Four Alchemists. One book. A constellation of ideas.
In November 2022, the first annual Alchemy Lecture took place at York University in Toronto, bringing four deep and agile writers from different geographies and disciplines into vibrant conversation on a topic of urgent relevance: humans and borders. Now, in these pages, that conversation is captured and expanded in insightful, passionate ways. Architect, artist, and urban theorist Dele Adeyemo (UK/Nigeria) calls attention to the complexity of Black infrastructures, questioning how “the environments that surround us condition the possibility of our being.” Poet Natalie Diaz (US/Mojave/Akimel O’otham) writes: “Like story, migration is the sensual movement of knowledge,” and asks, “What is the language we need to live right now?” Philosopher Nadia Yala Kisukidi (France) suggests there is no diasporic life “without the dynamics of fabulation, where we pass down, from generation to generation, the stories of our ancestors who walked barefoot for many months.” And cultural theorist Rinaldo Walcott (Canada) asks us to consider inheritances beyond white supremacist logics: “What might it mean to live a life, if we can’t risk desiring and working towards utopia?” As each Alchemist considers the legacies of anti-colonial struggle, the future of the planet, and the textures of Black and Indigenous life, their essays speak to each other in multiple ways, creating something startling and revelatory: a vision of the world as it is, and as it could be.
DELE ADEYEMO (UK/Nigeria) is an architect, artist, and critical urban theorist. Dele’s creative practice, research, and pedagogy interrogate the underlying racial drivers in the production of space. Adeyemo is completing his PhD, titled Last Dark Continent, at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the recipient of the Journal of Architectural Education’s inaugural Fellowship, the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s Andrew Mellon Fellowship, and Het Nieuwe Instituut’s Research Fellowship. Adeyemo’s projects have been presented internationally, including at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial, the 13th São Paulo Architecture Biennial, and the 2nd Edition of the Lagos Biennial. He currently teaches an architecture design studio at the Royal College of Art, London.
View titles by Dele Adeyemo
NATALIE DIAZ (US/Mojave/Akimel O’otham) was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She is the author of When My Brother Was an Aztec, winner of the American Book Award; Diaz’s second collection, Postcolonial Love Poem, was published by Graywolf Press in 2020 and won a Pulitzer Prize. She is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, a Lannan Literary Fellow, and a Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow. She is an alumni of the United States Artists Ford Fellowship and now serves on the board of trustees. She is currently a Mellon Foundation Fellow. Diaz teaches at the Arizona State University Creative Writing MFA program where she is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair of Modern and Contemporary Poetry and directs the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands.
View titles by Natalie Diaz
NADIA YALA KISUKIDI (France) is Associate Professor in philosophy at Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis University. She was Vice President of the Collège International de Philosophie (2014–2016). Member of the Les Cahiers d’études africaines (CNRS, Ehess) editorial committee, she was co-curator of the Yango II Biennale, Kinshasa, DRC (July/August 2022). Kisukidi is specialized in French and Africana philosophy. She has published Bergson ou l’humanité créatrice (CNRS, 2013), and Dialogue Transatlantique with the Brazilian philosopher Djamila Ribeiro (Anacaona, 2021). Her first novel, La Dissociation, was published by Seuil in 2022.
View titles by Nadia Yala Kisukidi
RINALDO WALCOTT (Canada) is Professor and Chair of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo. His teaching and research are in the area of Black diaspora cultural studies and postcolonial studies with an emphasis on questions of sexuality and gender. He is the author most recently of On Property (Biblioasis, 2021) and The Long Emancipation: Moving Toward Black Freedom (Duke University Press, 2021).
View titles by Rinaldo Walcott
Four Alchemists. One book. A constellation of ideas.
In November 2022, the first annual Alchemy Lecture took place at York University in Toronto, bringing four deep and agile writers from different geographies and disciplines into vibrant conversation on a topic of urgent relevance: humans and borders. Now, in these pages, that conversation is captured and expanded in insightful, passionate ways. Architect, artist, and urban theorist Dele Adeyemo (UK/Nigeria) calls attention to the complexity of Black infrastructures, questioning how “the environments that surround us condition the possibility of our being.” Poet Natalie Diaz (US/Mojave/Akimel O’otham) writes: “Like story, migration is the sensual movement of knowledge,” and asks, “What is the language we need to live right now?” Philosopher Nadia Yala Kisukidi (France) suggests there is no diasporic life “without the dynamics of fabulation, where we pass down, from generation to generation, the stories of our ancestors who walked barefoot for many months.” And cultural theorist Rinaldo Walcott (Canada) asks us to consider inheritances beyond white supremacist logics: “What might it mean to live a life, if we can’t risk desiring and working towards utopia?” As each Alchemist considers the legacies of anti-colonial struggle, the future of the planet, and the textures of Black and Indigenous life, their essays speak to each other in multiple ways, creating something startling and revelatory: a vision of the world as it is, and as it could be.
Author
DELE ADEYEMO (UK/Nigeria) is an architect, artist, and critical urban theorist. Dele’s creative practice, research, and pedagogy interrogate the underlying racial drivers in the production of space. Adeyemo is completing his PhD, titled Last Dark Continent, at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the recipient of the Journal of Architectural Education’s inaugural Fellowship, the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s Andrew Mellon Fellowship, and Het Nieuwe Instituut’s Research Fellowship. Adeyemo’s projects have been presented internationally, including at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial, the 13th São Paulo Architecture Biennial, and the 2nd Edition of the Lagos Biennial. He currently teaches an architecture design studio at the Royal College of Art, London.
View titles by Dele Adeyemo
NATALIE DIAZ (US/Mojave/Akimel O’otham) was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She is the author of When My Brother Was an Aztec, winner of the American Book Award; Diaz’s second collection, Postcolonial Love Poem, was published by Graywolf Press in 2020 and won a Pulitzer Prize. She is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, a Lannan Literary Fellow, and a Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow. She is an alumni of the United States Artists Ford Fellowship and now serves on the board of trustees. She is currently a Mellon Foundation Fellow. Diaz teaches at the Arizona State University Creative Writing MFA program where she is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair of Modern and Contemporary Poetry and directs the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands.
View titles by Natalie Diaz
NADIA YALA KISUKIDI (France) is Associate Professor in philosophy at Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis University. She was Vice President of the Collège International de Philosophie (2014–2016). Member of the Les Cahiers d’études africaines (CNRS, Ehess) editorial committee, she was co-curator of the Yango II Biennale, Kinshasa, DRC (July/August 2022). Kisukidi is specialized in French and Africana philosophy. She has published Bergson ou l’humanité créatrice (CNRS, 2013), and Dialogue Transatlantique with the Brazilian philosopher Djamila Ribeiro (Anacaona, 2021). Her first novel, La Dissociation, was published by Seuil in 2022.
View titles by Nadia Yala Kisukidi
RINALDO WALCOTT (Canada) is Professor and Chair of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo. His teaching and research are in the area of Black diaspora cultural studies and postcolonial studies with an emphasis on questions of sexuality and gender. He is the author most recently of On Property (Biblioasis, 2021) and The Long Emancipation: Moving Toward Black Freedom (Duke University Press, 2021).
View titles by Rinaldo Walcott
