Screening Nature Network: Flora, Fauna, and the Moving Image

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The Screening Nature Network addresses the relationship between the natural world and the moving image via a mixed platform that includes a series of symposia, curated screenings, discussions between filmmakers, academics, and the public, and a project website. The research asks how ideas about the natural world contributed to the development of early cinema and how nature continues to inform the medium today. Ideas about cinema's ability (and limitations) to convey a non-anthropocentric perspective are at the heart of the project, whose eco-aesthetic focus is intimately linked to topical questions about the status of nature as an economic and aesthetic resource. Other themes that will be explored are the question of nonhuman agency, climate change, sustainability, and human-animal relations. The network showcases a programme of rarely seen moving image work, from early archival pieces to recent film and video work, with the aim of broadening the scope of debate on representations of the natural world beyond popular natural history broadcasting (e.g. the BBC's Planet Earth or Frozen Planet). The network will bring together stakeholders across several disciplines: Film Studies, ecology, philosophy, film and arts practice, cultural studies, as well as the general public. The first series of events will take place on 7-8 September 2012 at the Whitstable Biennale. This is the first time that an academic symposium and a themed series of screenings form an integral part of the Biennale, establishing an innovative crossover network between academics, artists, and the public. The Whitstable events will open with the Symposium Screening Nature held at the Horsebridge Arts & Community Centre, with confirmed keynotes by the renown scholars W.J.T. Mitchell (University of Chicago) and Claire Colebrook (Penn State), and invited speakers, ecocritic Greg Garrard (Bath Spa), historian Jonathan Burt (author of Animals in Film), and media and cultural studies scholar Jodi Berland (York University). The Symposium is followed by six curated Flora & Fauna screenings featuring a mixture of early film and contemporary artist film, video and sound works that deal with the relationship between ecology, nature, and the image. Screenings will include Question & Answers with the filmmakers and artist panel discussions, resulting in a comprehensive dialogue among filmgoers, visitors to the Biennale, academics, and artists. The second series of events (November '12-January '13) will be at the Goethe-Institut London, and include two public premieres of award-winning documentaries on ecology's place in the wider political and social context. The screenings will also be followed by a discussion between the filmmakers, film scholars, and the public. Two additional symposia in 2013 will complete this phase of the network's research and pave the way for its future work.By linking a wide range of communities, including local residents, visitors to the Whitstable Biennale, filmgoers, academics, activists, and artists, the project centres on fostering a genuine intersectional dialogue on the place of nature in film and the historical, political, and everyday consequences of the media circulation of natural images. The recent surge in natural history TV programming, commercial documentaries (e.g. March of the Penguins), or the BFI's DVD release of Secrets of Nature suggests a growing appetite to explore a wider range of nature filmmaking. The network harnesses this appetite to exhibit and debate historically crucial filmic materials (early scientific and exploration films, contemporary artist film and video, and experimental film), all of which offer fascinating counterpoints to popular wildlife filmmaking. The network sets out to bridge the gap between art, academia, and public engagement. Thus, the network seeks to make a concrete intervention into existing conversations on nature's place within a diverse film culture at a time of ecological crisis.