Marking Silences

Geographer Kathryn Yusoff with poet Myung Mi Kim

In this second episode, geographer Kathryn Yusoff speaks with poet Myung Mi Kim about the potencies of past lives, traumas, histories and possibilities that are held in the demarcated silences between the rock strata and between words.

They consider the multiple ‘broken worlds’ that have come before our current perceptions of ecological crisis, and how descriptions of geologies have perpetuated colonial narratives erasing the geotraumas imposed on peoples through colonial extraction and violence. They question the possible sites of politics, intimacies and scripts of life, as places with the potential to activate new realities, as matter and words reform around us, time and again.

Interweaving the conversation are readings of Kim’s poetry and a sound work by artist Shamica Ruddock. At the end of the podcast, the full sound work by Ruddock, Sun Dial 51.3861°, 1.3520° plays out, as it reaches downwards to the geological substrata beneath our feet.