Kairos at Green Gathering
Thursday August 3rd to Sunday August 6th
Kairos will be popping up at Green Gathering, the off-grid festival on a beautiful site just outside the Welsh border town Chepstow. We're occupying a large marquee in the new Radical Flank Field.
During the daytime it will be a place to drink tea, chat, dip into our library and take part in a collaborative art project. On the Friday and Saturday evenings we'll be hosting our usual salon-style talk events.
Green Gathering has offered us reduced price tickets at £110 instead of £150 on the gate. To book, go to www.greengathering.org.uk/affinity-codes and follow the instructions carefully using the affinity code G11SHC.
Evening Talks*
Friday August 4th, 7pm
PLANETARITY: SOME TOOLS FOR THINKING ABOUT THE EARTH with TIM WATERMAN
How can we replace the neo-liberal idea of “globalisation” with other ways of thinking about global connectedness and our place in the world?
Tim Waterman, professor of landscape at the Bartlett and author of The Landscape of Utopia, will present some new tools to help us reimagine “planetarity”: earthliness, worldliness, and globality. His talk will take in maps and Utopia, colonialism and protest, enclosure and the commons, as well as the romantic and the poetic as different ways of thinking about the planetary.
He’ll also discuss the notion of “double consciousness”, a term first used in 1903 by WEB Du Bois to describe how Black Americans were forced to see the world and themselves through the eyes of a white supremacist society. This double consciousness also applies to our contradictory experience of the natural world. Landscapes, transformed by colonialism and imperialism both past and present, are where power and financial relationships are played out on a global level. Yet at the same time they are also the setting of everyday lives and everyday experience.
Tim's talk will offer fresh insights for anyone trying to find alternative ways of conceiving, working with, caring for and "commoning" our Earth, while grappling with the predicament of climate and nature breakdown.
Followed by a vegan supper that we’ll all eat together and plenty of time for discussion.
Saturday August 5th, 7pm
ANARCHISM & ITS LESSONS FOR NOW with RUTH KINNA
If our current form of government is incapable of acting on the many challenges we face, what can anarchism teach us about how to self-organise and take the reins?
Ruth Kinna, professor of political theory at Loughborough University and author of The Government of No One: The Theory and Practice of Anarchism, will set out the basic principles of anarchism. She’ll discuss anarchy as “order” and why, according to anarchists, our existing political arrangements are fatally ‘disordered’ and perpetuate exploitation – of humans, non-humans and the planet.
She will explain how anarchism offers a different way to organise, how ideas about anarchy could translate into practice, and what organisations designed to support non-dominating relationships without permanent fixed authority (a key principle of anarchism), need to do to survive and thrive.
Followed by a vegan supper that we’ll all eat together and plenty of time for discussion.
* Please note: Train union ASLEF will be working to rule between July 31st and August 5th. Our festival schedule may have to change if the action causes significant travel disruption.
Volunteers needed
If you'd like to be part of our Kairos at Green Gathering volunteer team we'd love to have your help. Please email us at events@kairos.london.
Talks will take place in the Kairos Marquee, Green Gathering, Piercefield Park, Chepstow, NP16 6BE
What3Word location for the Radical Flank Field is dote.steroes.flocking
Doors open 6.30pm for drinks. Talks starts at 7pm, followed by a one pot vegan supper and discussion.