current projects
Upcoming Projects/Appearances
Tales from the Abyss, with Ama Josephine Budge & Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide
Mister Motley and ArtEZ studium generale present three online lunch events that stem from the hope for a better future and take a closer look at the role of activism in the arts. Ama unpacks the dynamics of climate justice and environmentalism within the arts, together with moderator Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide.
13th May, ArtEZ Studium Generale, Online
Keynote Speaker: Fractals & Fragments
I'm honoured to be the keynote speaker at the PhD Cyber Conference 2020: Fragments and Fractals in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck University.
1st June: 1-5PM, online
Science Fiction as Activism: Sharing Futures
Experience a fantasy-filled online evening with participants of the Science Fiction As Activism: Writing Futures course, hosted by Ama Josephine Budge.
11th June: 8PM, Free Word Online
Science Fiction As Activism: Speculative Writing Course
As part of Free Word's Finding Power Season, I'm delighted to be leading an eight week science fiction writing course from April - June 2020. Course dates released soon, available on a sliding scale - watch this space!
April - June, Free Word, London
Lead Artist: Myco-Lective with Feral Practice & Chisenhale Studios
Myco-Lective takes its inspiration from human & nonhuman models of
education and mutual aid, especially the mycorrhizal networks of the forest, where established trees share nourishment with shaded neighbours via under-soil webs of fungal mycelium. Working with 6 artists selected through an open call, the curator & lead artist will lead the development of new ideas & skills, while actively nurturing the
increasing autonomy & collectivity of participants over a 12 month period.
May 2020-2021, London
New Work Commission: Other Futures Festival, Amsterdam
I will be installing a new work at Other Futures Festival, a multidisciplinary festival of speculative fiction from all over the world. The second edition in April 2020 will focus on the relation between humans and non-humans and the question how to create multispecies communities.
October 2020, Amsterdam
Queer Ecologies
Three interlinked artist residencies led by Linden Katherine McMahon, Hari Byles and Ama Josephine Budge at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve will explore queer ecologies. Through a series of events, collaborations and new writing, we will creatively engage with the queerness of nature, paying particular attention to how queer people can connect and collaborate with non-human beings to create new stories and new futures.
*postponed new dates tbc*, The Nature Reserve, Bethnal Green
Previous Projects:
Apocalypse Reading Room launches at Free Word, 2019
The Apocalypse Reading Room will be an on-site library from writer and pleasure activist Ama Josephine Budge, who will also lead in-conversation events exploring alternatively gendered and ungendered worlds. Part of Free Words new Season: All the Ways that we could Grow.
Co-convening 'The Art of Not Doing Conference: on Rest, Resistance & Pleasure Activism'
In a culture that valorises busyness, productivity, pace and “progress”, stillness can be radical. Refusing, ignoring, omitting, not doing; sometimes the most political actions look like doing nothing at all. But who gets to not do? When and how is not doing a politicised, racialised, privileged, resistant or utopian act?
Birkbeck University, Oct 17th 2019.
Casco Art Institute Commission
I'm delighted to announce that I have been commissioned as one of four solo artists, to produce a new work for the Casco Art Institute Fall Exhibition Programme, in conjunction with Uitfeest in Utrecht, Netherlands from 14 Sept - 3 Nov, 2019. Other works will be presented by Babi Badalov, Ansuya Blom and Mire Lee.
"Her prose is lush as the soft insides of a husky nut shaken from the topmost branch, lush as that first millisecond after sex. She's a new force in genre fiction. I'm excited to see what she brings us next."
- Sara Saab, writer of poetry & strange fiction
contact
a (dot) josephinebudge (at) gmail.com
tweet @amjamb
Ama is usually based in London, UK.
Ama Josephine Budge's A Shoal of Lovers Leads me Home is a " heady, hopeful sensorium"
- Michael Matheson, Anathema: Spec from the Margins
“Ama is exactly the kind of young writer we need, innovative, daring, fantastical and delicious, the UK’s N.K Jemisin meets Tomi Adeyemi.”
- Tosin Coker, The Mouth of Babes
Recent Publications
Ama Josephine Budge in conversation with Angela Chan (in) Science Fiction Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press
Series: Documents of Contemporary Art
Imaging an Assisted Evolution: The environmental futurity of Zanele Muholi’s Somnyama Ngonyama
Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies
Issue: Curatorial Care
Of Parables, Patterns, and Progeny — Rethinking Trans Theory with Octavia E. Butler (in) Think Pieces by the UCL IAS Review
Ama Josephine Budge & Christine ‘Xine’ Yao