the idea of a global water supply.
00:32:43.920 --> 00:33:06.559
Like in in kind of like institutional um World Health Organization or other global level organizations, there's this notion of a global water supply which flattens out all the mad excesses and localized expressivenesses of waters of many kinds in many different situations.
00:33:06.720 --> 00:33:22.720
As you said, there are topologies, there are geographies, there are relations, there are, you know, there'll be atmospheric dimensions in any given topology that are unique to that particular interaction between land, mass, air, and water.
00:33:23.200 --> 00:33:58.400
And I kind of feel that there's a metaphor there for how we might aspire to stay with the trouble we're in, and how we might aspire as humans who are happy to ask different questions without necessarily finding emphatic answers, to explore a way forward together, to generate multiple kinds of responses that that are exquisitely apt, exquisitely apt for the situation in which they emerge.
00:33:59.039 --> 00:34:05.599
Um, I think we just need a much more horizontal politics, really, from what you're saying.
00:34:05.759 --> 00:34:14.639
I mean, if I'm understanding you correctly, and I'm hearing a really important critique of verticality and where it's led us in what you're saying.
00:34:14.960 --> 00:34:15.599
Would you agree?
00:34:15.760 --> 00:34:16.800
Have I misheard you?
00:34:17.119 --> 00:34:18.079
No, no, you haven't misheard.
00:34:18.400 --> 00:34:18.639
Thank you.
00:34:18.800 --> 00:34:22.719
Thank you for uh thank you for hearing very uh attentively.
00:34:22.880 --> 00:34:44.800
Um I think it's I think the moment where we hail as the beginning of humanity and Homo sapiens is also a way of I'm not saying anything wise or new, but it's a is a moment of alienation.
00:34:45.360 --> 00:35:14.639
And and while I'm not advocating a return, I'm trying to push forth an awareness of of that distance between um between something that we used to be and something that we are now, and how this has been driven to um quite kitsch excesses, such as you know, massive skyscrapers or fracking.
00:35:16.079 --> 00:35:40.400
These somehow these things are um very uh related to me because they they explore the arrogance of uh I mean, okay, and then we can think of it very very figuratively as you know of the the phallic erection, and it's the the you know the erection of the building.
00:35:41.920 --> 00:35:59.280
And and if one wanted to use biblical metaphors, of course, one can go very easily to the Tower of Babel and and think of it as precisely that moment of where, okay, there's a limit to your verticality, you know, do it, play with it, but don't take it too seriously.
00:35:59.519 --> 00:36:04.480
Like understand that you it's not that you belong somewhere, it's not about belonging.
00:36:04.559 --> 00:36:15.840
It's that it's not it's not even a crisis of verticality in the sense that we haven't reached that moment where we kind of say, okay, it's difficult to to go more vertical.
00:36:16.400 --> 00:36:25.920
It can carry on being vertical, but the point is this that the more we do that, the more we pushed out of you know this planet's edge.
00:36:26.159 --> 00:36:32.639
We are we we we're tilting, we're off balance, and and that's a fact.
00:36:32.800 --> 00:36:51.119
I mean, it's nothing to with these, it's it's not, it's it's not even a um, it's not a it's not an ethical suggestion, it's a very factual moment of yeah, we we are in very deep trouble, and there's nowhere else to stay to to go but to stay with this trouble.
00:36:51.360 --> 00:37:10.639
Um, and I'm not it's it's a I I live in some sort of uh schizo moment where in in my mind where I'm both optimistic and and very pessimistic at the same time, and I think yes, thank you for nodding, because I think a lot of us share precisely this.
00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:32.079
And I'm it's not that I find optimism in the small, some might have called romantic gestures of of um of return or or or of uh of origin, but it's more about I I find solace in the grandeur of of precisely this cycle.
00:37:32.320 --> 00:38:17.280
And that's why I uh when I in the the the final part of the book, I um propose um a hydra contract, and that is a speculative contractual text written in quite I think quite strict legalees, uh but but it brings in bodies of water uh together with one another and works through some of the movements of of how we can expect to flow with and against each other, because as you said, it's not just about coming together in unison as waters, but but there is there's difference in water.
00:38:17.440 --> 00:38:21.920
There's a term um by well, several philosophers.
00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:40.079
Um I'm using um I'm using Deleuze's way of thinking about the Klineman, um, which is and also very interestingly, the is it's sort of the same route as clines in ocean waters where they come together and they flow together, but they remain different.
00:38:40.159 --> 00:38:45.360
And I adore this this slight, soft, smooth sliding of difference.
00:38:45.760 --> 00:38:47.920
And I think we need to preserve that.
00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:52.000
And in the contract, what I'm trying to do is accept.
00:38:52.239 --> 00:39:12.000
Um, I've also called it the polyamorous ethics of shared flow, and that is that you receive and you give love in the sense of positioning yourself responsibly in relation to someone else, to everyone else.
00:39:12.239 --> 00:39:24.400
And you respect distances and propinquities, you respect the need for hidden alcoves, as well as the the desire for open breathing spaces.
00:39:24.719 --> 00:39:30.559
And um and that's that's all through this this contract unto Hydro Justice.
00:39:30.800 --> 00:39:59.440
And what I um I'm having quite a lot of fun with is that I one of the performances that I've devised around the book Hydro Justice is something that has to do with also my um my visual art production, which um works with folds and flows, but uh actually an actual material concertina um sort of blocks of paper.
00:39:59.679 --> 00:40:50.880
But at the same time, I'm I'm using this as part of um of an expression of the contract, which is a chanting expression of the contract where I go through the motions and and and the articles, and and there is a point and that I give everyone uh a long piece of string that starts from a box filled with water, and then it's very important for me that the string does the whole round and brings in almost everyone, if possible, absolutely not every almost, absolutely everyone in the room, and and and it's it's the the the string is still a little wet, and so everyone has to hold it, and pretty much I'm hoping that they're holding for the rest of the performance.
00:40:51.039 --> 00:41:16.000
And it creates a very interesting space, it creates almost like a in in Jewish um orthodox tradition, there's uh this practice of the airov, um, the the the string that they place around an area in the Shabbat uh during the Shabbat so they can freely move and and do some of a some semblance of natural uh life, a bit of sort of everyday regular life.
00:41:16.480 --> 00:41:24.079
And in a sense, that creates a bit of a sense of safety, but also a sense of of pulsing community uh around me.
00:41:24.719 --> 00:41:36.559
And I love that moment where there is a little bit of a wave created on the basis of something as simple as as a bit of wet strain.
00:41:36.880 --> 00:41:37.760
That's wonderful.
00:41:37.920 --> 00:41:43.760
I know that you said you had to go at this particular point in time, so we'll have to end it here.
00:41:43.840 --> 00:41:47.920
But I feel like we've got so much more to explore here, Andreas.
00:41:48.320 --> 00:41:58.719
Um, have you got by any chance a link to a film of that performance that I could make available for people listening to the podcast or watching this on YouTube?
00:41:59.360 --> 00:42:04.320
Uh I think there's there's some filming that has been done, and so I can send it to you, yes.
00:42:04.480 --> 00:42:05.360
That would be amazing.
00:42:05.519 --> 00:42:07.440
I I think people might appreciate that.
00:42:07.519 --> 00:42:10.960
And thank you so much for giving up your time this afternoon.
00:42:11.280 --> 00:42:13.440
And you are there in the city of water.
00:42:13.760 --> 00:42:14.639
I am in Venice.
00:42:14.880 --> 00:42:20.719
So enjoy Venice, Andreas, and I very much look to continuing this conversation with you at some future point soon.
00:42:21.039 --> 00:42:21.920
I would love to.
00:42:22.079 --> 00:42:22.880
Thank you, Anna.
00:42:23.119 --> 00:42:24.559
All right, take good care.
