Introducing The Edges in the
Middle with Báyò Akómoláfé

For The Wild is excited to announce a new collaboration with Báyò Akómoláfé and the Othering & Belonging Institute’s Democracy & Belonging Forum. Over the next couple of months, we will be releasing one episode a month that is part of a special series titled The Edges in the Middle. These series of conversations between Báyò Akómoláfé and thought companions like john a. powell, V, Naomi Klein, and more, have been adapted from Báyò’s work as the Global Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute. In this role, Báyò has been holding a series of public conversations on issues of justice and belonging for the Institute's Democracy & Belonging Forum, which connects and resources civic leaders in Europe and the US who are committed to bridging across difference to strengthen democracy and advance belonging in both regions and around the world. Báyò's conversations encourage us to rethink justice, hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise, not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms

Describing The Edges in the Middle, Bayo Akomolafe writes, “These explorations are not ‘safe’. These encounters will probably be offensive (we hope they are). This is not a preaching to the choir. This is a jumping-off-from-tightropes into potentially risky and emancipatory waters. This is a material inquiry of the unsayable, a leaning into the places we are not supposed to go to, a reconsideration of the ordinary, and a refusal to reify anything touched as finished, declared, transmitted, or final. As a ritual of inquiry at the end of the world, this is a material-discursive-pedagogic attempt at breaking through the sensory monoculture of compliance and cyclicity. Most importantly, this is a call for you to create-destroy with us, to with-ness, to greet more-than-human entities, to be pierced through, to be undone.” 

Our first episode in this series features a conversation with john a. powell Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute. Speaking on the theme “When ‘just getting along’ isn't enough: Is belonging possible in a world rooted in othering?,” Báyò and john contemplate the ontological weight of our desire for belonging. How might we learn how to belong together? Articulating both the harsh realities of modern-day division and the simultaneous reality of our connection to each other and to the earth, Báyò and john examine what it means to be “other” and to invite in the “monstrous” and the “strange.”

Featured in our first The Edges in the Middle episode is the band Sitka Sun, “Sitka Sun is the music of bassist/arranger Patrick Murphy. At the intersection of jazz sensibility, rhythmic prowess, and psychedelic soundscapes, the music is steady, intricate, and at times, meditative… Based in Northern California, the music is brought to fruition in collaboration with The Long Road Society.” These mesmerizing tunes from Sitka Sun are generously provided through our partnerships with The Long Road Society. The Long Road Society is a record label, studio, and collective of individuals committed to making soulful music and building community in the Bay Area of California. Thank you Long Road Society and Sitka Sun!

Our Favorites This Month

MORGAN CURTIS on Transmuting Ancestries of Exploitation /327

“As we get out of the way, as we move our resources, our prayers, our energy towards the leadership of those that our ancestors harmed, we can move into a place where maybe one day all of our descendants can share this planet in a better way.”

Rising against growing wealth inequality and resource consolidation, guest Morgan Curtis asks how we might, rather, shape our world in reciprocity, mutual aid, and intentional community. Ayana and Morgan dive deep into the need for repair, healing, and acknowledgement as we face the historical roots of modern inequity. Morgan centers her work by listening deeply to the call for radical change – a call coming from the earth, from Black and Indigenous organizing, and from the spiritual imperative of reparations work. Attuned to this, Morgan asks: how can we grow when we don’t push away harm and instead learn to face and acknowledge it? Reparations work and wealth redistribution demand acknowledgement and accountability alongside concrete action. Pointing listeners towards specific organizations working on reparations work, Morgan details the logistical and spiritual realities of redistribution and highlights the ways power over such resources must also be redistributed. 

“We are wired for connection, yet we live in a society that aims and strategizes towards severing us from another through the capitalist project.”

Gabes Torres offers her thoughtful wisdom in this conversation that weaves through healing, interconnection, and embodiment. Focusing on holistic healing and mental health support, Gabes lucidly describes the ways our individual health and well-being are dependent upon our connections and the structures of the societies in which we reside. This insight brings Gabes and Ayana into a beautiful conversation about interdependence and the abundance that our communities can foster when we move beyond a scarcity mindset based on individualism and profit. Gabes paints a picture of health in which mind and body are not severed, and where embodied actions like eating in community, and making art can be sources of deep healing. With this understanding of community, no one is disposable, and we all must hold each other in accountability.

Artist Highlight: Linnéa Ryshke