April joins carla and Jamie-Leigh in a joyful conversation about broadening our perspectives of what ancestry can be, and who and what it includes. They discuss the potential of technology to facilitate connections, as well as a need for grounding amongst/within the more-than-human kin around us. Exploring these expansions of radical ancestry as a way to create more harmonious and just futures.

SPEAKERS

April, Jamie-Leigh, carla

[there is instrumental music and soundscapes woven throughout the show]

Welcome to On Belonging, an audio series to connect us. On Belonging explores why so many of us are feeling called to find a deeper sense of belonging, whether with our ancestors or to land where we live. And beyond.

These powerful stories and conversations are an invitation into the lives and landscapes of the guests' worlds, offering pathways towards remembering and finding more belonging.

The following features a conversation with April Lin, Jamie Leigh and carla.

I'm currently based in London, I moved here around eight, nine years ago from Sweden, which is where I was born. And my parents had immigrated there from mainland China in the early 90s. Yeah, I feel like migration and ancestry for me are really intertwined and interlinked, just on a personal level, but also in terms of understanding like this passage of time and space, on this enormous scale that this concept of ancestry contains. And I think sometimes, yeah, locating it in my own story, and in my own family, makes that a bit more digestible. So yeah, I refer to the UK as my adult parent home, and then China as my ancestral home and Sweden, that's my childhood home, that is somehow, my my selves all exist somewhere in between these three places.

All of this conversation kind of reminds me of like, kind of this idea of making kin, you know, at the edges of empire. And I'm curious what led to articulating this work as radical ancestry versus typical ways of engaging with Ancestry and, more specifically, what does radical ancestry mean to you?

Hmm, I think, quite a core part of my exploration or my practice, or my work, is like investigating what role ancestry plays in these worlds that we inhabit and create in contemporary society. Some of which are, I guess, all of which start out as some kind of myths, and which I think then become materialized and reified, through thought and language and action into the worlds that we do inhabit, which have very real and tangible and felt consequences. And the ways that ancestry is part of that kind of world building, both in a speculative more so called fictional with quotation marks sense but also, in a really, in a very real sense in a ways that have consequences and ripple effects, beyond you know, our immediate time, beyond our immediate like kin, as well. And yeah, ancestral lineages are intergenerational and diaspora knowledges. And the role of expanding and critiquing and experimenting with notions of memory or time and space, they feature quite heavily in my works, in the sense that I envision my work as portals of some kind that can invite collaborators or audiences into another mode of being. And in this hybrid, kind of fictional, semi fictional semi real space, these false truths that we often inhabit in real world time, things that become kind of solidified or cemented to like late stage capitalist or colonial, post colonial structures and power systems. These false truths can hopefully then be unlearned is my hope by /via my work. And instead, we can move towards ways of living equitably with the land and with each other. Or slowly relearn these things and reconnect with the ways that our cultures or our histories have practiced these things before. And as a second generation immigrant myself, with parents who have experienced the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and undergone like, maybe three different kinds of huge economic shifts in their own lifetime, and then moved to Sweden, which has a completely different history, it's a completely different way of living. I feel like the sense of the false truths and real consequences, feels very dominant, both in my own background, and feels kind of-- it's made ancestry and this way of understanding things as being inherited and also understanding ideas as seeds that you sow for future people and future audiences as something that's like personally and culturally relevant to my every day, and I feel really blessed and honored to be able to work with ideas like this on a professional level and to make connections, like the ones we're making right now, as part of my work. And feel like it's really an never ending kind of journey about, of learning about and with these histories and having these kinds of conversations with other people who are interested in this topic, you know, like exchanging ideas, exchanging techniques, exchanging approaches, but also, people who don't work with ancestry on a professional level, to see how they too embody and practice and move within that kind of topic for themselves. Yeah, and radical ancestry, I guess, for me, it comes with this desire to be able to approach ancestry from multiple angles or like multiple planes of understanding, like, seeing that there is this very romanticized, sometimes science around what ancestry is, and, you know, is in like, bold font, this way of thinking about biology as some kind of unquestionable truth or dogma and wanting to see beyond that. And to see entanglements as something that we're all always part of whether or not we are biologically related, I think expanding from this biological definition of ancestry to something that is more spiritual or cultural or critical as well feels quite essential to an understanding of what ancestry is to me.

Yeah, I liked even in your answer, there was sort of like a shift maybe in how you started exploring the words that you were using, like, like you started really like, focusing it on like that relearning. And like, coming back to and always learning and always growing, which is something that carla talks about, like literally non stop, is this really beautiful way of finding connection through, like you say, kind of beyond bloodlines and ways that we can find kinship, that is so rooted in who we are, and how we exist on this planet, or this experience, or this lived experience. Like, you know, the one of the phrases that we like to use is that it's like already in our bodies already in our bones already in are already in who we are, if we're like open to these conversations and open to each other and open to that kinship with things that are beyond just human experience. So connecting to the land, connecting to the flora, the fauna, the fungi, all that beautiful stuff that is like woven into our experiences that we're having. And I love this idea that like, radical ancestry to you is so much more than biological. Especially, because that can actually be really limiting. A lot of people don't have access to that biological, quite literally inherited genes and genetics, like they like, it's an erasure of an experience, if that's our only way of connecting to our ancestry.

Absolutely, and the ways that like, bloodlines, as you say, are like, this very narrow understanding of who we should consider our kin has actually fostered so much different there's so many different kinds of violence. and different kinds of like, categorization or systemization of like people and usually there's some kind of value system attached to that system, you know, so yeah, so I am really dismantling or wanting to dismantle and think beyond that feels really, really crucial. So I re- growing your own relationship with what ancestry is.

Yeah, I love this conversation. I've been starting to use, I think has a lot to do with your work April, I've started using the word Radcestors. We were asking people who the Radcestors are and I said, I'll start: mine is mycelium. It's been really fun.

So what does belonging mean to you?

I'd say belonging means many things to me. I think the first thing that comes up for me is that it's a sense of home or a sense of safety. Safety that doesn't presume a sense of like, stagnancy, or a sense of fixedness I think maybe those things are often, or can be conflated right to be like safe, is to just have a feeling comfortable and you know, not being threatened too much. But actually belonging for me, is the space where, yeah, there's perhaps comfort in being uncomfortable, or there's an openness towards discomfort and there's a safety knowing that like, it's okay to be uncomfortable sometimes, like some discomfort is necessary to grow. And, and knowing that that's something that's safe to do that it's safe to, like, make mistakes, or safe to, like, venture out into different directions or draw different connections that didn't previously exist, as well as to kind of take your time getting to know the things you know, even better. And, yeah, I think that's like the vague kind of emotional sense that comes up in my gut when I see the word belonging. But then there's also a part of me, that's maybe a bit more skeptical, maybe? in terms of how belonging is often leveraged to perpetuate systems of violence or systems of power and equality. And then thinking also about, you know, belonging, in and of itself, is not the same, right? Like, there's different myths, or maybe myths is the right word, there are different myths of belonging that are used, and weaponized, also to further violence and to create, create divides. And I'm thinking a lot about how, you know, while society gets more and more polarized, also with the use of tech, sigh, manipulation of like, what we're seeing and encountering, like algorithms, how that, in turn becomes an enforced kind of belonging that is manufactured. Yeah, to kind of sustain the system that we live in a system that is inherently sustainable, but to kind of lengthen that lifespan. Thinking about how belonging yeah has often become like a concept that's twisted for a lot of like, for instance, in Alt Right circles, perhaps a lot of like more vulnerable or like lonely men who aren't able to connect with people well, they find like a sense of belonging, in perpetuating ways of seeing the world that justify a sense of like supremacy or thinking also, perhaps about, like transphobic circles as well, where a belonging to them is maybe more predicated on a defining a sense of community that excludes others. So I don't know if it's a, it's an interesting term, and I think it contains a lot. And I think, in my intuition, and in my own body, it's something that feels really safe. But sometimes when I see it, and witness it being used outside of just me, I feel like it's also something that is used to justify a lack of safety, or a lack of equitable safety, maybe. So it's quiet, it's, yeah, it's complex. But that doesn't mean it's not something that I pursue or want to foster, you know.

Yeah, I agree that it's... like I always think about children, my work is really oriented around adult supremacy. And so it's definitely a site where, you know, parents particularly or any caregiver who's in a relationship with a young person, like can leverage belonging in a really terrible way that isn't consensual or that doesn't center a deep care. So I think it's really important to ... like all words, language is so limited and it can just be in the wrong hands be terrible. I always think of one of my favorite quotes from Rilke is "I'll always belong to myself, even as many times as I'll try to give myself away"-- and I love the nuance in it because it I think it could have a really shallow reading of individualism or some weirdness, but I think it's an important piece to bring to this conversation around finding belonging and figuring out how yeah like you say it's about home but it can't be fixed like it has to be fluid has to be consensual, it has to be relational, messy emergent.

And, you know, as kind of like these conversations around like, identity and and reconciling like pieces of ourselves within the context of like the outside world and actually like, recognizing that the pieces of us are not separate. But in fact, we're whole. And we, yeah, just like there's this duality kind of experience that we're touching on here that like, you know, with belonging comes othering. And whether that's internal or external. I really liked the idea of that, you said about safety and like kind of how you explained it, like, just wrote down on my page, it's like, you know, the safety within blooming and being, being at a stage of growth that maybe we can find compassion and understanding for ourselves too. And yeah, like how we embody, belonging is very different than how society and culture embodies belonging or kind of think of the word right now, but like, imposes, I guess, imposes belonging, right? So maybe you could share a memory or a time that you felt in your body belonging, or perhaps maybe speak to like, Where and with whom you actually feel the most connected?

Yeah, first of all, so I want to say I really enjoyed that intention that you mentioned between belonging and othering, or that they kind of inherently need to coexist in order for them to exist at all. And maybe that the part of kind of like deromanticizing belonging also comes with destigmatizing othering, in a sense, like, obviously, othering, across like divides is not good. And yeah, very painful and very hurtful. But in a sense that there does always need to be a sense of like, an otherness to kind of shift your own location of self towards something. And I don't think that's like a bad thing, in and of itself, you know, that there is always a sense of an unfamiliarity, or a sense of newness, and that requires like another that you don't understand yet. But yes, in terms of a specific memory of a time I felt, belonging? I don't know if I have a super specific, like, one off memory, but I feel belonging, mostly when I'm in nature, or surrounded by what we call nature, more than human species of many, many kinds. Specifically, in my childhood home in Sweden, which is, I think, where this relationship that I feel very intimately of belonging in a natural world grew. I yeah, I am, I think I would say I have struggled to feel a lot of belonging amongst like fellow humans growing up in Sweden, which is quite like quite a White country, and quite, a country with quite a big middle class population, which is probably not a bad thing. You know, it's not bad to have wealth equality. But maybe it also means that people who fall out of the middle class, which is what I did, growing up, I grew up quite working class, and like a working class immigrant Chinese family then feel like extra ostracized, because most of the people around you really do live in quite the same way, if that makes sense? So I felt, you know, growing up, I quite struggled to connect with other people my age, because I felt like our everyday lives just looked and felt really different. So often, what I would do is kind of find a home, just in this little patch of forest, say 5-10 minute walk from where I live. And then you kind of walk through this little patch of forest and you're immediately surrounded by like, Birdsong, and it's like the asphalt road turns to like a gravel path. It's very, very surreal and like, kind of otherworldly, but it's almost so magical because it really is just like any patch of woodland. It's not like a specific landmark forest. You know, a tourist destination is just like this little piece of greenery just outside where I live, which is like on the outskirts of Stockholm. But I would often go there I think when I felt a bit like dislocated, I don't think I would be able to permit that as like a teenager. But I think looking back that's definitely like when I was seeking some kind of belonging I felt really drawn to go there and just spend time with like the trees and the grass and the different kinds of like textures of like bark, or moss or like twigs or rocks, and feeling really like a lot of things are fleeting in life, but and so of course is like the environment and the planet, and we're always growing. But that nature would always have like have a home for me as long as it existed because, in a sense, these divisions that are very much like a human construction or a human fabrication don't really exist in the natural world, like, obviously, we project humans have projected different systems onto nature, or onto more than humans, but I would never feel like they themselves replicated that worldview onto me. And so I felt really free and I felt really safe. And yeah, it was probably in those moments just like, kind of wandering along, and like touching different textures and different bits, and maybe finding like a nice rock to sit on and like, close my eyes and like feel the breeze on my face in which I felt like there was a sense of home for me in this world beyond my immediate surroundings of like school and all the drama that comes with formal education. So yeah, I often go back to that specific spot every time I go home to Sweden as well. And it kind of feels like we've grown up together in a sense, or, you know, they've seen many, many versions of myself. And I have also seen, like, these different inhabitants of this woodland kind of shift across time, too. So, yeah, that's what I think is where I feel most belonging.

Thank you for sharing. That sounds like a serene place. I love that it was just this place nearby.

Yeah, we kind of want to explore a little bit and talk about the game that you created and why you created it. Like what was the catalyst for the Earthly Realm is Out of Balance.

So, the Earthly Realm is Out of Balance is a chatbot. Choose your own adventure game and resource library in one, which when it was in line between December 2022, and January 2023, was all accessible via WhatsApp. Yeah. And in this game, the user or the player or the person typing on WhatsApp, aids this character called the Interface, who is this guardian of a Cosmic Library of forgotten or endangered, endangered knowledges, pertaining to ancestry. And the way they support the interface is by needing to answer your questions, or contribute reflections regarding their own relationship to ancestry and their own understanding of ancestry? And with every question that the answer or every reflection that they contribute, they move the game forward, in a sense. And yeah, my intention with this game was to open up discussions about how ancestry is both an incredibly personal experience, you know, personal but simultaneously universal, how we're all bound by these different threads of connections that span intergenerationally, but also intra-generationally, like, vertically and horizontally at the same time, and how our experience of these threads can differ incredibly wildly, you know, not even person to person, but within one person's lifetime, or like year to year, one's relationship to their ancestors or to ancestry as a concept can shift so, so much and have really huge personal and political implications. So ancestry, in a sense, was a kind of container for these questions and provocations and conflicts that happen on a micro scale individually, from person to person, but also, you know, across different selves within the same individual, but also on this huge immeasurable scale like sociopolitically, intraspecies, planetary, ancestry for me seemed like a really useful and also emotional way to approach questions that otherwise might feel quite abstract or hard to kind of talk about or hard to really word. Yeah. And this sense, you know, thinking about ancestry is something that is, again, so personal and feels like a very internal kind of musing to think about, you know, what is my relationship to my ancestors, but inherently ancestry is something that is shared, you know, that you always need at least two parties to speak of ancestry, I think, and it's a relational concept. And so I kind of wanted to hold space. By making this work, I wanted to hold space for people to expand, who or what they might consider an ancestor, and maybe introduce, you know, this idea that more than humans, like plants, or landscapes or bodies of water, or objects even can also be ancestors alongside of course, people who are not in our biological lineage. Yeah, that can be a little starting point for this work.

So just to follow up and just curious who is who is the Other Worldly Guardian, maybe to you or to the project, but also just in a more open way... Like, why the choice to use a chat bot or to use AI?

Hmm. So now's a good time to debunk quite a common misunderstanding, I've come across whilst making this work, that all chatbots are necessarily powered by AI or AI driven. Usually, yeah, they usually are, say things like in a customer service sense. But even so usually, their responses have been trained by, you know, they've been trained by humans to work on a certain data set. And at least in this very specific, in my work, there's no AI involved at all, like all the different conversations you have have been like hand written by me, and then programmed by programmers, so it takes you from like, you know, say Question one, there's two choices, you can make a or b, and an A will take you to one point, and then B will take you to another and all those choices are have been like pre designed by me -- if you think about like a really, really big mind map, it looks like that on the back end. But actually, it's a really important point, because why I wanted to work with a chatbot in the first place, or use this chat bot as the site for this project is because, I've been thinking a lot about tech, thinking about our relationship to our smartphones, how they're, you know, I grew up, I'm kind of a very, very young millennial, or like a very old Gen Z, depending on how you look at it. So I grew up whilst social media was becoming a thing. And maybe like, yeah, my adolescence and the advent of the smartphone are quite linked together. So I have a little bit of this like techno utopian feeling in me that I'm aware of. And thinking about, like the potentials of technology in facilitating conversations and facilitating all this knowledge that you would never be able or would take you a lot, lot longer time to come across. But also, of course, thinking about surveillance and big data harvesting, and all these multinational corporations like Meta and Google and Amazon. Yeah, and I started thinking about my smartphone and how it holds this similar tension of like, incredible potential. But that's kind of leveraged in a way that's really harmful to people and to the planet. Yeah, I think like a little cousin to the smartphone was the Chatbot, who I felt like was this entity who had had all this caring labor outsourced to them to do, you know, people come to a chatbot to like, have their problems fixed, have their problems solved. You know, they, by the end of it, they expect, like their situation to get better. And I was thinking like, oh, you know, what if we enlisted the chatbots' help and their expertise and their labor, but maybe in a way that was in that, that could facilitate a different kind of growth, or a different kind of experience for the person talking to them. And usually, you know, chatbots used in the Customer Service setting are used by companies of different kinds to help their clients or customers with different issues, usually more practical issues that they're having. But I was like, you know, what, if people wanted to speak to a chatbot, where it's, it feels like it's a similar kind of conversation. But actually, it's something a lot more personal and a lot more emotional, and a lot more intuitive. And maybe that can also be a way to help people reroute back into the possibilities of what a smartphone could do or what a conversation on WhatsApp could mean. Because I think we're all quite used to, you know, this tech, just being in the background and our lives and me and myself as well, you don't really tune into it that much. I was like, Wow, it's really amazing to be able to have these conversations via this like palm sized device in your hand. And I wonder what that kind of accessibility could do when facilitating conversations that can be quite difficult to have, I think. Sorry, this doesn't answer your question.

No, that's okay. No, I was gonna be like, honestly, from listening. I kind of gathered that maybe potentially. You're the Otherworldly Guardian.

You are not wrong! I think essentially, it's the character that I created. Yeah, you know, that mirrors a lot of the same feelings I have in wanting to facilitate these kinds of conversations. And the interface, they have like a personal stake, I should say in having people help them, they tend to this library, which I mentioned before the Hall of Understandings. But this library needs some kind of human interaction or interaction from other people, or in order to be sustained, or it just falls apart and kind of falls into disuse. And it's their responsibility to make sure that this place of knowledge is tended to and like thriving, and not like, dusty, and decrepit, kind of, so that's their motivation, maybe... it's where's my own desire to want to speak more about ancestry, because often I've felt it's been quite a solitary experience. And also, because I recognize how important it is in this time to have conversations like this in the open and to have them not now, but like soon. Yeah, I think maybe there's been no time in history where you don't feel like you're at a crossroads. But maybe that feeling is even more heightened now with the climate crisis, and its consequences just kind of creeping up closer and closer. And this point of no return, which the interface mentions to the viewer, is also something I feel reflected in our shared reality in terms of this point of no return around the climate emergency. And at what point it's any kind of human action is going to be too late to like, go back, I guess. And up to this point is always shifting. But in general, this idea of there being like a kind of cliff, that we're all standing on the edge of and what needs to be done in order to move us all collectively away from that cliff and into a place of sustaining our livelihoods and our existences on this planet.

There's so much here to unpack, I love the fact that you bring it into the view that it's relational, like this whole work of finding belonging and connecting to our ancestral is like, inherently, about relationships. It's like the anti individual movement, and how fundamentally important it is to broaden what we mean by ancestry across bloodlines across species, and including technology, because of course, you know, trees are technology. Like, we can get really narrow when we talk about what technology is, and I think, you know, we I think we all, we all know this, but I'm gonna say it anyway. But like, it’s the use of technology is what the problem is, and of course, the extraction of people's lands and bodies and resources that are where the problems are. And then of course, the addiction stuff, maybe or the over the distraction of our smartphones, too, is all part of this. So I love that you're disrupting that it feels like a huge intervention into what it could mean to connect in this way. And I think, you know, we're at, we're at this unprecedented time of immense displacement, and a lot of it has to do with climate disaster and climate change. But of course, it's about war and ongoing extraction and Empire. You know, and I recently read that it's 100 million folks worldwide, that are displaced, and so belonging to a specific place or peoples, you know, with that joy of feeling super rooted to your landscape to to all the all the flora and the fauna as well, it just seems really almost ancient and not, you know, a little difficult to reach when we think beyond maybe our location, and, yeah, so bringing digital connections to the fore, I think, right. And so I think you're really tuning into something important. And so we are wondering, how, how are digital portals of connection, changing the ways we find belonging?

Yeah, to just kind of extending what I said before, you know, I want to really want it to reroute into technology as intimate or as a place of intimacy, and a place of like, safe kind of experimentation with things that can feel really abstract or isolating, or, you know, yeah, to have, say, something that feels quite automated and disembodied and baseless, like a chatbot be able to mediate a very complex question of ancestry feels like the kind of work that I would have really enjoyed as, still, I would have I would enjoy it today as my current self but I also would really enjoy it as my younger selves. Different spaces of conversation can lead to different ways that that information is like circulated and embodied and digested, I feel. And I think there's something quite specific about like texting, and being able to kind of pick up and leave that conversation when you need to, and when you want to, in a way that is maybe a bit harder to do in person, was something that I really wanted to facilitate or like, encourage, I think, with this work. And thinking also about how precious attention has become as a currency in this economy. I'm just loving this in this economy, quote, but no, but for real, like, you know, when all these big tech companies that like vying for our attention, and there's a lot of things being made, and a lot of content being created, I feel like it's also in this project. And in my work in general, I feel really grateful, I think, to a viewer who has chosen to spend their precious time and precious energy with work that I've made when they could be doing about a billion other things. And it's almost like this gift that I want to give back to them. It's like, okay, you've chosen to spend some time and give this project a shot, then maybe in turn, I can offer you different ways of understanding some things that you're already interested in. Hence, this feeling of this being a choose your adventure game that is ultimately user lead. That means that if the person is not interested at all they'd like to go, they can send one text and be like, you know, this is not for me, I don't really, I'm not interested in more and leave it or, you know, depending on what they answer, then, you know, different things will come up in response to that. So I want to see tech also as a way of meeting someone where they're at, and kind of showing them different directions in which they can move. And then letting people make that choice with their own full agency and in their own kind of time and space. So that's maybe one specific way that I find belonging, I wanted to nurture belonging, think through this work. And I think that was always something that was quite explicit, for me as well, in the making of it, like I never wanted to do it just as like a thought experiment, because there's so many other things I could be doing the thought experiment, to be honest, like, everything is interesting, but it's like, at the end of the day, I really feel you know, I think back to the works that have touched me and led me to where I am now. And I feel like I kind of want to do those justice in the sense and I noticed that in works like that they really took the time and energy out to like connect with me, and maybe that's something that I'm replicating-- it's like an ancestor of mine if you will.

I think like weaving something carla said and something you said April together like you know the it's like the tools in the way that we use them and then you were kind of saying like in this economy but really it's like these landscapes right if we think about like you know, physical geographical world around us and like going to watch the sunset or being on the beach or whatever we choose these all there's a deer walking past my window. Like literally right now speaking about escapes

part of the conversation, right?

So cute. Here

hello beautiful deer

They always walk down my driveway and they're so sweet this time of year. Yeah, anyways, they like the landscapes of, or like our physical surroundings, like really, we choose those like when we need to recharge. And if we kind of lean away from that whole narrative around like technology, no matter what or like being on your phone, or being on your computer or whatever, being on screens is always bad for you and instead say like, what landscape are you immersing yourself into? And yeah, maybe like escapism and coping is a part of that but also like what if it's filling you up through these digital portals that like you hear have so carefully curated and made a place of love that might actually feel as good as going to sit and watch a sunset in your favorite spot or whatever like thinking of the digital landscape in more similar ways as we think about like our physical landscapes and and how we can, yeah, like not not be so bogged down in the in that screens are bad and they take you out of this physical reality or whatever.

Exactly. And there really is this feeling at least that like, using a phone or looking at a screen is a disembodied experience, which, in a sense, it is even, it's very like I am head heavy. But the body is such a big part of interacting with this technology. Like it's, you know, I've always, one thing that really drew me to wanting to make this work accessible on WhatsApp so that people can use it on their phones or their iPads etc, is that people aren't tied down to like a specific time in place. Like they can be doing it on the toilet in bed before they go to sleep. Like whilst they're like queueing for like a no something. queueing to borrow a book at the library was the first scenario that came to mind. I was like, maybe that's not that relevant anymore. But you know, that just they can... This journey accompanies people through different points in their day. And that in itself is a really embodied kind of variation of wanting to experience since it was a work.

In fact, like finding connection to the world around you might not be possible in your physical surroundings, but could be possible if you're in the right landscape on your tech.

To me, this project you've created is, you know, it's a, it's a beautiful weaving of using current technology, but really going back to some earlier ideas of the web, the www, which was really about connecting. And I think it's beautiful. And I'm really excited for people to, are you going to be putting it out again?

I think when the right time and place allows, yes. I don't think it's going to be a one time thing. When the next time will be? I'm not sure yet. But yeah, I am. I definitely feel like I remember this feeling of being so excited about connecting. And like, in the early days of social media, it was kind of like that for me, or it was just like, wow, that is the stranger across the globe. I know some things about them, we can go into a relationship. And honestly, that's become real, a little more complex and nuanced now, but kind of wanting to go back to that still kind of amazing fact, which is that what the internet does is connect us to these things that otherwise would be a lot harder to access. And just trying to remember that in a time when this access seems like it's being like manipulating us instead, or used to manipulate us it's like, actually, we can also have some agency and use. Use it in a way that benefits us, too. So not just the only one being manipulated all the time.

Yeah, a really important nuance. I mean, when I left social media and I, I always say that I didn't leave. It's not social media. Right? It's capitalism. And so yeah, and like figuring out ways to… whatever we don't need to go into that, people can read about it, I've written a whole bunch about it. But you know, so I'm just really delighted that this is happening, because I just really love the weaving together of like, the best parts and you know, Empire and the system and colonialism, it is very colonial to think these things and in binaries and or hierarchies... so beautiful, beautiful work.

Yeah. Maybe this is a good time to segue to me talking more about the Hall of Understanding,

Please, yeah, tell us more about what it is? And why you think weaving together other people's ideas is so important?

Yes. So maybe as a little refresher, in the game, it's like the user chooses all these little paths, and eventually the game comes to a stop, like the path has to end at some point. And I kind of wanted to give people who've traveled that far on this journey, something to kind of take with them or something that they're left with, like a little gift, essentially. And it also made sense, I think, in the context of the game, where the interface is this guardian of this cosmic library, so I was like you know, maybe I can also flush out this cosmic library to a kind of a real library or like a real database of some kind. So also, going back to this feeling around internet's being, you know, a tool still to, you know, come into contact with different kinds of information. Me creating this library was also just playing into my own interests like I really enjoy reading and researching across a variety of angles. And creating the Hall of Understanding just allowed me to curate my own library of information on ancestry, which is really fun. And I think at the end of it, it was around like 300 plus different references or excerpts or quotes that were from 100 plus different sources. And these included like podcasts and poems, and more like theoretical writing, or like fiction writing or different kinds of essays and articles. And I was just collecting these quotes and labeling them in this very big table I had. I think sometimes I would get quite bogged down into creating these like paths that of the adventure game, the choices that the users would need to make. And it would be quite a nice, like, breath of fresh air to step outside and be able to research kind of endlessly on something that I was so interested in. Yeah, really, I think, precious almost to be just adding to this table of infinite information and knowing like it could go on and on, and just learning and meeting different kinds of practices and like research interests. And feeling like, you know, we're all you know, expanding ancestry to almost think about different people who have come before me in their study and their work on this topic as well. Which is really nice, but like meta ancestors almost.

Yeah, I love your list. I love it so much. I look at it often. Thank you for putting it together. And that just made me feel a sense of belonging. So I think I just wanted to reflect back like even seeing the Hall of Understanding did that.

Yeah, so kind of, you know, in the face of empire, like the systems of various systems that have this hold on our collective lives, and often violently pushing many of us to remain siloed in our individual lives or like a bloodline, nuclear family or just a grouping in that way, you know, we have to actively cultivate and carve out other more generative ways to thrive in our belonging and find find each other across these differences. And, you know, in our work mine in Jamie's in the work we do together, and with other people, you know, we like to affirm and hold up all the ways we are always already doing it differently. Like it's already happening, and it always has. And I think your work really speaks to this and how you weave it together. And, yeah, and I think it's an important piece to hold on to, as we tried to find belonging. And so in that spirit of holding on to these many truths, to the multiplicity of our lives, can you share some of the concrete ways you cultivate thriving and belonging? Where you are... maybe beyond the trees

Yeah from touching grass? Yeah, concrete ways are really important, I think when it comes to something so vast as belonging, where you can often feel a bit lost, I guess. Yeah, concrete things, one really, really big thing -- and I don't think I'm alone in saying this is just like learning how to rest, it is something I have been trying to do for a few years now consistently, and I want to say I am getting better at it or feel like this year, I really am resting a lot better than I have before. Which I am very happy about and also very proud of me for doing. I think it's something that is, you know, obviously there is this kind of productivity mindset that goes around and then countering that there is this kind of like, rest, like rest is resistance kind of conversation, too. But you know, it took me so long from like, understanding how important rest was theoretically and in my head. Like I understood that immediately. I was like, yeah, of course, rest is good. And we should all you know, take time to cultivate and nourish and digest then to actually practice it and living it took yeah, took many years slash is still taking its time. But you know, it comes intertwined with so many other things, which I think it's maybe hard, why it's hard, or why it's been hard for me to like instantly arrive at a place of okay, I understand rest is important and know I am resting... like it comes with also maybe a sense of trust to and like the future or a trust in my future selves to be okay. And that's been intimately linked to like, you know, A lot of sense of anxiety or like needing to like control things, and especially when it comes to work. And I would often feel like, you know, if I don't do it as a freelancing full time artist, then no one's gonna do it. So I really do need to do it, and I can't really rest. But I think it goes, this is also part of the privilege of being able to have practice as an artist for a few years now. And not needing to treat every single project I do like the last, possibly the last thing I'm ever going to make. But seeing that there is some sort of viable future where I can sit on ideas and let them be and let them develop over time, and not just exist on a cycle of needing to push things out and keep creating and keep needing to, like, stay on top of it, staying relevant. And I feel really lucky to be able to tap into that feeling in this, again, in this economy, in this at least in the UK, a lot of defunding that's been going on, towards things like the arts and culture sector by the Conservative government. So I feel, yeah, I feel it's been good for me to learn that and really practice that sense of trust in my own work and in the kind of collective response around my work that also allows it to remain meaningful for myself and be sustained as like a professional source of livelihood. What else comes with rest? leading me being able to ask for help also comes with rest, I think? and just that one on its own is already connected, there's so many different things like being able to just like accept care or ask for care when needed and not just like, fucking sucking it up. And, you know, pulling through and like grinding your jaw, grinding your teeth and clenching your jaw to get through it. But also being able to either ask for help when you feel like you can't do it alone, or just letting it go and understanding that things will work out one way or another. And being okay with the potential discomfort of not knowing quite a big part of I think of learning to rest. It's the small things like that. Little, little, little what would you call it? Little seeds maybe? Little seeds that I feel like I'm planting for my future self.

Thanks for listening to On Belonging. This episode featured April Lin with music by AwareMess and Sour Gout.

On Belonging is curated by carla joy bergman and Jamie Leigh Gonzalez with tech support by Chris Bergman. The show's awesome theme music is by AwareNess on belonging is a Joyful Threads and Grounded Futures creation. Please visit groundedfutures.com For show notes, transcripts, and to read more about On Belonging.

Till next time, keep walking; Keep listening....

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These transcripts were generated in Otter, and lightly edited by our team.