Kapwani Kiwanga Explores the Links Between Nature, Technology, and Racial Oppression

“I’m very reluctant to talk about what’s happening now—the hot topic, the outrage of the moment. It seems necessary to ask: how did we get here?” The speaker, artist Kapwani Kiwanga, was in Paris; I was in New York. We did not dwell much, during that May 27 phone conversation, on the current political situation in the United States, where the social contract seems to be dissolving before our eyes. Yet I have gone back to our call again and again, as events have unfo