Below the Radar

Filmmaker Brett Story and labour organizer Chris Smalls join us this week on Below the Radar. Brett is the co-director of UNION, a documentary film that follows the efforts of the Amazon Labor Union and their campaign to unionize the first Amazon warehouse in American history. The movement was spearheaded by Chris, a former Amazon warehouse supervisor who was fired in 2020 after organizing a protest against Amazon’s lack of COVID-19 safety protocols.

Brett and Chris chat about the process of making the film, the state of organizing in the contemporary moment, and the international reception of UNION.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/255-brett-story-chris-smalls.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/255-brett-story-chris-smalls.html

Resources:

Brett Story: https://brettstory.ca/

Chris Smalls: https://www.instagram.com/chris.smalls_/?hl=en

Amazon Labor Union: https://www.amazonlaborunion.org/

UNION: https://www.unionthefilm.com/

DOXA Documentary Film Festival: https://www.doxafestival.ca/

Bio:

Bretty Story:

Brett Story is an award-winning filmmaker and writer based in Toronto. Her films have screened in theatres and festivals internationally, including at CPH-DOX, SXSW, True/False, and Sheffield Doc/Fest. She is the director of the award-winning films The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) and The Hottest August (2019), and author of the book Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power Across Neoliberal America. The Hottest August was a New York Times Critics’ Pick and was called one of the ten best documentary films of 2019 by over a dozen publications, including Variety, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair.

Brett has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Sundance Institute, and was named one of Variety’s 10 Documentary Filmmakers to Watch. In 2020 she was nominated for a Cinema Eye Award for Best Director. She holds a PhD in geography and is currently an assistant professor of Media Praxis at the University of Toronto. Her most recent film, UNION, co-directed with Stephen Maing, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024.

Chris Smalls:

Christian Smalls is the founder of the Amazon Labor Union, an independent, democratic, worker-led labor union at Amazon in Staten Island. He is also the founder of The Congress of Essential Workers (TCOEW), a nationwide collective of essential workers and allies fighting for better working conditions, better wages, and a better world.

Smalls was formerly an Amazon warehouse supervisor, helping open three major warehouses in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut during his five years with the company, but he was fired in 2020 after organizing a protest against the company’s unsafe pandemic conditions.

Smalls has been profiled by media outlets worldwide, including The New York Times, USA Today, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, CBC Radio, Salon, and Jacobin. He lives in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “ Union Power — with Brett Story and Chris Smalls.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, November 5, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/255-brett-story-chris-smalls.html.

On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Hank Bull, an artist and curator whose administration and advocacy work has greatly contributed to artist-run culture in Canada. Hank discusses his work with the Western Front and Centre A, and he also brought along some props to give us a taste of what his past radio art sounded like!

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/254-hank-bull.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/254-hank-bull.html

Resources:

Hank Bull: https://hankbull.ca/

The HP Show: https://wavefarm.org/ta/archive/works/vae2da

Western Front: https://westernfront.ca/

Centre A: https://centrea.org/

Vancouver Art Gallery: https://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/

Bio:

Hank Bull was born in 1949 in Moh’kins’tsis/Calgary and grew up in Toronto and small towns in southern Ontario. He became interested in art and music at an early age, mentored by a librarian, Graham Barnett, and encouraged by high school instructors Paavo Airola and David Blackwood. After travels in Europe in 1968, he studied drawing and photography in Toronto under Robert Markle and Nobuo Kuobota. In 1973, he moved to xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam)/Vancouver to join the newly formed artist-run centre Western Front. In this interdisciplinary setting, he was exposed to mail art, poetry, ceramics, improvised music and video. He produced a weekly radio broadcast, cabaret performances, shadow theatre and telecommunications projects. During the 1980s he travelled in Asia, Africa and Europe, organized international exchanges and helped to develop a Canadian network of artist-run centres.

He has worked in collaboration with a wide range of artists, including Kate Craig, Glenn Lewis, General Idea, Robert Filliou, William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Michael Snow, Mona Hatoum, Antoni Muntadas, Steve Lacy, Tari Ito, Rebecca Belmore, Germaine Koh, Khan Lee, Cornelia Wyngaarden and many others. He has filled a variety of roles as artist, curator, writer, organizer and administrator. Throughout his career, he has continued an individual practice of painting, music, photography, video, sound and sculpture. He lives at the Western Front and spends a fair amount of time in swiya, territory of shíshálh Nation, as a member of the Storm Bay Art and Conservation Society.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “The World Accordion To Hank — with Hank Bull.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, October 22, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/254-hank-bull.html.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and artist, joins us on this week’s episode of Below the Radar. Am Johal and Leanne chat about her creative process, the significance of Nishnaabeg thought and practice in her work, and some upcoming projects including her newest book Theory of Water, set to be published in Spring of 2025.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/253-leanne-simpson.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/253-leanne-simpson.html

Resources:

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson: https://www.leannesimpson.ca/

Leanne Simpson: Listening in Our Present Moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VhckgLYX3k

Episode 122: Theory of Ice — with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/122-leanne-betasamosake-simpson.html

Dancing On Our Turtle’s Back: https://arpbooks.org/product/dancing-on-our-turtles-back/

As We Have Always Done: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517903879/as-we-have-always-done/

Bio:

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg musician, writer and academic, who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her work breaks open the boundaries between story and song—bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.

Leanne has performed in venues and festivals across Canada with her sister singer songwriter Ansley Simpson and guitarist Nick Ferrio. Leanne’s second album, f(l)light, was released in 2016 and is a haunting collection of story-songs that effortlessly interweave Simpson’s complex poetics and multi-layered stories of the land, spirit, and body with lush acoustic and electronic arrangements. Her EP Noopiming Sessions combines readings from her novel Noopiming with soundscapes composed and performed by Ansley Simpson and James Bunton with a gorgeous video by Sammy Chien and the Chimerik Collective. It was produced during the on-going social isolation of COVID-19 and was released on Gizhiiwe Music in the Fall of 2020.

Leanne is the author of seven books, including This Accident of Being Lost, which won the MacEwan University Book of the Year; was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Trillium Book Award; was long listed for CBC Canada Reads; and was named a best book of the year by the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and Quill & Quire. Her new novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies was released by the House of Anansi Press in the fall of 2020 and in the US by the University of Minnesota Press in 2021 and was named one of the Globe and Mail’s best books of the year and was short listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction. A Short History of the Blockade was released by the University of Alberta Press in early 2021. Her new project with Robyn Maynard, Rehearsals for Living will be released in 2022 by Knopf Canada.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Theory of Water — with Leanne Simpson.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, October 8, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/253-leanne-simpson.html.

On this episode of Below the Radar, we’re joined by Miwa Matreyek, an animator, designer, performer and Assistant Professor in Theatre Production and Design at SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts. Am and Miwa discuss how she got into making interdisciplinary artwork and some of her recent projects that combine animation and live performance.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/252-miwa-matreyek.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/252-miwa-matreyek.html

Resources:

Miwa Matreyek: https://miwamatreyek.com/

SFU Theatre Production and Design: https://www.sfu.ca/sca/programs/theatre-production---design.html

Infinitely Yours: https://miwamatreyek.com/#/infinitelyyours/

Cloud Eye Control: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cloud-eye13-2009oct13-story.html

Bio:

Miwa Matreyek is an animator, designer, and performer. Coming from a background in animation, Matreyek creates live, interdisciplinary performances that integrate projected animations at the intersection of cinematic and theatrical, fantastical and physical, and the hand-made and digital. Her work exists in a dreamlike visual space that makes invisible worlds visible, often weaving surreal and poetic narratives of conflict between humanity and nature as embodied performed experiences. She has presented her work internationally, including animation/film festivals, theater/performance festivals, art museums, science museums, tech conferences, and universities. A few past presenters include TED, MOMA, SFMOMA, New Frontier at Sundance Film Festival, PUSH festival, Lincoln Center, Walker Art Center, and many more. Her newest solo piece, Infinitely Yours, was awarded the grand prize for Prix Arts Electronica’s Computer Animation category. She is a 2013 Creative Capital award recipient. She is the co-founder and core collaborator of Cloud Eye Control.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Infinitely Yours — with Miwa Matreyek.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, October 1, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/252-miwa-matreyek.html.

This week on Below the Radar, we’re joined by Ghinwa Yassine, a Lebanese anti-disciplinary artist whose work confronts the ideological and patriarchal systems that she grew up in, while exploring collective feelings and what it means to be a marked body. Ghinwa discusses her recent multi-media installations and ongoing artistic research into gestural agency and freedom.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/251-ghinwa-yassine.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/251-ghinwa-yassine.html

Resources:

Ghinwa Yassine: https://www.ghinwayassine.com/

How Far Can a Marked Body Go? : https://www.ghinwayassine.com/how-far-can-a-marked-body-go

KickQueen: https://www.ghinwayassine.com/kickqueen

MENA Film Festival: https://www.menafilmfestival.com/

When You Pour Something, It Carries the Memory of its Mold: https://www.ghinwayassine.com/when-you-pour-something-it-carries-the-memory-of-its-mold

Bio:

Ghinwa Yassine is an anti-disciplinary artist based on the land of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people, so-called Vancouver. Her work uses various media, including film, installation, performance, text, and drawing. Yassine’s work confronts the ideological and patriarchal systems that she grew up in while exploring collective feelings and what it means to be a marked body. She seeks a radical historicizing of individual and collective traumas where embodied memories are put into question. Using hybrid forms of storytelling, where story manifests as somatic experiencing, ritual, and gesture, her projects are portals to factual/fictional dimensions that activate collective memory.

Yassine holds an MFA in Contemporary Art - Interdisciplinary Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, an MA in Digital Video Design from the University of the Arts Utrecht, and a BA in Graphic Design from the American University of Science and Technology in Beirut. Her works have been exhibited in the Netherlands, Lebanon, UAE, Canada, Iran, and Croatia.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “How Far Can A Marked Body Go? — with Ghinwa Yassine.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, September 24, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/251-ghinwa-yassine.html.

On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Wendy Brown, distinguished American political theorist and Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of California Berkeley. Together they discuss Wendy’s writing on the emergence of and critical responses to identity politics, physical border controls as performative expressions of sovereignty, the replacement of democratic values with neoliberal values of free market competition and individualism, and her forthcoming work on expanded notions of democracy that account for the past, future, human and non human. They also discuss the 2024 American presidential race, and as this episode was recorded in May, before President Joe Biden announced that he would not run for re-election, some comments are out of date, though still relevant to larger conversations around electoral politics.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/250-wendy-brown.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/250-wendy-brown.html

Resources:

Wendy Brown: https://www.ias.edu/sss/wendy-brown

States of Injury: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691029894/states-of-injury

Walled States, Waning Sovereignty: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781935408031/walled-states-waning-sovereignty

Undoing the Demos: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781935408543/undoing-the-demos

Bio:

A political theorist who works across the history of political thought, political economy, Continental philosophy, cultural theory and critical legal theory, Wendy Brown is the UPS Foundation Chair in the School of Social Science. Prior to her appointment at the Institute, she was Class of 1936 First Chair at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a prize-winning teacher and scholar.

Drawing from Nietzschean, Weberian, Marxist, Foucauldian, feminist and postcolonial angles of vision, Professor Brown writes about the subterranean powers shaping contemporary EuroAtlantic polities, with particular attention to the political identities, subjectivities and expressions they spawn. The author/co-author of a dozen books in English, she is best known for her interrogation of identity politics and state power in States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (1995); her critical analysis of tolerance in Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (2006); her account of the inter-regnum between nation states and globalization in Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (2010); and her study of neoliberalism’s assault on democratic principles, institutions and citizenship in Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (2015) and In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West (2019). Across her work, Brown aims to illuminate powers unique to our era and the predicaments they generate for democratic thought and practice. These predicaments range from rule by finance, to the de-democratization of political culture, to the nihilistic depletion of truth, values and conscience.

Currently, Brown is exploring how political freedom can be salvaged from its historical imbrication with regimes of class, race and gender subjection and be made responsive to the climate crisis. Her driving question is whether and how political freedom can be reformulated in light of both. She is also extending and revising for publication her 2019 Yale Tanner Lectures, “Politics and Knowledge in Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber.”

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “States of Injury — with Wendy Brown.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, September 17, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/250-wendy-brown.html.

On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Ranjit Hoskote, poet, translator, art critic, and curator. Together they discuss Bombay’s political and cultural milieu in the 1980s and 90s, from which Ranjit began to experiment with art making, artistic and curatorial responses to an emergent neo-colonial Indian state. They also discuss the crisis of cultural politics, Ranjit’s poetic responses to humanity’s demise in this moment of ecological crisis, and the promise he sees in interstitial spaces.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/249-ranjit-hoskote.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/249-ranjit-hoskote.html

Resources:

Ranjit’s linktree: https://linktr.ee/rhoskote

Icelight: https://www.weslpress.org/9780819500557/icelight/

Hunchprose: https://www.penguin.co.in/book/hunchprose/

Jonahwhale: https://www.penguin.co.in/book/jonahwhale/

PEN International: https://www.pen-international.org/

Bio:

Ranjit Hoskote is an Indian poet, theorist, and curator whose influential work centres on the complex history and presence of cultural pluralism from the local to the global. His eight books of poetry—including Icelight (2022), Jonahwhale (2018), and a translation of a fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic-poet, I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Dĕd (2011)—engage with themes of identity, displacement, and transformation through time. His acclaimed 2012 book Confluences: Forgotten Histories between East and West (with Ilija Trojanow) traced the rich history of intercultural and interreligious encounter that has shaped—and continues to shape—the contemporary world. Hoskote has curated more than 50 showcases of Indian and global art over the past three decades, including India’s first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “The Politics of Art — with Ranjit Hoskote.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, September 10, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/249-ranjit-hoskote.html.

This week on Below the Radar we’re joined by Michael Hardt, political theorist and Professor at Duke University. Am and Michael discuss the political concept of love, Michael’s research on revolutionary movements in the 1970s, as well as his past writing with the late Tony Negri, and how they continue to think together.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/248-michael-hardt

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/248-michael-hardt

Resources:

Michael Hardt: https://scholars.duke.edu/person/hardt

The Subversive Seventies: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-subversive-seventies-9780197674659

Michael’s Talk at SFU: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/library/2023/michael-hardt-the-subversive-seventies.html

Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674006713

Bio:

Michael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is co-author, with Antonio Negri, of the Empire trilogy and, most recently, Assembly. He is co-director with Sandro Mezzadra of The Social Movements Lab.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “The Politics of Love — with Michael Hardt.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, August 27th, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/248-michael-hardt.html.

As the seasons change, Below the Radar is back to our regularly scheduled programming featuring a dynamic range of local and international voices. We’re thrilled to bring a host of critically acclaimed writers, theorists, and artists across disciplines to share conversations on the politics of love, the crisis of neoliberalism, and artmaking through political shifts. We also have graduates and faculty of our very own SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts to discuss their practice and pedagogy.

Our Fall season will begin on August 27, 2024, with new episodes on Tuesdays. This season is also a celebration of Below the Radar’s milestone 250th episode, featuring political theorist Wendy Brown. As we head into our sixth year, we’re so grateful for your continued listenership, and we have lots of exciting projects and partnerships coming up ahead. As always, thank you for listening and we’re looking forward to sharing these conversations with you.

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/btr-trailer-fall-2024.html

This episode of Below the Radar is a special live recording from SFU School for the Contemporary Arts’ 2023 Re-Orientation Day, an all-day event designed to welcome SCA students, faculty, and staff back to campus for the fall semester.

The 2023 theme was on “Place,” and the Vancity Office of Community Engagement convened a panel of speakers across the arts, academia, and community engagement to speak on community engaged practices in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Our host Am Johal is joined by Wendy Pedersen of the Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative, SFU Professor of Geography Nick Blomley, musician and facilitator Khari Wendell McLelland, dancer, choreographer and now SCA faculty Justine Chambers, and Vancity Office of Community Engagement staff Julia Aoki, Kathy Feng and Samantha Walters. Enjoy the episode!

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/247-re-orientations.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/247-re-orientations.html

Resources:

DTES SRO Collaborative: https://srocollaborative.org/

Nick's work: https://www.sfu.ca/geography/about/our-people/profiles/Nicholas-Blomley.html

Khari’s website: https://khariwendellmcclelland.com/

Justine’s website: https://justineachambers.com/

About Julia: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/about/updates/all-updates/meet-julia-aoki.html

Samantha’s website: https://samanthawalters.com/

Kathy’s website: https://kathyfeng.info/

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “PLACE: SCA Re-Orientation Day 2023.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, August 20, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/247-re-orientations.html.