Speculations and Survivals:

What role might an engagement with the past continue to play for an anthropology oriented toward the imagining and enacting of alternative (more just, livable, sustainable) futures? I approach this question via a “speculative memoir” of my own involvement in the Papay Gyro Nights Art Festival, held on the island of Papa Westray, Orkney (2011-2017). Founded by two emigré artist-curators (from Kyrgyzstan and Hong Kong), and featuring a range of contemporary artworks in a variety of media, the festival sought to engage elements from North Atlantic storytelling and performance traditions to explore alternative forms of collectivity, premised not on reactionary nostalgia or readymade criteria of inclusion and exclusion, but on an open-ended and experimental engagement between pasts and presents, humans and other-than-humans, including the singular materiality of the island setting.