Our environments are entangled with everything – human and non-human. We are embedded in them and live in relationships with them, as part of ecosystems. For long though, we have believed that we are separate from the non-human world, and have kept it out of our social, legal and political spheres.

More recently we are noticing that what happens out ‘there,’ impacts us. When ecosystems die, we too cannot survive. The alienation is false and can only lead to disastrous outcomes for all. The Covid 19 pandemic is an example of such thinking. Extinctions and erasures follow- as species become extinct or as languages and traditional ways of being disappear. Further, even we as humans do not live in one world. Those down the well-being ladder are rendered invisible, like non-human worlds are, and only recognized as ‘labour.’

Recent scholarship, environmental thinking and movements, new interdisciplinary enquires, and artist engagements have started to suggest other ways of expanding the field of multispecies living. We need to re-examine the historical beliefs from which these conditions emanate, and possibly propose an onto-epistemological shift, guided by an ethical rudder.

This project Samtal Jameen-Samtal Jameer is an attempt to think of this possibility. It seeks to imagine worlds with inclusions and rights for all – through new worldlings, and new ways of thinking agency as scholars like Donna Haraway and Karen Barad have suggested. What kinds of new, ecological, unalienated, more-than-human, and entangled worlds which we can make?

I would like to thank all those who participated in the online project over the course of the year, including those who could not, owing to time constraints, since it demonstrated the enthusiasm and willingness to engage with this topic. It is this community spirit that has kept us going during these isolating Covid times, during which this entire project was carried out. I would like to especially thank Leonhard Emmerling of the Goethe Institute who helped initiate the project and supported it in letter and spirit. For the accompanying publication, Multispecies Speculations and Growing Lexicon, a deep and heartfelt thanks to fellow artists and friends, who contributed voluntarily to it, Moakshaa Vohra for her constant support and help, Kritika Trehan and Tejaswini Waghulde, for its design and Amjad Majid for the website. Finally, the generous support and flexibility of the Prince Claus Foundation and Goethe Institut made the project happen in the first place, supported by the able administrative team at Toxics Link.