Lumen is very pleased to announce a new online event series, Readings for Uncertain Times. The first three events are in collaboration with Elastic Fiction. These events are generously funded by the Arts Council England.

Readings for Uncertain Times, Session One - James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis

Tuesday 4 August, 6.30pm-8pm (via Zoom). Join reading group via Patreon

Can Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis help navigate a ‘rebalancing’ in the wake of Covid-19?

Join Lumen for a reading group and online gathering using James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis as a stimulus to explore the precarious and deeply entangled nature of life, and consider how or if it might be possible to balance or rebuild the ruptured systems of our planet in the wake of the climate crisis and global pandemic. The session will be chaired by Lumen and led by Elastic Fiction (Becky Lyon), an artist and researcher exploring nature futures. Lumen and Elastic Fiction will select headline and supporting texts to open up discussion on Lovelock’s work, and explore the ‘reading group’ as a method for working through confusion, cynicism and uncertain futures.

About the Gaia hypothesis

James Lovelock began to formulate the Gaia hypothesis while working for NASA in the 1960s, when challenged by NASA scientists to design an experiment for detecting possible life on Mars. Later becoming an Independent scientist and informed by his work alongside microbiologist Lynn Margulis, Lovelock developed the hypothesis that life on earth functions as a single organism and that all living matter from carbon-based life forms to the air, the oceans and land surfaces form a complex, self-regulating system that maintains earth’s capacity to accommodate life. He speaks to the world-making capacity of life where the geologic and the atmospheric are in/direct products of living organisms. 1979’s Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth was his first treatise on the concept and acts as a headline reference for this session.

Lumen’s reading group series

This and forthcoming reading groups offer a welcoming environment for discussion that is open to all and encouraging of multiple understandings of the world around us. The sessions are embedded and engaged in interrogating more-than-human times, exploring how ‘nature’ has been and still is, colonised, controlled, represented, researched, and protected today. In precarious times we privilege words, philosophies, imaginings of our peers and esteemed thinkers alike for wisdom and guidance.