Hi, I'm Adam Shats, and before we get into today's episode, I'd like to tell you about Bluettes,

a play opening next month at the Royal Court Theater in London, starring Ben Wishaw, Emma Darcy, and Kayla Michael.

Based on Maggie Nelson's book, Bluettes is a meditation on love and grief,

a story about depression and desire, pleasure and pain,

and a person obsessed with the color blue. It's adapted for the stage by Margaret Perry and directed

by Katie Mitchell, and it runs at the Royal Court from 17 May to 29 June. Click on the link

in the description to book tickets.

Thank you. click on the link in the description to book tickets. Hello and welcome to the LRB podcast. I'm your host, Adam Shatz, and my guest on this episode is Hazel Carby.

The subject of our conversation is Carby's recent LRB lecture, remembering the future, a reflection on a series of artworks by Indigenous, Native American, and First

Nations artists depicting scenes of ecological catastrophe in North America. Hazel, it's great to

have you on the podcast. It's good to talk to you, Adam. Hazel, your lecture begins with a description of an arresting photograph of the Four Corners

Power Plant in New Mexico by the Dene artist Will Wilson. This photograph depicts a coal-fired power plant at the edges of the Morgan Lake in

New Mexico. It's in a Navajo reservation, and it's this wide-angle photograph. We see the

shimmering water. We see these enormous clouds, bits of blue sky, and the landscape

just feels somewhat haunted, and we see the coal spewing out of the plant. This photograph, you can see

online on the LRB's website.

Can you talk about the photo and why you chose to launch your lecture with it?

Interesting question about why I started the lecture with it.

I think because it contains so many of the contradictions that I wanted to elaborate upon later.

And I will explain those.

So what Will Wilson is doing in many of his photographic projects

is to raise the question of the production of energy, which is the legacy

...