Political Geologies

Rachel Pimm (b. Harare, 1984, lives in London) works in sculpture, video and performance to explore environments and their materialities, histories and politics often from the point of view of non-human agents such as plants, minerals, worms, water, gravity or rubber. They are interested in the potential of surfaces and matter to transform. Their work has been included in recent programmes including Hales Gallery, Jerwood Space, ANDOR, Tenderpixel and Chisenhale Gallery, The Royal Academy and Serpentine Gallery (all London 2014-2019) as well as internationally in Europe and the USA. They have an MFA from Goldsmiths and lecture in Fine Art at Camberwell College.

Amy Donovan is an interdisciplinary geographer and volcanologist from the University of Cambridge. She is currently the PI of an ERC Starting Grant on “Geographical imaginations and the (geo)politics of volcanic risk: cultures, knowledges, actions”, which is examining the ways in which people construct their environment and how they perceive and live with risks of different kinds, with a focus on transborder regions in areas experiencing rapid environmental change. She also works on disaster risk through the “Tomorrow’s Cities” UKRI Hub and the Landslip project, and is involved in studying risk from Mount Paektu on the border between China and the DPRK. She has worked on volcanoes all over the world.