I finish writing the talk at the same time as my phone alarm rings, reminding me to leave the relative warmth of our studio to receive NOAA-18's transmission. The satellite will pass 77º overhead. It always feels like a waste to not catch such a 'good' pass, so I pack my ground station bag make the short cycle to the edge of the Augarten park. I have learned to stay outside the its impressive brick perimeter wall, so as to avoid confrontation with Austrian rules-based culture. In the past year, multiple gardeners have told me that I need permission to have an antenna in the park and my German is not good enough to argue. The satellite is above the horizon when I hit record. I use the 10 minutes of bleep-bleeps to think about what I will say tonight. The talk is written, but I want to begin with a pause to think of Gaza, our former classmates, friends and colleagues in the Middle East, and to hold in our minds those whose names we will never know but whose existence is resistance to Israel's genocidal drive. The architectural exhibition that the talk is a response to is a installation of Breathe Earth Collective's archive. Material samples, organic matter, salt, copper pipes and more fill the gallery space, each exhibit labelled with a small paper number as part of archeological dig or forensic scene. This anarchic yet indexed presentation and the earthy smell of decay in the gallery reminded me of the book 'M Archive: After the end of the world' by American writer and poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs, in particular her description of an 'Archive of Dirt'. The book is dedicated "to the purveyors of our bright black future". Tonight I will read for Gaza the following poem:

they came with sugar not of sugarcane
sweetness not of cotton but of air
they came with cakes not funneled down to grease
with layers like clouds
they came every day like it was their birthday
or yours one or both
that was when they first came

and then they came with salt
with water and blood to wash you
they came with spit and sand to shine you
they came with cleansing first in mind
and woke your soul with it

next time they come
i hope they bring soil and green
soothe for the roots
i hope they bring dirt and depth
and plant us in it
we could sure use the grounding
for remembering earth'

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, 2018