AC Team: Your involvement with the Anthropocene Curriculum, first with The Shape of a Practice in November 2020 and then the Courses project, coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, during which we were all forced to adopt some aspects of the “urgent slowness” you write about in your work. Can you talk a little about how you experienced that?

Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski: Because of the way the process has been, it’s continued to rumble along, sometimes more in the background, but has always felt relevant. It’s been such a rich experience that feels ongoing, in different ways. It was such a huge learning curve, from first participating online as part of The Shape of a Practice in and amongst everything else that was going on, on so many levels. You know, I hadn’t even heard of the term “Anthropocene” before we began. But it now feels like community, with connections that have endured, even when originally made online. One of those connections for me has been Tia-Simone Gardner. I wrote a piece [Black Feminist Archival Continuums] earlier this year for the project I’m working on with the artist Rita Keegan, and I quoted Tia at the top of that piece as I felt that her words framed it so well. She emailed me recently about maybe doing a seminar or lecture for her students. So that kind of ongoing ripple is lovely.

In terms of urgent slowness, if we take the example of the deadlines for the Courses project: there was a part of me that pushed back against you all, against deadlines, to have the space to really think. There’s the hopes and dreams of deadlines but sometimes I think they’re not realistic; it’s not that they’re not practically realistic, it’s more a case of “what does it take to produce?” In recent years, my work and particularly the community work I’ve done, means I’m always responding to something. Like the dumpster fire that is the global situation right now! Because in some ways, while that is going on, I feel like I’m always responding to the fire. And last year, the city I was living in at the time, Minneapolis, was literally on fire. So my priorities really changed. Community was a priority and though this AC work is also a priority—because it’s not separate, I am trying to develop a living practice—the question I’ve been trying to ask is, what is the difference when I’m able to produce from a place of rest rather than “oh my god, it’s got to be handed in”?

I wrote a blog piece the other day on a sculpture by Ronald Moody for Pallant House Gallery. They recently bought one of his sculptures from Christies called “The Warrior,” and asked me to write about it. The piece is made from kauri, a native New Zealand wood. And the more I looked into this wood and its history, the more it felt like I was looking at the Anthropocene through this sculpture. I wouldn’t have been able to frame it around that idea previously, but through looking at the world through that lens as part of the AC I was able to. It has stayed with me. We’ve all come together to try, and not necessarily find an “easy solution,” but there’s something that we’re trying to resolve, address, acknowledge, or understand. It’s been a fascinating process. I suppose what the AC gave me to do, without me really knowing it, is to try and find a commitment myself.

AC: There’s this idea of impact that you explore in your Course pathway, where you reflect on both ecological and pedagogical impact. Could you perhaps describe your involvement with the Anthropocene Curriculum in relation to different notions of impact, and what that means for the work that we’re collectively undertaking?

EAS: I think that idea started with your invitation to take part in the screening that opened The Shape of a Practice, and featured a work by Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann called Hopium Economy, which explores substance dependency as a global condition. Had I not been a part of that screening, I don’t know that I would have necessarily have engaged with the Curriculum in the way that I did. When I was going through the research pool and putting my Course pathway together—which in some ways was quite an overwhelming process—Hopium Economy provided a framework that I think is a really solid one for approaching the Anthropocene. That is, using the word “habit” and holding it akin to the cycle of addiction and then thinking of that as a wider cycle, and all the stakeholders involved. The work really resonated and allowed me to look at my own impact and what I’m doing through a different lens, which is something I’ve been thinking about for a while in my own work.

In terms of the impact of learning together, that impact is ongoing. There’s something really beautiful in the fact that we’re having this conversation, because often your contact with a project team is largely asking things like “where do I send my invoice” or “what’s the timetable?” I don’t think I would have made this journey without you or your gentle prompt emails. That also counts. To allow space for someone to learn along the way and understand just because they don’t know something in this moment shouldn’t be a barrier to what they’re maybe trying to communicate. Or have the opportunity to try and communicate something that they’ve never tried to communicate before.

Another impact has been connecting dots unexpectantly with Minnesota, where I work. I remember [fellow AC contributor] Tahani Nadim came to Minnesota while I was in London and I was like, “what, you’re going to be rowing down the Mississippi??” Then we managed to see each other in London and she told me more about the AC project. When the invitation came later to participate in The Shape of A Practice, I then discovered the unexpected connections with Shanai Matteson, who is connected to Amoke Kubat, who founded the YO MAMA! Housing Cooperative where I am a board member… It brought multiple worlds together. Which was completely unexpected but really wonderful. And I feel like that will continue to play out in different ways that I’m yet to know.

AC: In terms of knowledge production and this idea of relearning, resetting, and programming as you talk about in your pieces, so much of what you’ve been describing concerns this idea of serendipitous connections that you didn’t even seem coming; you’re already embedded in a network of ideas and exchanges but maybe you just didn’t realize it yet! How do you see that idea in the broader scope? There is that personal aspect of building of commitments or relationships but what does it mean for producing or carrying knowledge?

EAS: I think that something that is sometimes undervalued is how long it actually takes to build relationships and get to know people or organizations and institutions, and the role of trust. Then once you meet the people you might have only been connected to from afar, that doubles down on the respect—your trust builds. I’m always interested in how we work together. We’re not short of great ideas but it’s more about a kind of how do we get there? I love collective working, but it’s really hard! Sometimes the things that people don’t talk about when they’re fantasizing and using the word collective is that, in reality, often there’s a lot of fallout; it takes a huge amount of communication to ride through, and care, collectively.

With regards to the Anthropocene, we do need to build relationships over time and around the globe in order to understand what’s happening on the ground in the first place. One thing that attracted me to the AC was thinking: wow, this is global! I think the fact that you’re supporting this community to do this research is a phenomenal thing. I feel really lucky, through the faith and trust of someone like Tahani to become part of it, or even to know that it exists. It was all around me in different ways, I just didn’t know. Trust and building relationships over time, and I suppose that’s the urgency in slowness; it means that in the future you can take shortcuts because you know how each other work. There’s that kind of tacit knowledge of not necessarily being able to read each other’s minds but you can pre-empt how you move, how you navigate certain things or expectations. All those different things become a shorthand once you know, and over time they can become invaluable to moving fast and through hard things quicker.

Maybe the other thing is listening. I will say this, because I do think it’s relevant as it’s something I experience a lot: as a Black woman my opinion is not valued. You are giving me that space in an area where I don’t even know necessarily know “how to do it”. Because the Courses project, in particular, was a real open canvas to create, which can be difficult. Even though I’m doing research, I’m not a natural researcher and I find doing it online very hard. I like material, I like it in my hands… That’s why it made a huge difference to “be” with people, even online, during The Shape of a Practice.

AC: Alongside urgent slowness and different ideas of impact, the other focus in your Course pathway concerns practices of rest and refusal and the idea of those notions being intertwined. How and why do practices of rest and refusal intertwine for you, especially with regards to how you understand the urgently slow?

EAS: This has to do with wellbeing and health. Through my work looking into archives, particularly Black feminist archives, and British Black feminism, over the past decade there seemed to be a theme of artists and activists dying young. This focus on health came through working with the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive, as well as thinking of Olive Morris, who was a Black British activist based in Brixton, who died aged 27. It’s almost a question of: how do I take heed? Projects I have been doing with collectives have been about trying to create a lived practice, so it’s often been centered around an ongoing practice of rest. Also: I’m tired. I’ve been doing community work, in a particular kind of way that at a certain point I started to recognize isn’t healthy. I began to think: how do I create boundaries and what would the impact be of that upon what I produce? So that’s really the question I have: does rest help me to produce in a different kind of way?

People like The Nap Ministry also started to ask those questions too, so it became a broader question, particularly for Black women who are notoriously cast as “strong.” Some of the experiences I’ve had have made me feel like I am not human, because there’s an expectation that I can just keep on going. I know I’ve got to die, but I don’t want to die just because I’ve been working…! As a designer, I’m interested in problem solving in my practice and trying to get people to do things differently. It’s easy to talk about doing things differently, having these discourses but then not actually do anything different. It normally takes time, and some kind of refusal or resistance to at least encourage, coerce or show maybe a possibility of doing something differently. I’m quite comfortable being an agitator in that respect.

I would maybe swap the idea of refusal or resistance with persistence. Maybe rest and persistence are what I’m really interested in. The way that I work or what I’ve learned through work experience, like I was saying with relationship and trust—I have long-haul visions and I’m aware that things take time. It requires a particular kind of resolve and persistence. And in that regard, I’m excited to have put together this material that I can use to continue to have conversations around the impact of our habits.