Welcome to episode 1 of the hello X podcast! Meet Christine, Anneli and Valentin, your hosts in imagining the lives of the future. The first segment tells the backstory of X and explains the concepts behind the larger project. Find out how X was born in 2011 on a beach (in Christine’s mind), and why she went from dramatisations of political violence in the past (and co-directing The Act of Killing) to asking scientists, artists, kids and listeners like you to collectively imagine X, a woman who will be born in 2045. (You can start by checking out the WRITE page on this website). Christine and Valentin talk about why they moved to Tromsø, Northern Norway, how much they love food and how these passions have been channeled into the key question of this year’s stories: how might human activity today (CO2, pollution, fishing, agriculture) affect Arctic ecological food webs and food culture for X in 2068?

Segment two introduces you to some of the members of the hello X creative team and their answer to the question: What does it mean to have a relationship with the unborn, or future people?

Segment three features environmental anthropologist Ann Eileen Lennert. Ann’s work features the stories of hunters from Greenland, whom she studied for many years while living in Greenland before moving to Tromsø and becoming the newest member of Ice-9. A big advocate of citizen science, Ann integrates cultural landscapes with natural science and talks about how science can be mixed with stories both old and new, and how stories can help answer natural scientific questions. She also introduces us to the Mother of the Sea.

This story was produced by Christine Cynn and Anneli Stiberg with support from Valentin Manz.

Special thanks to Marina Borovaya, Ismet Bachtiar, Leo Kay, Sigbjørn Skåden, Annika Wiström, Ann Eileen Lennert, and Kunuk Lennert.

Sound recording/mix by Nathanael Gustin.

Music by

Metatag https://helaudio.bandcamp.com/album/surrender

Fiium Shaarrk https://not-applicable.bandcamp.com/album/we-are-astonishingly-lifelike )

LINKS:

X2068 exhibition in Polaria science museum (earlier permutation of hello X… in Norwegian) https://www.itromso.no/kultur/2016/10/25/Festivalutstilling-med-fremtidsvisjon-13694893.ece

Ann Eileen Lennert

https://anneileenlennert.com/

Mother of the Sea background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedna_(mythology)

The book that inspired Christine’s description of the ‘sea inside our cells’

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016, and Harper-Collins UK, 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/15/other-minds-peter-godfrey-smith-review-octopus-philip-hoare