Climate journalist and author Kate Aronoff joins Sung Tieu in our galleries to talk about, and around, Liability Infrastructure. This new sculptural, newsprint, and sound installation commissioned for Infra-Specter deals with the hidden infrastructures, language tactics, and legal protections that hinder direct communication or straightforward understanding but nevertheless impact bodies, land, legacies, and water. Kate and Sung will depart from Sung’s research that informed this project to address wider questions dealing with infrastructure, obfuscation, and the challenges of accessing crucial information.
This conversation is part of Ear to the Ground, an ongoing series that brings together events, performances, and talks in parallel to Sung Tieu’s exhibition Infra-Specter between March and September 2023.
Image: Sung Tieu, Anti-Vandal Clock (Havana), 2022.
Ear to the Ground recalls a practice of paying attention to sounds and vibrations that travel through the land, allowing the listener to predict the arrival of animals, trains, other humans, or the presence of flows in the underground as well as even more intangible phenomena.
In this series of public programs, we look into spectral practices: forms of acquiring knowledge beyond the reach of eye that require building trust and depend on intuition. Might invisible sensations, ghostly feelings, or dreamlike perception allow us to anticipate and imagine possible futures? Might they help us in turning away from destructive, divisive acts of conspiracy to forms of conjecture that are creative and deeply informed by their earthly context?
Previously, she has held fellowships at the Type Media Center and the Climate Social Science Network. Her work has appeared in outlets including The New York Times, The Nation, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and Dissent, where she serves on the editorial board.
She is a regular commentator on climate politics and has appeared on (among other programs) All in with Chris Hayes, Democracy Now!, On the Media, and the Brian Lehrer Show.