Kairos CLub

Past Events: 2022

Wednesday December 21st 2022

Winter Solstice Story-Telling with Ruth Padel and more

As an alternative winter celebration, we held an evening of story-telling on the longest night of the year. We shared stories about darkness and renewal, loss and hope, collapse and re-emergence in a beautiful candle-lit venue. Poet Ruth Padel read from Watershed, her forthcoming collection about water and climate, and Kairos director Zoë Blackler shared a Swedish folk tale. There was a story of peace and reconciliation in Columbia. a fable by William Morris, a poem by Toni Spencer, the Hanukka story, and a reflection on grief and kairos by Liz Jensen. We also discussed the power of the imagination and the need to find new stories to help us through the challenges ahead.

Thursday December 1st 2022

Party: Farewell Holborn Viaduct

A CELEBRATION of an amazing first two months for Kairos, a THANK YOU to everyone who helped made it such a success and a FAREWELL to our temporary first home. We weren’t together long, Holborn Viaduct, but you have a special place in our hearts and we’ll miss you. The evening featured Zander mixing the cocktails, Ben and Jo spinning the vinyl, and the Sibyl waiting in her cave to answer people’s questions about their fate.
Monday November 28th 2022

Screening of ‘Once You Know’ with director Emmanuel Cappellin

A second screening of Once You Know by Emmanuel Cappellin (2020, 105mins)  – a personal exploration of what it means to emotionally accept the truth about climate change, which received glowing reviews. Emmanuel, who was visiting London, was with us in person to lead a post-screening discussion.

SYNOPSIS: Today, like a ship entering the storm, industrial civilisation faces the first symptoms of energy depletion and climate change induced collapse. Once You Know asks the disturbing questions: Are there better ways of collapsing than others? What is meaningful work on the way down?
Director Emmanuel Cappellin is obsessed with how to best respond personally and collectively. His quest leads him around the world to meet five of the world’s leading climate scientists and energy experts. They share with him the truth, chaos, and hope in their work. They allow him to challenge everything he took for granted – from growth-based democracies to personal freedoms.
This odyssey brings him back to himself and to Saillans, his small mountain village. In this life-size, open sky laboratory, everything becomes once again possible: having a child, redefining questions of social justice, implementing participatory democracy, starting an energy transition…The first steps, perhaps, towards some kind of collective resilience.

Friday November 25th 2022

Supper Club with Mark Vernon

With Mark Vernon on William Blake, London’s greatest poet and prophet, also a tremendous thinker with a keen diagnosis of what was unfolding in his time, which is also our time. Blake understood the human yearning for more, the multifaceted inner life of places and ages, the mixture of ecologies within which, and with which, we live.

This talk and discussion included an introduction to some of Blake’s most punchy intuitions, thoughts on how his insights matter, and time to explore and question what he might be saying to us now.

Food was provided by Super Nature, an experimental kitchen based in Hackney with a strong environmental agenda. Their team of chefs, foragers, artists, activists and cultivators work in collaboration to address problems with our global food system and the way we eat. Every creation is a celebration of hyper-seasonal produce using an innovative ‘root to fruit’ zero waste approach, using plant based whole and raw foods sourced from local farmers practicing minimal intervention and regenerative agriculture methods.

Wednesday November 23rd 2022

Entrapment and Escape with Anoushka Grace

Writer and psychoanalyst Anouchka Grose explored the psychological complexity of mourning capitalism while still living inside it, through a series of YouTube videos about shopping.

Followed by a talk and guided discussion chaired by Josh Appignanesi.

Wednesday November 16th 2022

Navigating The Global Phase Shift with Nafeez Ahmed

The world is going through an extraordinary convergence of ecological, energy, economic, geopolitical and social crises. But at their root, this is a single global systemic crisis that at worst threatens the destruction of planetary life support systems. Simultaneously, we are seeing the emergence of exponential technologies, some of which might offer new ways of solving our biggest challenges, but some of which may even worsen them. How do these different crises interact? Why are they worsening at the same time?

In this talk, systems theorist and investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed used the concept of a “global phase shift” – among other systems lenses and tools – to aid understanding of how to navigate a unique moment in human and planetary history, the transformation of the global system in which the old industrial paradigm is collapsing, as a new system is emerging. What lies ahead could encompass collapse, dystopia or renewal: but to breakthrough to renewal, we must be able to see both risks and possibilities, so that we can make better choices.

Tuesday November 1st 2022

Despair, Acceptance, Transformation: “Once You Know” & Caroline Hickman

Screening of “Once You Know” by Emmanuel Cappellin (2020, 105mins)  – a personal exploration of what it means to emotionally accept the truth about climate change, which received glowing reviews.

Followed by a presentation by climate psychologist and psychotherapist Caroline Hickman who explored how depression, rage and despair are our strongest allies in transformative, resilient action.

Saturday October 29th 2022

Introducing the Kairos Supper Club with Carne Ross

For our first ever SUPPER CLUB, we were delighted to have as our guest speaker Carne Ross, writer and founder of Independent Diplomat, the world’s first non-profit diplomatic advisory group.

Carne talked about the ideas in his new book, What is to be done? which propose answers to the ‘polycrisis’ in the environment, democracy and society, and offered a radical but practical alternative to the current model of liberal democracy and capitalism.

Supper was cooked by Super Nature, an experimental kitchen based in Hackney with a strong environmental agenda. Their team of chefs, foragers, artists, activists and cultivators work in collaboration to address problems with our global food system and the way we eat. Every creation is a celebration of hyper-seasonal produce using an innovative ‘root to fruit’ zero waste approach, using plant-based whole and raw foods sourced from local farmers practicing minimal intervention and regenerative agriculture methods.

Tuesday October 25th 2022

In Conversation: Activism

Author and campaigner Anthea Lawson and reader in political sociology Graeme Hayes discussed why everyone isn’t in the streets, and what history and a deeper understanding of the dynamics of activism can teach us about how people mobilise. With reference to soup-throwing.

There was also be a rare chance to see New York-based guerrilla theatre group Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, accompanied by the UK Stop Shopping Choir.

Sunday October 23rd 2022

Sunday Film Salon

For our first film salon we screened L’Argent (Money) by Robert Bresson (1983) in the Kairos cinema room. It was followed by a presentation written by Professor Nicky Marsh from University of Southhampton whose work examines the ways that economic ideas – like money, risk, credit and debt – become represented in the culture at large, to form part of our imaginary and our fantasy. Nicky couldn’t attend in person due to illness, so her talked was delivered by Devorah Baum and was followed by an animated discussion on the power of money as our controlling metaphor.
The Kairos Film Salon is a monthly series curated by Josh Appignanesi, pairing provocative and life-changing films with special guest speakers, drawing all participants into guided conversation around that month’s theme.
Tuesday October 18th 2022

Kairos Cinema Preview

We opened the Kairos Cinema, with two short talks and a mini-screening.
As Amitav Ghosh said, “the climate crisis is a crisis of the imagination”. So how can the stories we tell help us to think again?

Film-maker Josh Appignanesi spoke about that elusive thing we call change and what role the arts have to play in it. He also explained the thinking behind our monthly Sunday afternoon Film Salon.

Kairos’s director Zoë Blackler talked about how sci-fi can help us reimagine the world and why she’s proud to be a Trekkie.
Followed by an episode from a classic sci-fi series (45mins)

Tuesday October 11th 2022

Introduction to Kairos

With short talks and complimentary drinks and vegetarian food.

Nick Anim, researcher of contemporary movements at UCL and social justice activist spoke about how to build cross-movement coalitions to counter the forces that divide us.

Jonathan Rowson, philosopher and founding director of Perspectiva talked about how Western society has turned consumption, a basic human act, into consumerism, a prevailing cultural ideology, and asked us to imagine a world
beyond consumerism.

Thursday October 6th 2022

Members’ BYOB Drinks Night

With a performance by singers Sam Lee and Jessie Lloyd, including a new song by Sam inspired by Carmody Grey’s talk at Kairos two nights before.
Tuesday October 4th 2022

Introduction to Kairos

With short talks and complimentary drinks and vegetarian food.

Carmody Grey philosopher from Durham University spoke about how we can start asking questions again about what it means to be human and to live a good life.

Paul Powlesland, barrister, Lawyers for Nature spoke about why we need a new relationship between the law, nature and the earth and why this needs to be an ecosystem of legal interventions. Paul explained Rights of Nature and why they
are a crucial part of any such eco-system.

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