EMPIRE LINES

Wormcasts is a podcast from Chelsea Physic Garden, created by the Young Producers – a group of 16 – 24 year olds working to engage more young people with the garden.  This series explores the global histories of botanic gardens, deceptive plants, working in the garden, and plants in the context of health and wellbeing. 

Wormcasts are the microbially rich and fertile clumps of soil that worms leave next to their burrows as they forage for food. The Young Producers hope you enjoy the arisings that come from this little patch of green in South West London. 

This series was collaboratively produced by the Young Producers at Chelsea Physic Garden (Hwei-Linn Khoo, Amelie Rossati, Zachary Sukonkin, and Tymon Zgorzelski), coordinated by Richard Choksey. The lead producer is Jelena Sofronijevic. Editing and Sound Design by Tymon Zgorzelski. 

The Young Producers are funded by generous charitable donations by the Garden’s supporters.

Unearthing in January 2026 - listen and follow, wherever you get your podcasts.

In this special episode, contemporary artists and filmmakers Miloš Trakilović and Jelena Visković join EMPIRE LINES live, exloring narratives of war, displacement, and visual cultures in the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, through the video essay, Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously (2023).

This episode was recorded live as part of the public programme for soft enclosures, co-curated by Old Mountain Assembly, Rebecca Edwards, and Rina Meta at Forma in London, in October 2025. soft enclosures is an auxiliary programme to Dream States, Artists’ Film International (AFI) 2025.

For more information, visit: instagram.com/p/DMxKnjBtFf9/

Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously (2023) is currently on view as part of At the End of the Small Hours, curated by What, How and for Whom (WHW) and Ana Kovačić, at the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb until 30 November 2025.

For more about Miloš Trakilović’s 564 Tracks (Not a Love Song Is Usually a Love Song) (2024) at the KW Institute in Berlin, read my article in The New Internationalist: newint.org/art/2025/spotlight-milos-trakilovic

Motonation (2024) is currently on view as part of Jelena Visković: HEAT: A Sci-Fi Spa Story at Tallinn Art Hall until 23 November 2025.

Listen to artist and filmmaker Saodat Ismailova on Melted into the Sun (2024), on view as part of Nebula, produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film, at the Venice Biennale in April 2024: pod.link/1533637675/episode/Y2IxOWI2YTUtMTI4MS00NzdiLWEyZmUtYmMyYTQ0NmQxMTQ2

Saodat Ismailova: As We Fade is at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead until 7 June 2026.

Read about Marina Abramović: Gates and Portals at the Pitt Rivers Museum and Modern Art Oxford, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/marina-abramovic-gates-and-portals-review

For more about Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019), hear contemporary artists Hoa Dung Clerget and Duong Thuy Nguyen, and gallerist Sarah Le Quang Sang, recorded live as part of the public programme for Only Your Name at SLQS Gallery in London, in July 2025: pod.link/1533637675/episode/NjZmOGE0MmQtZTk5Ni00NTQ1LWJjYjAtMmVjODYzNWMwYjdj

For more from Artists’ Film International (AFI) 2025, read about Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán in this Letter from Timișoara, in Art Monthly: instagram.com/p/DFdBW0eoE55/⁠

And view Anca and Arnold’s Rehearsals for Peace (2023) in Seeds of Hate and Hope, curated by Jelena Sofronijevic and Tafadzwa Makwabarara as part of Can We Stop Killing Each Other? at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, from 28 November 2025.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Composer and artist Raven Chacon amplifies the Catholic Church’s complicity in the suppression of Indigenous people in the Americas, through their composition for organ, Voiceless Mass (2021).

Raven Chacon’s Voiceless Mass was performed at St. Giles’ Cathedral in August 2025, as part of Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) 2025.

Deep Time 2025: I See Red, curated by Raven Chacon, is at Fruitmarket in Edinburgh from 27 November 2025 to 29 November 2025. This edition of the annual festival of new music accompanies the exhibition of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s work, Wilding, which continues at Fruitmarket in Edinburghuntil 1 February 2026.

Raven Chacon’s Silent Choir (2017) is part of this edition of the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA), which continues until 30 November 2025.

For more about GIBCA, you can read my article in Third Text.

For more about the Sámi people and Sápmi region, hear curators Ros Carter and Sofie Krogh Christensen on Pia Arke’s Camera Obscura (1990) at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton and KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin: pod.link/1533637675/episode/OWVhZjc3YWItNDRiYy00MTYyLTk0ZmItZmE5MmJlZDY1YmI1

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠⁠

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠⁠patreon.com/empirelines

In this special episode, filmmaker, cultural theorist, and curator Manthia Diawara joins EMPIRE LINES live, to discuss Édouard Glissant’s relations with natural environmental disasters, connecting the islands of the Caribbean and Scotland, through the exhibition, The Trembling Museum (2023-2024).

This episode was recorded live as part of PEACE FREQUENCIES, a 24 hour live radio broadcast to mark International Human Rights Day in December 2023, and 75 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Listen back to the recordings with Billy Gerard Frank and Sara Shamma, and find all the information in the first Instagram post: instagram.com/p/C0mAnSuodAZ

The Trembling Museum, co-curated with Manthia Diawara and Terri Geis, was at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow from 2 December 2023 to 19 May 2024.

Manthia Diawara’s film, A Letter from Yene (2022), is part of The Earth, the Fire, the Water and the Winds: For a Museum of Errantry with Édouard Glissant at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo until 25 January 2026. You can join the conference on 25 and 26 November 2025.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠⁠

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠⁠patreon.com/empirelines

Contemporary artist Emilija Škarnulytė snakes from the decaying control rooms of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in Lithuania, to Dungeness on the English Channel, exploring time and geology through the concept of future archaeology, via their film installation, Burial (2022).

Folkestone Triennial 2025 continues until 19 October 2025.

From Amber to the Stars. Together with M. K. Čiurlionis: Now and Then is at National M. K. Čiurlionis Art Museum in Kaunas until 12 October 2025.

The MUNCH Triennale, Almost Unreal, opens at MUNCH in Oslo on 15 November 2025.

A major solo exhibition of Emilija’s work opens at Tate St Ives in Cornwall on 6 December 2025.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠⁠

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠⁠patreon.com/empirelines

In this special episode, contemporary artists Hoa Dung Clerget and Duong Thuy Nguyen, and gallerist Sarah Le Quang Sang, join EMPIRE LINES live, exploring the legacies of French and British colonialism in East Asia, fifty years since the end of the Vietnam War, through the series, If They Survive, They are Refugees (2024).

Marking 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War, Only Your Name (2025) is a group exhibition featuring works by artists of Vietnamese descent: Hoa Dung Clerget, Vicky Đỗ, and Duong Thuy Nguyen. The exhibition follows the journey of Vietnamese people migrating to the UK from 1975 onwards, preserving history through a Vietnamese lens and reflecting on the contemporary diaspora.

In this special episode, recorded live at SLQS Gallery in London, gallerist Sarah Le Quang Song discusses the particular location of the exhibition, close to Hackney’s Kingsland Road, also known as the ‘Pho Mile’, where many Vietnamese families settled from the late 1970s. We discuss the title, which draws from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019), a novel by Ocean Vuong, and the work of thinkers like Homi Bhabha and Saidiya Hartman.

Duong Thuy Nguyen describes the process of making their embossed aluminium and wax sculptures, which reinterpret Joan Wakelin’s photographs of Vietnamese refugees held in Hong Kong detention centres and refugee camps, now held in the collections of the V&A in London. Hoa Dung Clerget presents installations and sculptural works that consider the labour and lives of immigrant women through Nail Art subculture, distorting stereotypical and fetishised portrayals of Asian women. Drawing on their work, Chinoiserie (2025), Hoa shares examples of orientalism in East Asian art and education systems. We explore both artists’ work with the Museum of the Home in East London, plus Vicky Đỗ’s documentary films, revisiting the history of Vietnamese refugees arriving in Hong Kong.

This episode was recorded live as part of the public programme for Only Your Name, an exhibition at SLQS Gallery in London, in July 2025.

For more information, visit: instagram.com/p/DLhGFqCIhNA/

Womb of Fire 2025, curated by Tuong Linh, opens in Hanoi in October 2025, and tours to Ho Chi Minh City until January 2026.

Interspecies Entanglements, curated by Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp, is at the SLQS Screening Room online until February 2026. Damaris Athene is at SLQS Gallery in London from 10 October 2025.

For more contemporary artists working from diasporas, find out more about SEEDLINGS: Diasporic Imaginaries (2025)⁠⁠, curated by Jelena Sofronijevic with Travelling Gallery in Scotland: linktr.ee/seedlingstg2025

Hear Iman Datoo and Jessica J. Lee on Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging (2024), recorded live as part of the programme for Invasion Ecology, co-curated by Jelena Sofronijevic for Radical Ecology, and Vashti Cassinelli at Southcombe Barn: pod.link/1533637675/episode/b457bcd064badcdc4dc2a2a8fde86768⁠

For more about orientalism and French colonialism in North Africa, listen to contemporary artist ⁠Zineb Sedira⁠ on Dreams Have No Titles (2022-Now), recorded with Whitechapel Gallery and Goodman Gallery in London, as part of EMPIRE LINES at Venice: ⁠pod.link/1533637675/episode/N2NjZjUzYTctY2JlMS00N2JhLThjNTAtNGE3YWUwMjEwYzNl

For more about mother of pearl paintings, hear Sonia Ocaña Ruiz’s EMPIRE LINES episode about a ⁠Mexican Enconchado of the Virgin of Guadalupe (c. 1700s)⁠: ⁠pod.link/1533637675/episode/NGEyNWUwOTItNTMzOC00NDgyLWJiZjAtZmFjOWFjNTkzYmQ0

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

BUZZWORDS is a new pilot podcast from Open City, produced in collaboration with the arts and culture podcast EMPIRE LINES. The podcast unpacks words and phrases often overused in the fields of art and architecture.

Produced by curator, writer, and researcher Jelena Sofronijevic, each episode invites artists, curators, architects, and academics to consider what we really mean when we use terms like “sustainable” or “decolonised.”

In this episode, Jelena speaks with artist Jasmina Cibic about the idea of “care thinking” and what it means to be both care-ful and care-less in the practice, performance, and preservation of art and cultural artefacts. Their conversation ranges from Cibic’s current exhibition The Gift Ecology at Void Art Centre in Derry, to her representation of Slovenia at the 55th Venice Biennale, exploring how care shapes her work and what we might learn from it.

For more, read this article, in Contemporary Lynx: contemporarylynx.co.uk/singing-with-birds-artists-reimagine-human-avian-kinship

The theme music is “Devotion” by Jim Hall from the Free Music Archive, licensed under a Attribution 4.0 International License.

Subscribe to the Open City Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud or iTunes. You can also listen to this episode on Resonance FM.

The Open City Podcast is supported by Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and culture platform and produced in association with the Architects’ Journal, London Society, C20 Society and Save Britain's Heritage.

The Open City Podcast is recorded and produced at the Open City offices located in Bureau. Bureau is a co-working space for creatives offering a new approach to membership workspace. Bureau prioritises not just room to think and do, but also shared resources and space to collaborate.

To help support excellent and accessible, independent journalism about the buildings and the urban environment, please become an Open City Friend.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

In this special episode, contemporary artist Elsa James joins EMPIRE LINES live, navigating how the slave ship marks and haunts Black lives in Britain today, in their interdisciplinary exhibition, It Should Not Be Forgotten (2025).

*Content Warning* This episode discusses rape and other forms of sexual violence.

Seeking to capture ‘the rupture, erasure, fragmentation and interconnectedness of Black Life in the diaspora’, Elsa James’ latest exhibition brings together performance works, neon sculptures, and collage. Elsa confronts Britain’s ‘national amnesia’ regarding its role in the transatlantic slave trade, bringing alternative perspectives on how we engage with the past. The artist crafts fictional narratives to contend with colonial archival records, and delves into the psychological effects of enslavement, both exposing historical atrocities and honouring the resistance of two enslaved women.

In this special episode, recorded live in Elsa’s Afro Dada studio at Firstsite in Colchester, we journey through the larger-than-life photographic installation located on the main floor of the gallery, which draws inspiration from American academic Christina Sharpe, and her idea that ‘the slave ship marks and haunts contemporary Black life in the diaspora’. Elsa shares influences including Tina M. Campt, Steve Martin, and David Olusoga, and details her collaborations, including with sound artist Trevor Mathison, who worked with a field recording from a sacred ceremony Elsa attended during an artist residency at Yinka Shonibare’s Guest Artists Space in Nigeria. Exploring ideas around Afropessimism, we talk about the role of critical hope in Elsa’s practice, touching on the work of Alberta Whittle and Maya Angelou.

We discuss Elsa’s long relationship with Essex, as the first artist to exhibit in Firstsite’s Living Room space as part of her Black Girl Essex residency, and solo exhibition, Othered in a region that has been historically Othered, at Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea in 2022. We explore recent group exhibitions including the Hayward Gallery Touring Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, and transfeminisms at Mimosa House in London, developing her research into Mary Prince. Plus, Elsa describes the interconnectedness of her research interests, and Black British, Caribbean, and African heritages.

This episode was recorded live as part of the public programme for Elsa James: It Should Not Be Forgotten, an exhibition at Firstsite Colchester, in July 2025.

For more information, visit: instagram.com/p/DK-WsOPzeI3/

Hear the first episode with Elsa James, Living in the Wake of the Lust for Sugar (2023), recorded at the Museum of London Docklands: pod.link/1533637675/episode/NTFiZDQxMjUtZDI2Ni00ODE1LTk1YjktOTM4NzNhY2YzOTBi

For more about the Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation, listen to artist Yinka Shonibare CBE RA on Decolonised Structures: Queen Victoria (2022) at the Serpentine in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/NTE4MDVlYzItM2Q3NC00YzQ1LTgyNGItYTBlYjQ0Yjk3YmNj

And about fellow resident Leo Robinson, listen to this cutting with Dominic Paterson from The Trembling Museum at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow, part of ⁠⁠SEEDLINGS: Diasporic Imaginaries (2025)⁠⁠, curated by Jelena Sofronijevic with Travelling Gallery in Scotland: pod.link/1533637675/episode/ZDA5OTgyY2EtMGE3MC00MGExLTkwOTUtODc3ODFkNTAyZmQ3

About Harold Offeh, listen to We Came Here (2022) at Van Gogh House in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/ZmI5MmM2NWYtYzAyNy00MDkwLTk5MjMtNDhlZjcxZDExMTU3

Hear Ekow Eshun, curator of the touring exhibition, The Time is Always Now (2024) at the National Portrait Gallery in London and The Box in Plymouth: pod.link/1533637675/episode/df1d7edea120fdbbb20823a2acdb35cf

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Artist Hanna Tuulikki traces the migration route of the Marsh Warbler, a bird that mimics and remixes the songs of European and Afrotropical species it meets, across the English Channel to Kent.

Through vocal mimesis, or mimicry, Hanna Tuulikki offers alternative approaches to making kin with more-than-human beings. Developing their performance work with birds and bats in Scotland, recently part of an exhibition on Dartmoor, Hanna returns to southern England to raise the alarm for another endangered species - the Marsh Warbler. The artist imagines a fictional creature called the Love Warbler, part-human and part-bird, composing its song from traditional love songs collected from 27 countries along the Marsh Warbler’s migratory route across Europe and Africa. Taking on the role of ‘nature’s original DJ’, Hanna creates a musical mashup with the bird’s song structure, and live sounds from the concrete sound mirrors at Denge near Dungeness in Folkestone. The audio is then broadcast locally into a former World War I shelter that overlooks the English Channel, internationally on shortwave radio - and via the EMPIRE LINES podcast.

Meeting 64 species in just over seven minutes, Hanna explains how the work takes a bird’s eye view over the routes which humans and animals have long travelled. Both celebrating histories and making new relations, the artist details their collaborations, including with ornithologist Geoff Sample, and musicians from the Western Balkans. We explore how Hanna’s work is both inspired by and critical of romantic depictions of natural landscapes, and national identities. The artist shares experiences from her residency at Prospect Cottage, the former home and sanctuary of artist, filmmaker, gay rights activist, and gardener Derek Jarman (1942-1994). Encountering a Qur’an, washed up on the shore of the southern coast, we discuss British media representations of the ‘migrant crisis’. Through the warbler, we explore entangled ecological and geopolitical crises, and individual stories behind transnational journeys, that often risk being lost at sea.

Folkestone Triennial 2025 continues until 19 October 2025. Radio Love Warbler is broadcast locally on FM radio (87.7 MHz), internationally on shortwave radio, and via the EMPIRE LINES podcast.

For more, you can read my article, in Contemporary Lynx: contemporarylynx.co.uk/singing-with-birds-artists-reimagine-human-avian-kinship

Hear more from Hanna in the EMPIRE LINES episode about Avi-Alarm (2023), recorded as part of the programme for Invasion Ecology, co-curated by Jelena Sofronijevic for Radical Ecology, and Vashti Cassinelli at Southcombe Barn, an arts space and gardens on Dartmoor. The central group exhibition, featuring Ingrid Pollard, Iman Datoo, Hanna Tuulikki, Ashish Ghadiali, Fern Leigh Albert, and Ashanti Hare, ran from 1 June to 10 August 2024: pod.link/1533637675/episode/21264f8343e5da35bca2b24e672a2018

FInd all the links in the first Instagram post: instagram.com/p/C9TMW1BoWXy/?hl=en

For more about Hanna’s work with plantation landscapes in Finland and Scotland, read about under forest cover (2021) in Deep Rooted at City Art Centre in Edinburgh, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/edinburghs-environmental-exhibitions-the-local

On the Dungeness nuclear power stations, hear artist Emilija Škarnulytė on their film installation, Burial (2022), part of Folkestone Triennial 2025:

Hear Emeka Ogboh on the sounds, tastes, and smells of place, in the episode on Lagos Soundscapes (2023), recorded at South London Gallery: pod.link/1533637675/episode/dd32afc011dc8f1eaf39d5f12f100e5d

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠⁠

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠⁠patreon.com/empirelines

In this special episode, filmmaker and contemporary artist Alia Syed joins EMPIRE LINES live, to weave together their works in moving image, photography, and oral history, and reflect on personal experiences of migration in South Asian diasporic communities in 1960s–1970s Glasgow, through their ongoing film series, The Dhaba (2025).

Drawing inspiration from the tale of St. Mungo - the patron saint and founder of Glasgow - Alia Syed’s exhibition, The Ring in the Fish, is an intimate exploration of memory, cultural transmission, and identity in Scotland. In The Dhaba (2025), Alia gleans stories from a series of interviews she initiated with members of the South Asian community, exposing absences in official narratives and archives, and illuminating histories in the spaces between national identities, race, gender, and diaspora. With this new, experimental, 16mm film work, Alia explores the role of imagination in migration, and how images carried across multiple generations of migrants from India and Pakistan can create new landscapes and enable new ways of being.

Alia details her relationships with ‘the second city of Empire’, Swansea in Wales, and London, including her long-term creative relationship with Gilane Tawadros, her formative work, Fatima’s Letter (1992), filmed at Whitechapel Underground Station, and shortlisting for the Film London Jarman Award (2018). From her current work with curator Shalmali Shetty, we discuss her many intergenerational collaborations, and relations to artist women including Jasleen Kaur, who shares Alia’s experiences of ‘monocultures’ in Glasgow. Alia shares the importance of audio, literature, language, and translation, in her work with film and moving image.

Plus, we consider political solidarity through her life and practice, from her father’s activism and connections to Yasser Arafat, to the present. Alia reflects on CCA Glasgow as an institution – one that she recalls having occupied as a teenager, when it was known as the Third Eye Centre - including the Board’s ambiguous statements around endorsing PACBI (The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) and BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), and response to Art Workers for Palestine Scotland’s programme to Reclaim the CCA in June 2025.

This episode was recorded live as part of the public programme for Alia Syed: The Ring in the Fish, an exhibition at CCA Glasgow, in June 2025. The exhibition was originally scheduled to continue until 26 July 2025. Join the artist in a panel discussion at Many Studios in Glasgow on Saturday 26 July.

For more information, visit: instagram.com/p/DKuql9-It_3/?img_index=1

Wallpaper (2008) is on view as part of Tigers & Dragons: India and Wales in Britain at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea until 2 November 2025.

Read about Alia’s work at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, and relations to Jasleen Kaur and Permindar Kaur, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/permindar-kaur-john-hansard-gallery

Listen to Ingrid Pollard’s EMPIRE LINES episodes, from Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at the Turner Contemporary in Margate: pod.link/1533637675/episode/e00996c8caff991ad6da78b4d73da7e4, and with Corinne Fowler, as part of Invasion Ecology (2024) at Southcombe Barn on Dartmoor: pod.link/1533637675/episode/9f4f72cb1624f1c5ee830c397993732e

Nil Yalter on Exile is a Hard Job (1974-Now) at Ab-Anbar Gallery in London, part of London Gallery Weekend (LGW) 2023, on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/36b8c7d8d613b78262e54e38ac62e70f

And Dr. Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil, sounding out 1960s migration between post-colonial Kerala and the Arab Gulf in a cassette of S. A. Jameel's Dubai Kathu Pattu (Dubai Letter Song) (1977): pod.link/1533637675/episode/417429b5c504842ddbd3c82b07f7b0f8

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines