When the tangles arrived is a 3½-minute speculative moving-image work emerging from several years of artistic and research collaboration around environmental health and just transitions in Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa. The work developed through my role as a Visiting Professor at Nelson Mandela University. See video below.

Set along the Gqeberha coastline, the work (of which a longer version exists -- click here) imagines the arrival of an unfamiliar life form known as the Tangles, which begin repairing its damaged coastal environments. However, their gift can only go so far. Poverty, inequality, fossil-fuel dependence, and entrenched ways of living continue to reproduce the conditions causing that damage. 'When the Tangles Arrived' asks what must change in us if our relationship with the coast is to change.

The concept of entanglement is central to both the work and my wider artistic-scientific work with colleagues in Nelson Mandela Bay – it is an easy-to-understand concept showing how people and communities become interconnected with, and dependent upon, the environments around them. For more on Entanglement and the lecture, CLICK HERE to read the proceedings.

On-site work is also central to the project. Many of the images originate from photographs around Nelson Mandela Bay, grounding the speculative narrative in the material conditions from which the work emerged.

My presentation of the video was part of my annual public lecture at Nelson Mandela University (South Africa). Much thanks to Andrea Hurst and Harsheila Riga  and Professor Pamela Maseko, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, for the opportunity to give the ISCIA Public Lectureon 16 September 2026.

The lecture was hosted through the SARChI Chair in Identities and Social Cohesion in Africa (ISCIA), led by Andrea, and forms part of a much wider collaboration I have developed with colleagues at Nelson Mandela University over the last several years. In terms of Durham University, where I work, I also want to thank the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing and the Durham Research Methods Centre, for supporting my work and for Jonathan Wistow for traveling with me on this trip.