Navigating the Polycrisis

Join contemporary critical systems thinking navigators Nora Bateson and Tyson Yunkaporta for an evening of provocative presentations, engaging conversation and insights and tools for negotiating and surviving our 21st century polycrisis.

We are living through an unfolding global polycrisis, ushering in accelerating collapse dynamics, tipping points and profound uncertainties, as well as unprecedented denial and dissociation, gaslighting and blame-shifting, fascism and techno-feudalism, the hyper-simplifying of complex issues, and general overwhelm and discombobulation.

Nora and Tyson will bring their unique lenses and their respective ways of making sense and meaning out of the chaos of our contemporary existence.

This FREE event will be held in the Performance Space on Level 2 at Library at the Docks.

Please arrive by 5:45pm to be seated for a 6pm start.

Nora Bateson is a filmmaker, writer and educator, founder of Warm Data Labs and President of the International Bateston Institute - a research group specialising in transcontextual research into human and other living systems. She is author of ‘Combining’ and ‘Small Arcs of Larger Circles’. Nora’s work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, aesthetics, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in the ecology of living systems. In ‘Combining’, Nora Bateson invites us into an ecology of communication where everything is contextual and relational, where nothing stands alone, and where each action sets off a chain of incalculable consequences. She challenges conventional fixes for our problems, highlighting the need to tackle issues at multiple levels, understand interdependencies, embrace ambiguities, and act with compassion.

Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar, researcher, maker (traditional wood carving), poet, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University, and author of ’Sand Talk’ and ‘Right Story, Wrong Story’ and host of the podcast ‘The Other Others’. Tyson’s  work focuses on applying collective Indigenous methods of inquiry and complexity science to resolve existential issues and explore global crises. In ‘Right Story, Wrong Story’, Tyson Yunkaporta explores how we can all learn from Indigenous thinking and how our relationship with land is inseparable from how we relate to each other. He will share ‘crowd-sourced narratives where everybody’s contribution to the story, no matter how contradictory, is honoured and included … the closest thing I’ve found to the Aboriginal collective process that we call “yarning”.’

While Nora is in Australia, she is speaking and hosting workshops at other events, including at the upcoming Wisdom & Action Forum with our friends from Small Giants Academy. If you'd like to learn more about Warm Data & Warm Data Labs, Nora will be hosting a pre-forum Introduction to Warm Data practice workshop on Tuesday 1 April, 11am-4pm at Abbotsford Convent, Abbotsford (Melbourne). You can learn more and register here.

If you'd like to join Nora, Tyson and other world-leading thinkers from across disciplines and industries about addressing the challenges of our times, you might want to check out the Wisdom & Action Forum, 1-3 April, also at Abbotsford Convent. Learn more and apply here.