This is an update on the episode that was supposed to go live today. My guest for this last episode of the season is an artist and art teacher living in Gaza, Noura Al Qasasia. Ahead of our interview, she and her family was pushed to pack up and move to another area of the Gaza Strip. My hope is that this interview will still happen, if Noura is willing, able, and wanting to use this platform to share about that experience and about her art and teaching. If this episode is not possible at this time, Imagination State will resume again in the new year.

Find Noura's work here.

Learn more about Noura and support her family's GoFundMe here.

What might an imagination curriculum look like? How is learning the art of interruption a key part of that?

This week's guest is Barbara Leckie, professor at Canada's Carleton University, author of Climate Change Interrupted: Representation and the Remaking of Time, and host of the podcast Commons Sense. Barbara’s work moves between Victorian literature, climate communication, and environmental humanities, and she is one of the most creative thinkers I know.

Our conversation begins with a drawing exercise (join us!) and moves into Barbara’s frameworks of interruption, re-storying, and nonlinear time. We talk about why climate “alarms” so often fail to generate action, what it means to think beyond linear narratives of progress, and how love for the world and for one another might be the most powerful climate response. Barbara also shares how stories hold communities together and how tending to our imaginations - both personal and collective - is vital for attention and care.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Barbara Leckie’s book: Climate Change Interrupted: Representation and the Remaking of Time
• Her essay Loving the World Could Address the Climate Crisis and Help Us Make Sense of Changes to Come (The Conversation)
• Hannah Arendt’s idea of amor mundi (love of the world)
• A Walter Benjamin sample
• Ursula Franklin's idea of the potluck
• Barbara’s podcast: Commons Sense
• Robin Wall Kimmerer on stones
• Jane Hirshfield 3 pebbles

Invitation:

Barbara's invitation: take a stone, any stone, and spend time meditating on it. Consider its origins, its weight, its place in the wider world, and how it connects you to histories, ecologies, and futures beyond your own.

Ideas? Visions? Imaginaries? Email rebekaryvola@gmail.com.

This episode was edited by Angela Ohlfest, typographer from Simon Walker, music from Cosmo Sheldrake.

César Jung-Harada has a wildly adventurous life: He’s a justice-oriented philosopher-inventor traversing the world’s oceans to help humanity adapt to climate change. He has built oil-spill robots, shape-shifting boats, floating cities, and hydrogen devices. The inventions range in technology and scale, but the heart and soul remains the same. César uses imagination and inclusion to scaffold all he does, believing that children, students, refugees, artists, and local “non-experts” belong at the design table and have contributions that are just as - if not more - valuable than those more credentialed.

Listen to hear César talk about everything from equality and inclusion, to animism and Shintoism, to “returning to the animal” that we are.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Studio Ghibli exhibit
• César Jung Harada: An Ocean City Reimagined exhibit
• Balon Balon Ijo, Floating Solar Hydrogen
• Protei, Shape-Shifting Sailing Robot
• “Coralbot” Coral Reef Mapping Robot
• Oyster Hatchery "Floating Marine Laboratory"
• Ocean Imagineer. Floating solar hydrogen pilot plant
• Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark
• Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method

César‘s invitation, from his mother’s wisdom:

To return to the animal that you are, you need to forget. How much can you forget? Can you let go of your name, material attachments, problems and worries? Humans can experience so much unnecessary suffering, but if you can forget, you get closer to experiencing the simplicity of being an animal among animals.

Ideas? Visions? Imaginaries? Email rebekaryvola@gmail.com.

This episode was edited by Angela Ohlfest, typographer from Simon Walker, music from Cosmo Sheldrake.