Change at the top in Ukraine and the 10-year anniversary of Turkey’s failed coup

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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on the 16th of July, 2026 on Monaco Radio.

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Is this the ideal time for Ukraine's government to be fighting amongst itself? Steps taken to stop Chinese people dating chatbots? And do we really want our politicians to be nicer to each other? I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts. Hello, and welcome to the Monocle Daily, coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Alena Hlivko and James Rogers will discuss today's big stories. And we'll also hear from the Italian artist Elisa Giardina Papa about her new video work on show here in London. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Alena Hlivko, founder and CEO at the St. James Foreign Policy Group, and James Rogers, Associate professor of International Journalism at City University of London. Hello to you both.

C

Hi, Andrew.

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Hello, James. First of all, you have recently been to Baden Baden, so nicely named it twice. What were you doing there?

C

I was going to see where Fyodor Dostoevsky lost a large share of his money and had to write his novel the Gambler to try to get it back. It's a place, it's a city that's always fascinated me and I've never got the chance to go. But I happened to be in southwestern Germany last week, so I just went for one evening. It was really interesting. You could see that this was a place where Europe's elites gathered in the 19th century and you can still fly in on your private jet to a small airport. Well, that's actually, it's a wee bit more modest in my case, but it was a very interesting trip and still, you know, lots of languages being spoken on the streets, a couple of people smoking big cigarettes, cigars at cafe tables. I think slightly wannabe, but you've got the idea.

B

Alena, you have recently returned from your native Ukraine, which is helpful as we will shortly be talking about it. But just as a general sense,

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how

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would you gauge the mood now among the people you spoke to while there?

A

The mood would probably be cautiously optimistic with the underlying exhaustion that's beyond people's comprehension. Everyone is kind of firmly in survival mode for over four years now, so it's difficult to get any enthusiastic optimism out of people, especially with the looming winter. That is promised to be even more difficult than the previous one with the lack of thermal power plants and proper infrastructure to keep the heating and the lights on in Ukraine. So people are really dreading what's to come. The prices are increasing tremendously, the inflation is all time high, everything is really expensive. So it's quite difficult to survive. And imagine on top of that you see on the news every day different bombardments and civilians getting killed and you have funerals in your hometowns at least once a week with soldiers coming from the east. So the mood is cautiously optimistic in terms of Ukrainian successful strikes on Russia and its infrastructure. There is a hope, a timid hope that they will continue new and they will grow into a bigger momentum. But for now the mood is still pretty dire as you can imagine after four and a half years of war.

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Well, we will start in Ukraine where several cities are hosting protests against President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's decision to sack Ukraine's Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. Fedorov was only appointed in January, but the months since have been pretty good for Ukraine. Fedorov brought the expertise gleaned from his previous role as Minister of Digital Transformation to put data to work in the service of Ukraine's defence. He is also credited persuading SpaceX proprietor Elon Musk to disconnect Russia from his Starlink satellites, considerably hampering the ability of Russia's military to operate. The issue appears to have been some species of falling out between Fedorov and the Commander in Chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces, General Oleksandr Syrchky. Alena, as far as it is possible to tell what has gone on here.

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So the thing is, the main point of contestation as you rightly mentioned, was not necessarily the conflict but the disagree agreement between the innovative young 35 year old minister of Defense who come from being the Minister of digitalization. He's basically created the whole digital infrastructure for Ukraine in the last four years. Very innovative, very tech focused. The one who decided to create the army of drones and first started actually putting the usage of drones into a system that translated into a drone warfare that we're seeing in Ukraine now of course with different brigades and drone units. It was all in collaboration, but he definitely spearheaded that process even in his previous job. And then as it is in Ukraine with everything, we also have the older generation, especially in the military, who still come from their Soviet backgrounds with Soviet style leadership and processes. And very often General Syrsky was described as that as effective to an extent, but still a very Soviet style, very paternalistic leader in the army and clearly the Two visions did not align.

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Well, clearly not. I mean, James, trying to see this as President Zelenskyy might have seen it, obviously it's not ideal in the best of circumstances if your Minister of Defence and the chief of your defence forces are not getting on, but in conditions of existential war, it's clearly intolerable. Did you, did he basically have to sack one of them?

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Well, I think he probably did. I mean, I think the way this dispute has flared up or at least come into the public gaze, it's presumably been going on for quite a long time, is a reminder that even when a country is at war, these political tensions still continue to exist. To a large extent, as you say, you know, the President has probably been able to keep a lid on this because of the requirements to do so. But it does remind that, you know, a point comes where the different parts of the machine, in this case particularly the political and the military, aren't working harmoniously together, then somebody probably does have to go. But it is interesting to think that at a time, you know, as Leona's been saying about people in Ukraine have so many pressing day to day concerns. Still people will come out on the streets for a political demonstration because they feel it's such an important issue.

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I mean, this also comes a matter of days after the resignation of the Prime Minister, Yulia Sievridenko. She was barely in the job a year herself. Is there a sense of a somewhat chronic problem at the top of Ukraine's government?

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I think it's definitely very challenging to be leading a government under such pressure, under war. A lot of problems that Ukrainian economy and just Ukraine as a country is facing, they're very unconventional. A lot of problems you have to solve ad hoc. Ukraine is fully relying on finances. Coming from the eu, there's a lot of requirements that come with that. And of course there's an age old issue of transparency in Ukraine and clearing out the corruption, enhancing transparency, performing the reforms that the European Union is expecting as Ukraine is approaching its membership. Hopefully all of that is extremely challenging and it's unsurprising to see that the ministers and the Prime Minister even have to change so rapidly now. How effective the new one will be we will only see with time, of course.

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Is this something Ukraine needs to watch from a, I guess you could say a theatrical, cosmetic view as well, James? Because obviously one of their biggest nominal supporters, I.e. the United States, has an administration at the moment which would be happy to seize upon any excuse to cut Ukraine loose. Does this doesn't Help, does it?

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It probably doesn't. But, I mean, I think if you, if we look in a broader European context at the way that politics are, I mean, take this country, Andrew. We're about to have our seventh prime minister in 10 years. It's unprecedented. So I think, you know, really, that Ukraine has been at war, and a lot of these tensions, therefore, have been suppressed by the requirement to suppress them. I don't think it does really look too bad. But, I mean, it is, of course, as you rightly point out, the kind of pretext that the United States might use to the current administration, at least might use to say, well, wait a minute, let's, you know, have another look at this.

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You mentioned earlier Alena Fedorov's relative youth. He is only 35. And a lot of the reports of the protests, which I think it's fair to say are not absolutely enormous, but they're a pretty decent size and certainly, I think, bigger than you would see in most countries on the occasion of the sacking of the defense minister. But they are notably young people. I'm just wondering more broadly, and this is a conversation I was having with a few people when we were both, in fact, in Odessa in June, whether you're getting a sense of something of a generation gap opening up in Ukraine, I guess, between that generation of people who would be in their mid to late 20s now, and so whose, I guess, entire adult understanding of this has been forged by the war their country is living through, and those people a couple of generations down the track.

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It's certainly going to be a very interesting generation, and I hope they cope and manage well to build the country, because as you rightly mentioned, Ukraine has been at war for over a decade now, and they grew up being at war. They know no other reality, unfortunately. But I'm not sure about the gap per se. There's definitely a gap between the politicians and the government officials who used to work under certain circumstances before and trying to move into the new Ukraine that operates by European rules and especially by the incoming EU rules. In terms of people themselves, I'm a millennial, proud millennial, I guess you would say. I was there on the protests in 2004 and later 2014. My parents, who were born in the 60s in the Soviet Union, they supported me because there's defin definitely a consensus in Ukrainian state and generally Ukrainian society. And I think that's the result of why we have these protests, that everybody cares about making this country work and making it a decent home for all of us. And I think simply the youth just has the most energy of everybody else and everyone is just supporting them mentally.

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Well, to Turkey now, where roughly 10 years ago, right now, it was becoming clear that an attempted coup d' etat against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may not have been thought all the way through by the conspirators in a possibly unguarded moment. At the time, Erdogan referred to the botched putsch as a gift from God, and certainly seemed grateful for it afterwards. In the immediate aftermath, tens of thousands of people were sacked, arrested or otherwise purged. And in the decade since, the number of Turks investigated and or tried on terrorism charges runs into the millions. Erdogan remains president. James it does seem that the coup d' etat heus, though I'm sure it wasn't their intention, did do him kind

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of a favour, though, in the light of what's happened since. Very much so, yes. I mean, I think we've seen attempts to suppress any kind of political opposition. I note that Turkey has gone even further down. The World Press Freedom Index is compiled by Reporters Without Borders, Reporters On Frontier. So it's very, very difficult. And I'm a member of penn, the writers organization that campaigns for free speech around the world, and we frequently get information about writers and other people in jail simply for trying to express their opinion. So I think it's a very, very difficult political climate. And while this latest decision to review the conclusion of the late recent opposition party congress to have a new leader was apparently a legal one, it seems that none of the people but take that at face value and that don't see this as an independent judicial decision.

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I do want to come back to that one. But before we do that, Adiona, despite whatever reservations one may reasonably have about President Erdogan, is it, despite everything, a good thing that the coup d' etat failed because Erdogan was elected president? There is no doubt about that. And obviously it would be somewhat suboptimal if the military of a NATO ally went about seizing power.

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Absolutely. And when that power is being grabbed by military, military that you don't really know what to expect from them, because they would always act in ways that are much harsher than political leaders. So on the one hand, I think that's definitely a positive. I'm always a proponent of peaceful transitions and having been a participant of two revolutions in Ukraine, that's how we try to do it, certainly. But on the other hand, it did give a carte blanche to Erdogan to establish his even stronger powers and to ignore quite a lot of processes and freedoms that democracy should have. And unfortunately, it is moving closer and closer to authoritarianism, because explicitly or implicitly,

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James, is the pitch that Erdogan has made to, well, to the rest of NATO, especially, that it's me. Like me or not, or chaos.

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Well, I think it's me that you can rely upon. I think very much so. Although I did notice the recent NATO summit. He presented the other leaders with pistols. I think I've got that right. As they're sort of going home,

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he gave them revolvers and live ammunition, which apparently a couple of them did not realize until they were opened at customs. I don't know whether. I don't know whether Erdogan thought he was being funny or not.

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Yeah. But, I mean, I think that that's. That's what he offers to the. To the broader military alliance. He offers this reliability, you know, in a time when there's a. Of change and there's a lot of uncertainty in the world. And as you say, I think his message is, you can count on me to be who I say I will be, like it or not.

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But he is kind of a pioneer, I think it's fair to say, Alena, of a sort of not quite democratic leader. I mean, there is another Turkish presidential election due in May 2028. I mean, I get the definite sense that Erdogan is not in any great hurry to move out of that vast and ghastly palace he has built himself in Ankara. But is there? It's difficult for, I guess, Turkey's allies to make the calculation about whether we make a fuss about this or whether we take the risks attached to making a fuss about this.

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I think we will definitely see, and probably that would be a good time to start making a fuss about it. When we start approaching 2028 and we actually see whether he will allow the elections to happen in 2028, when he's no longer, according to constitution, allowed to run, or if he will try to call the snap elections to run again and secure another term. So I think if that happens, the European, at least allies from NATO should have a word in that. But otherwise, when we're living in such a world of extreme geopolitical fragmentation, we're seeing the rise of middle powers in Turkey is one of them and is definitely on the ascending front. It has a very unique ability to be part of the west community, to be part of NATO and provide that front, but also have open communication channel with Russia, try to build strong relationships with Middle east, and that's partly what NATO summit in Ankara was focused on as well. And those are truly authoritarian leaders. So he's kind of like a bridge between the two. No wonder Turkey sits on Bosphorus and is in between the two worlds.

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James, I just want to go back to the the situation you alluded to earlier, and this was the none too independent Turkish judiciary deciding that Oscar Ozil could not be the new leader of the Republican People's Party, which is an opposition party. Obviously Oscar Ozil is now talking about setting up a new party and you have to admire his optimism because I mean, won't that just get strangled by compliant judges as well on some risibly dubious pretexts?

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You'd imagine so. But the more that these risibly dubious pretexts are presented, the less credibility. I mean, of course they can still be enforced, but it seems a reasonable recourse in the first instance. But it does also seem remarkable that a court can decide on what a supposedly independent political party's decisions are and reverse them. I mean, it's very hard to imagine in many functioning democracies that somebody, one political party says, here's our new leader. And the court says, no, it's not.

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Well, to China now, the Communist Party of which has never been reticent about interfering in the private lives of its subjects, but which possibly for the first time deserves some sympathy for so doing. Perturbed by the numbers of Chinese who have apparently become over invested, which is to say at all invested in relationships with chatbots, it has been decreed that the encouraging of emotional reliance by chatbots is henceforth forbidden. The CCP believes, doubtless correctly, that people becoming romantically entwined with chatbots is unlikely to nudge China's birth rate upwards. But it seems fair in this context to ask some pretty rugged questions about the kind of people we actually want to see reproducing. First of all, would anybody like to admit being in an intimate relationship with a chatbot where I am one?

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I would admit it, Andrew, but I'm not.

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So that was a long hesitation.

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I know you've had even more time to come up with an answer.

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Thankfully not Thankfully. He could be one of my boyfriends, but he's not.

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Well, but the night he's young. I mean, does anybody, James Ola, ask you, first of all, do you if we're trying to be not entirely derisive about this, don't try too hard. But do we understand why, why anybody would actually want this?

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Well, I didn't really. Andrew, I have to say So I, I watched a report by Reuters news agency from little earlier this year. I don't know if it's about. From China actually, about a woman who decided not to give her second name, but she was on camera. So I guess if anyone knew her they would probably be able to identify her. And she said that having this chatbot boyfriend was extremely convenient because she could be with him on her tablet when she wanted and when she didn't want to, she could live her own life. I mean, I mean it kind of didn't work for me, but maybe I'm not the target audience.

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I can see the convenience argument, I guess. Alyona but should they not be more perturbed by the fact that this doesn't actually exist?

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I mean it's a complete delusion and I was just going to say you can have a real boyfriend, in fact several when you're dating and you can still ignore them when you want to.

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It's not really a problem. That's the thing. It's interesting though because I lived abroad for a number of years and I came back to the UK in 2004 and this is something else. I checked on this afternoon. There was a massive, massive social problem then or the big sort of moral crisis was teenage pregnancy. So that's gone away. It's never in public debate ANYM. And apparently UK there's been a 50% decrease in under 18 conception rates since 1999 in this country. And what has happened in the meantime? Social media. Now that's going to be banned. Now what on earth is going to happen now? The under 16s are going to be banned from social media. But there does seem to be a correlation. I mean one assumes that that's the reason because young people, teenagers at least interact more on social media than they did in person and it has had an effect, you know, on teenage pregnancy rates. And presumably the Chinese Communist Party is worried there's a similar effect on conception rates in China.

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Well, clearly. But if we just think about this from a basically, I guess, ethical, moral point of view, Aliona, if people do wish to spend their time investing in a relationship with an obviously non existent entity, one could insert one's own jokes about organised religion at this point, but is it actually any of the state's business?

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Well, that's the age old discussion about liberalism.

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Right?

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How much does the state control your personal life? And I think I would rather have some guardrails, definitely. We have seen recent decision by the UK government to ban the use of social media for teenagers under 16s. I think China is trying to ban virtual boyfriends and girlfriends for minors, which I think is a sane decision. They're extremely impressionable. But then if people are delusional enough that, you know, they, they want to be distracted by something and, and get away from this reality, they will it. It has always been the case for the humankind, be it with drugs or later social media or now AI we will have to go through that phase and it will definitely get much worse before it starts getting better.

B

I mean in a nicely JG Ballardian maneuver as well. James, the states of California and New York for two now require chatbots to remind users every so often that they're not real. But, but a variation on the same question. Is this any weirder than for example, people spending many hours, as many people do, pretending that they are leading an army in battle or coaching a football team via the medium of a video game?

C

No, I guess it's kind of up to them. But I mean I think there's a sort of strategic point here, isn't there for. Because of China's troubled birth rate and it is one of those things that

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the government they troubled about this there is not a shortage of Chinese people.

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Well that they seem to think that there is, I mean because it's a complete reverse of the policy of some decades. Indeed. So and I'm reminded of. And we're probably not going to talk about football this evening, but I'm going to mention it briefly. When I was a kid I had a book about the history of football and Henry VIII, who was king here in the 16th century, banned football because he thought people weren't spending enough time doing archery in their spare time and it was a strategic loss to the country. So there's a similar 21st century equivalent there, I think.

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Well, I mean James, if the people of this country had spent more of the last five centuries working on their

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archery or indeed working on their football,

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or indeed working on their football, we might be a happier nation. But just what I do wonder, Aliona, just finally on this one is I like to think every so often about like, what is the thing that we do now that just seems like normal and part of everyday life that 30 or 40 years from now people will regard as just completely insane in much the same way that we might now think of as people smoking in cinemas. Is this going to be it?

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Basically, absolutely, it's definitely going to be it. When later on some historians will be describing how people had affairs with unimaginable just friends that never existed and basically probably proclaim that we were all mentally challenged. But as I've said before, I fear that, that this is all going to get worse before it gets better. Because with agentic AI, we will be seeing a virtual boyfriend or girlfriend that is much more active, that could make decisions for us, advise us on our life plans and really insert themselves into our reality, choosing what we read, how we perceive certain things, how we vote, what we eat, where we travel. That is just only about to blow up.

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Well, on that ghastly thought, we will go back sort of to where we came in. The UK's Prime Minister Sakir Starmer is in Ukraine, undertaking his last overseas trip in his present role. Yesterday he appeared for the final time at Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons, a weekly set piece not usually noted for its crossbench bipartisan bonhumie. But both Starmer and opposition leader Kemi Badenoch opted on this occasion to set aside their differences. Let's have a look.

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Mr. Speaker, I know how much the

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Prime Minister has come to enjoy our exchanges.

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In fact, in the King's speech last month he told me that on difficult days my input was always a ray of sunshine. We have had robust exchanges across this dispatch box, but she has extended kindness to me private, privately, at very difficult times. She knows this is robust and it has to be robust and that's the way politics is done. But the kindnesses that sit behind it privately are often just as powerful, if not more powerful, and I thank her for that. Kemi Badnok and Sakiya Starmer at PMQ's yesterday. Alyoni, you have met a lot of politicians, Ukrainian, British and otherwise. Do you suspect that this may be more illustrative of what their day to day life is like than the usual sort of screeching and bun throwing?

A

It's nice to be reminded every now and again that politicians are still humans. It gives us hope for humanity in general and I think that was a very nice farewell exchange for the Prime Minister. And despite many failures that we all know and have discussed many times, he was a good Prime Minister for the last two years for this country and he definitely was a great leader for the Labour Party, having turned around it from some very difficult times. And you know, he has faced quite a lot of challenges in the office with the US President, with ongoing war in Ukraine, with the new war in Iran. So I'm sure it wasn't easy for him to navigate. And it's always nice to see that politicians can still remain humans and Just

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an extra point there, Alena. I think it's not insignificant that he went to Ukraine for. Well, it wasn't supposed to be his final trip. I think he rather hoped his final trip would be to see England play in the World Cup Final on Sunday night. Do you think there was an aspect of him deciding, well, I'm going to spend my last day at work going where I'm actually appreciated?

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Well, I'm sure he. I am certain that he definitely feels appreciated in Ukraine today. He's received an Order of Freedom and new awards that Ukraine has introduced, especially for foreign leaders who helped Ukraine at this most difficult time. I'm sure that both the government and the people of Ukraine are very touched to see him there in one of his last days in the office and will definitely be grateful to him, as many other previous Prime Ministers who have been with Ukraine at the hardest time.

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To return to PMQs, though, James, I rather suspect that a lot of it is performative and I think it probably has to be, because whenever people are asked in vox pops, et cetera, what they think about PMQs, they all go, oh, it's terrible, isn't it? All this shouting and rowdiness. It's what the public actually want. In much the same way that people always pretend to be appalled when there's a fight in a football game. But everybody obviously enjoys it tremendously, always

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says, no one likes to see scenes like this.

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It's rubbish. Everybody wants to see. Everybody wants to see. Everybody wants to see scenes like that.

C

Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting. I mean, PMQ's is at the heart of our system. If you think about other parliaments, and I'm thinking here particularly of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, or I'm thinking of the Danish Parliament, they are set out in semicircles, and these are parliaments which are built on cooperation where compromise is prized. But we've got a much more confrontational political culture in this country where, for people who don't know the truth, the two parties sit broadly across from each other. We heard the Prime Minister talking about meeting encounters across this dispatch box. It's legendarily supposed to be more than two swords length apart, so that if you had to draw your sword, you couldn't actually.

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That may be an urban myth, but it's a cute story.

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But it makes a good point. It does make a good point about the confrontational nature of politics in this country, whereas in other political cultures, the ability to make a compromise and make it work is highly valued. Not so in this country. So I think it was important and it was interesting and. And Kemi Badenoch there was praised by the Prime Minister for having reached out to him in times of personal difficulty, which included the death of his brother from cancer. So I think it is heartening to know in very, very confrontational and divided political times that there is still this sort of common courtesy that goes on at least behind the scenes. But you know, when it's match day, as it were, when it's 12 o' clock on a Wednesday, then it's of kind. Game on.

B

I mean, Ukraine does also have traditionally a fairly rowdy political culture as well, Alena.

C

Those.

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I mean, your own parliament has descended into outright fisticuffs more than once. And again, one of those things, everybody pretends to be appalled, everybody actually thinks this is just tremendous. But as you've come to understand the British, and this is my own suspicion from living among them, I think they'd hate it if their politicians were always this pleasant and this, you know, collegiate with each other. I'm thinking there was a story a few years ago, a very good piece, I think, written by Gabby Hinsliffe, definitely in the Guardian and at the risk of regarding the below the line comments as indicative of anything, she wrote this really nice piece about cross bench friendships that exist in the House of Commons. Like, you know, so she interviewed Tory MPs who were really good mates with Labor MPS, Lib Dems who got on absolutely fine with Scottish nationalists, et cetera. And people in the comments absolutely lost their minds. They thought this was, this was appalling and unbearable and illustrative that the whole thing was just a big cosy stitch.

A

Their whole world crumbled.

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It did.

A

I think it confirms your previous comments that, you know, the audience just wants what the bread and scenery as, as it did in ancient Rome performance. I think political views are historically divisive, so they want, people want to see that played out more. Very fair comment about Ukrainian Parliament. When James was talking about semicircles and consensus, I was thinking back to those scenes with eggs being thrown at each other and all sorts of performances. Luckily, the UK Parliament, there's a lot of strong exchanges that are very brave, but there is never fist fighting. So I think even that is enough to be proud of this parliament.

B

Alena Hlivko and James Rogers, thanks both for joining us. We'll end the show with a dive into the world of Italian interdisciplinary artist Eliza Giard Papa. Her latest exhibition opens tomorrow at London's Institute of Contemporary Art. It's a video and mixed media installation which examines the geological, mythological and political temporalities of the Mediterranean. Monocle's Josefina Astrid Nagla Gomez went to meet her.

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So the piece is called she Flickered in and out of History and is part of a trilogy of video installations that explores forgotten and erased Mediterranean histories. The work is dedicated to an island that emerged and disappeared into the Mediterranean Sea. That is, in 1831, an underwater volcanic eruption gave rise to a new landform between Tunisia and Sicily. And it sparked this violent sovereignty dispute among European powers. England arrived first, planted a flag on its shores and called it the Graham Island. Then came Spain, then France, then the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Sicily was not part of Italy at the time. We were under the. The Bourbon crown. So we were part of the kingdom of the two Sicilies. So they gave to this island 12 different names and claimed for four different empires. Only after five months, the island disappeared under the sea. So the work is dedicated to the illuminatory potential of an island that refused to be annexed, an island that refused the imperial logic of conquest. This film is about withdrawal and refusal, right? So it refuses the idea that land, or an island, in this case, or a geological event, is something that can be captured. A geological event cannot be captured. A volcano cannot, cannot be captured. And so the island is never fully portrayed, is always portrayed as these unbounded formations of resurfacing volcanic matter that is always on the verge of emergence and is always on the verge of disappearance. And that is the connection with the we, right? We always need a we to begin any kind of political process. But that we is always. Is not something that is stable, is always on the verge of emergence, but always on the verge potentially of disappearing. When the island emerged, photography was not yet invented or like just at the beginning, right? So we don't have any photos of the island, we just have these drawings. And every drawing is completely different because the island is a shape shifter, is changing shape is changing manner, measurement, is changing, even the material composition, continuously for those five months. So it basically unsettled this calculative gaze, the imperial, ordering gaze, right? And renders these projects of conquest absurd. Nature was a constant reminder of just a different scale of time, right? Because like, the film was shot up on the edge of, for example, that is the main volcano in Sicily. And the volcano was continuously erupting for all the summer in which we had to shoot. So we had to keep postponing the shooting, the filming. And that was a good reminder of this Other timescale, a geological time scale that doesn't care about human affairs. It doesn't care about. It makes the. You want a timeline, just one among the many, and probably not even the most important one, I guess for all of us involved in the project, the story of the island became this framework for rethinking sovereignty, borders, belonging. And so that is why towards the end of the film, we created this provisional slippage between elemental and political antagonism. So moments in which again, that we. That we were talking about emerges and destabilize existing structural power. So we do suggest some of those moments towards the end of the film, naming some dates. For example, the 1968, which is the Stonewall riots. The 2010, which is the beginning of the Tunisian revolution. The 1954, which is the beginning of the Algerian war of independence, or 2015, which is a new Nameos revolt which started in Buenos Aires against the feminicide. So those dates and other like dates that we reference in that part of the film are of course moments of anti colonial, anti patriarchal and anti heteronormative antagonism, which this list emerged from a collaborative process of the people, among the people that worked on the film. But of course the list is never conclusive, right? So it can always be expanded, revised and continued. For me, retelling a story is always a possibility, possibility to activate an emancipatory political possibility and hopefully the one that is most needed at the moment, in this moment that we know. I mean, we've seen in the last years how these violent territorial claims are like, put forward once again in this, like crazy imperial logic of conquest. They are like again, resurgence. For me, to retell the story of this island, which I knew since I was a child, is a way to invite, maybe a reflection on the authority of these territorial claims, right? And what are the conditions that produce them and more importantly, the possibility of refusal.

B

That exhibition opens tomorrow and is on at the ICA until September 6th. That is all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Eliona Livco and James Rogers. Today's show was produced by Thomas Waterhouse and research by Nkayli Martin. Our studio manager was Steph Changu. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening,

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Sam.