Edinburgh Futures Conversations – AMUK

While everyone is witnessing the impacts of climate change, in many regions of the world people are losing their homes, livelihoods, culture and lives. It is not enough to recognise that climate change is accelerating. Climate change is one of the greatest drivers of injustice the world has ever seen.

In AMUK, Indonesian writer and artist Khairani Barokka performs a new, archipelago-futurist piece on environmental and climate crises as the result of centuries of colonial extractivism. Through the colonial histories leading to the mistranslation of the Malay/Indonesian word ‘amuk’ into ‘amuck’, and the phrase ‘running amuck’, these words are imagined as characters in literal dialogue with and against each other.

This specially commissioned poetry performance from Khairani Barokka builds on questions of climate policy and finance to tell the story – a story, our story, the story of our earth. Through her work and in conversation with Esa Aldegheri, Khairani Barokka will shift our understanding of the climate crisis from an external clash of nature and humanity to an internal struggle of behaviours, histories, cultures and ethics.

This event will be live-captioned.

Please note this event will be photographed and images may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed please let us know at the event.

Speaker Biography

Khairani Barokka  is Editor of Modern Poetry in Translation, and a writer and artist from Jakarta, whose work has been presented widely internationally, and centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis and environmental justice. Among her honours, she has been Modern Poetry in Translation’s Inaugural Poet-in-Residence, a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, an Artforum Must-See, UK Associate Artist at Delfina Foundation, and Associate Artist at the National Centre for Writing (UK). Okka’s work includes being author-illustrator of Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis), author of Rope (Nine Arches), and co-editor of Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches). Her most recent installation was at Museum Nasional for Jakarta Biennale, and her latest book is Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches), shortlisted for the Barbellion Prize.