{"id":5323,"date":"2026-09-09T09:30:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T08:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/?page_id=5323"},"modified":"2026-09-09T13:27:37","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T12:27:37","slug":"annie-jael-kwan-october-2026","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/annie-jael-kwan-october-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Annie-Jael-Kwan-October-2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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What I am Reading Now\u2026
Annie Jael Kwan<\/strong>
October 2026<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

I used to read, driven by an insatiable curiosity and a reckless willingness to dive into rabbit holes. A trip to the bookstore or library would open a wormhole portal outside time \u2014 darkness would have fallen before I reemerged onto the street, a time-traveler’s soul still breathless, trying to catch up with stumbling feet.<\/p>

These days, I move at a much slower speed; counting my steps, watching my rates and levels both inside and outside \u2014 mindful now of my chronically ailing body, and the flailing infrastructures within which it resides. I read as palliative care: for my body, and for a world on fire.<\/p>

I read to understand what good endings are. An ending is also a way home.<\/p>

Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice<\/strong><\/em> (Rupa Marya and Raj Patel<\/strong>) begins in the flesh. Marya, a physician, and Patel, a political economist, trace how chronic inflammation (asthma, autoimmune disease, gut disorders) is not simply misfortune or bad genes, but a direct embodied response to colonialism, racial capitalism, and ecological rupture. The inflamed body is a body under stress that remembers. A critique of the modern medical industry and big Pharma, this evidence-dense argument is essentially somatic \u2014 the body keeps score of what systemic injustice has done to land, labour, communities \u2014 to us.<\/p>

Hospicing Modernity: Parting with Harmful Ways of Living<\/strong> (Vanessa Machado de Oliveira<\/strong>) picks up a parallel thread. It suggests perhaps the work is not to rescue or reform the systems that have caused so much damage, but to sit with their ending, while composting what’s useful for what comes next. It asks that we stay with the passing – and the grief that follows.<\/p>

The Word for World Is Forest<\/strong> (Ursula K. Le Guin<\/strong>) is a science-fiction novella that reads like prophecy. On the planet of Athshe, human colonisers exploit both land and a peaceful Indigenous population, and violence inevitably ensues. A tale of collective consciousness of irrevocable loss.<\/p>

The Mirror of Simple Souls<\/strong> (Marguerite Porete<\/strong>). Porete was another stubbornly unruly woman (a forerunner) – a Beguine mystic sent to the stake in 1310 for writing about a soul that “annihilates” itself into total union with divine Love (pushing past the structural constraints of virtue, logic and the Church). By refusing to recant her text, Porete insisted on a radical, unmediated spiritual knowing that refuses institutional authority over the body and mind, and was willing to burn for it.<\/p>

When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse<\/strong> (Norma Kaweloku Wong<\/strong>). Wong is a Rinzai priest and longtime community organiser. A book of poetry, reflections, wisdom – on how to sit with the “timeplace” on the cusp of collapse – and breathe, and hold each other through it.<\/p>

Words can stay with you. A good spell can unmake you, or remake a world. Reset a story. I take comfort in a line that stayed with me from Naomi Novik<\/strong>‘s young adult fantasy, The Scholomance Trilogy<\/em><\/strong>, where the final spell sutras declared, \u201cYou’re already dead, but stay anyway. Stay with us, and shelter all the wise-gifted children of the world.\u201d How freeing, how liberatory – with all endings, come new beginnings.<\/p>

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Annie Jael Kwan<\/a> is an independent curator, researcher and educator whose exhibition-making, programming, publication and teaching practice is located at the intersection of contemporary art, art history and cultural activism, with interest in archives, feminist, queer and alternative knowledges, collective practices, solidarity, sisterhood and spirituality. She is director of Something Human, a curatorial initiative, that launched the pioneering Southeast Asia Performance Collection (SAPC)<\/a> in 2017 which represents 50 artists from the region at the Live Art Development Agency. She leads Asia-Art-Activism<\/a>, a research network, and is the instigating council member of Asia Forum<\/a>, a platform for gathering the practices and discourses of Global Asias.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Reading<\/p><\/div>

Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice<\/b><\/em>, Rupa Marya and Raj Patel (Allen Lane, 2021)<\/span><\/p>

Hospicing Modernity: Parting with Harmful Ways of Living<\/b><\/em>, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (North Atlantic Books, 2021)<\/span><\/p>

The Word for World Is Forest<\/b><\/em>, Ursula K. Le Guin (Berkley Books, 1976)<\/span><\/p>

The Mirror of Simple Souls<\/b><\/em>, Marguerite Porete (14th Century)<\/span><\/p>

When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse<\/b><\/em>, Norma Kaweloku Wong (North Atlantic Books, 2024)<\/span><\/p>

The Scholomance Trilogy<\/em>, Naomi Novik (Del Rey Books, 2020\u20132022)<\/span><\/p><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cthe body is itself a kind of place\u2014not a solid object but a terrain through which things pass, and in which they sometimes settle and sediment\u2026 To wonder why some things settle in some bodies and not in others is to begin to ask questions about power, injustice, and inequality, questions that are bound in modern medicine with questions of colonialism.\u201d<\/p>

\u2014 Rupa Marya & Raj Patel, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Please note the views published in\u00a0What I am Reading Now…<\/i>\u00a0are personal reflections of the contributors.
These may not necessarily represent the views of the University of Dundee.<\/span><\/p>

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>

Home<\/a><\/p>

Previous Issue: Naeem Mohaiemen, September 2026<\/a>
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about projects What I am Reading Now\u2026Annie Jael KwanOctober 2026 \u00a0 I used to read, driven by an insatiable curiosity and a reckless willingness to dive into rabbit holes. A trip to the bookstore or library would open a wormhole portal outside time \u2014 darkness would have fallen before I reemerged onto the street, a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5323","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5323"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5341,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5323\/revisions\/5341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}