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Left to Be Desired

Left to Be Desired

By: Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts
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Summary

 'Left to Be Desired' is a podcast by Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA) research project. Research leaders, Maja & Reuben Fowkes, invite artists and researchers to talk about their practice and exchange ideas at the intersection of ecology, climate change, art and the Socialist Anthropocene. 'Left to Be Desired' explores the distinctiveness of the socialist path through the Anthropocene by bringing together artistic and scholarly insights into the ecologies of global Socialism. Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA) sets out to radically transform current critical debates around the Anthropocene, addressing the major lacuna in existing accounts by establishing the Socialist Anthropocene as a conceptual framework that asserts the constitutive role of the environmental histories and potentialities of Socialism in the formation of the new geological age. The project is led by Dr. Maja Fowkes, based at the School of History and Art History at the University of East Anglia, and funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government's Horizon Europe funding guarantee.2023 Art
Episodes
  • Left to be Desired Episode 13: Terike Haapoja

    Left to be Desired Episode 13: Terike Haapoja
    Mar 27 2026

    Episode 13 of the SAVA podcast Left to be Desired features a conversation with artist and researcher Terike Haapoja.

    Left to Be Desired is available to listen to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music/Audible and Audacy. You can also access it via the podcast website: 
    https://lefttobedesired.libsyn.com/site 

    Left to Be Desired explores the distinctiveness of the socialist path through the Anthropocene by bringing together artistic and scholarly insights into the ecologies of global socialism. Maja & Reuben Fowkes invite artists and researchers to talk about their practice and exchange ideas at the intersection of ecology, climate change, art and the Socialist Anthropocene.

    Terike Haapoja

    This episode of Left to be Desired was recorded in the Sainsbury Centre University of East Anglia on the occasion of sixth SAVA Research Week on Eco-Socialist Alliances that stretch across global geographies but also traverse species boundaries. Focusing on Terike Haapoja's work in reimagining planetary histories from a more-than-human perspective, the podcast deals with the project History According to Cattle, shedding light on the forms of oppression and exploitation faced by animals in the intensive farming systems of the Anthropocene and raising the question of whether and how things were or could be different under socialism. At the core of Haapoja's art-activist project (Against) Animal Capitalism is not just the exploration of how nonhumans are relentlessly subjugated through mechanisms of value accumulation, but also the goal of rekindling of multispecies solidarities that recognize animals as part of the working class.

    Terike Haapoja is an interdisciplinary visual artist. Her large scale installations, writings, and collaborations explore the possibility of nonviolent coexistence across differences, with a specific focus on multispecies politics. While rooted in environmental thought and drawing from critical animal studies and posthumanism, Haapoja's work is in dialogue with intersectional feminist and post-colonial discourses, critically reflecting on structures of exclusion that emerge from Western traditions. Haapoja is currently working on a long term project '[Against] Animal Capitalism' that seeks to build a foundation for a multispecies left politics. She is the co-editor of seven publications on art and politics/environment, and her work has been exhibited widely in solo and group shows internationally. Haapoja represented Finland in the 55th Venice Biennale with a solo show in the Nordic Pavilion.
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    26 mins
  • Left to Be Desired Episode 12: Ângela Ferreira

    Left to Be Desired Episode 12: Ângela Ferreira
    May 21 2025
    Episode 12 of the SAVA podcast Left to Be Desired features a conversation with artist and researcher Ângela Ferreira. Left to Be Desired is available to listen to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music/Audible and Audacy. You can also access it via the podcast website:   https://lefttobedesired.libsyn.com/site   Left to Be Desired explores the distinctiveness of the socialist path through the Anthropocene by bringing together artistic and scholarly insights into the ecologies of global socialism. Maja & Reuben Fowkes invite artists and researchers to talk about their practice and exchange ideas at the intersection of ecology, climate change, art and the Socialist Anthropocene. Ângela Ferreira Continuing our exploration of global perspectives on the Socialist Anthropocene, in this episode of Left to Be Desired, Maja and Reuben Fowkes talk to artist and researcher Ângela Ferreira about her work on revolutionary Mozambique. We learn that the artist's main focus is on the first post-independence years, when the government opted for a tolerant form of socialism that was open to forms of creative experimentation, before the adoption of the Soviet model of social and political organization. The podcast includes discussion of Ferreira's collaborative project Experimental Field (2024), which explores the material and archival residues, as well as the social and environmental dimensions, of the radical agrarian practices developed at a university agricultural laboratory in the 1970s. About the Speaker Ângela Ferreira  Ângela Ferreira  is an artist and researcher teaching Fine Art at the University of Lisbon (FBAUL) in Portugal and in Mozambique. Ferreira's multi-disciplinary practice is concerned with the ongoing impact of colonialism and post-colonialism on contemporary society, an investigation that is conducted through in-depth research and distillation of ideas into concise and resonant forms. The contribution of this artistic practice lies in the construction of a solid and non-pamphleteering artistic decolonial discourse. The source of her archival reference materials often triangulates the three countries of her personal history: South Africa, Mozambique and Portugal, which she represented Portugal at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007.
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    25 mins
  • Left to Be Desired Episode 11: Reinaldo Funes Monzote

    Left to Be Desired Episode 11: Reinaldo Funes Monzote
    May 14 2025
    Episode 11 of the SAVA podcast Left to Be Desired features a conversation with Reinaldo Funes Monzote conducted by Maja and Reuben Fowkes and Sorcha Thomson. Left to Be Desired is available to listen to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music/Audible and Audacy. You can also access it via the podcast website: https://lefttobedesired.libsyn.com/site Left to Be Desired podcast explores the distinctiveness of the socialist path through the Anthropocene by bringing together artistic and scholarly insights into the ecologies of global Socialism. Maja & Reuben Fowkes will invite artists and researchers to talk about their practice and exchange ideas at the intersection of ecology, climate change, art and the Socialist Anthropocene. Reinaldo Funes Monzote This episode of Left to be Desired engages Reinaldo Funes Monzote in conversation on the environmental history of Cuba and its place in the Socialist Anthropocene. Maja and Reuben Fowkes, joined by SAVA Research Fellow Sorcha Thomson, discuss with Reinaldo his work on the different eras of Cuban environmental transformation - from the entangled processes of deforestation and sugar cultivation since 1492 to the projects of geotransformación after the 1959 Revolution and what they tell us about attitudes to nature under Cuban socialism. The conversation reflects on the impact of the end of the Soviet Union on Cuba in the 1990s and how the need to find new means of survival shaped eco-socialist and agroecological initiatives. In tracing these histories, Reinaldo complicates binary visions of the ecological imprint of socialist Cuba, instead highlighting an adaptability of Cuban approaches to the environment since the Revolution, with variable ecological impacts, in relation to the shifting conditions and legacies of colonial extraction, imperial exploitation, and global socialism that have shaped the Caribbean island. About the Speaker Reinaldo Funes Monzote Reinaldo Funes Monzote is a Professor of History at the University of Havana and Coordinator of the Geo-Historical Research Program at the Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation in Cuba. He has held visiting professorships at universities in Spain, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and the US, and has been a Fellow at Princeton's Davis Center for Historical Studies and the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Studies. Reinaldo is also a member of the Academy of History of Cuba and President of the Cuban Society for the History of Science and Technology.
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    48 mins
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