Michael Krawczyk
Griffith University, Brisbane (Australia)
Dwelling in the ‘South’. On Land, Permaculture and Cinema
The Anthropocene is the new geological epoch that situates humans as the main force determining the future of the earth. As an environmental humanist using the cinematic form of (re)presentation as an alternative to text-based research, I contribute to interdisciplinary research by visualizing our entanglement with the “earth others” to help imagine multispecies futures.
As Anna Tsing kindly reminds us, ruins are our gardens right now. Degraded, ‘blasted’ landscapes produce our livelihoods. Even the most promising oasis of natural plenty requires massive intervention of maintenance. For ‘LiFE, I’d like to propose a cinematic storytelling (short film, 15min) from my ethnographic fieldwork in permacultural site in Sicily (Italy), on regenerative dwelling inspired by permaculture ethics. Permaculture is an ecological design system which provides a concrete set of guidelines for discerning ecologically appropriate actions in specific contexts, based on an ethic care for the earth, care for the people, and fair share. Permaculture envisions a role for humans as responsive participants in ecosystems and can be understood as a way to embody a practical wisdom that could facilitate a shift toward an ecological epoch.
Cinema has a unique affinity with the Anthropocene, given its origins in the materials and technologies produced by the Industrial Revolution. Such affinity runs even deeper as cinematic production involved artificial world-making, unnatural weather and multiple eco-cataclysms, allowing the viewers to perceive anthropogenic environments. And yet, as I argue, moving images have the capacity to be part of the world’s ecological solution, and not just the part of the problem. Moving images can have a regenerative agency on us, they can revivify our relationship to the world by enabling us to find and articulate new and innovative socio-ecological meanings and capacities. Cinema, yes, has an impact on the earth’s resources, but concurrently it has an impact on our imagination, carrying the transformative role of affecting our actions.
Michal Krawczyk is a PhD candidate at Griffith University (Brisbane, Australia) within the field of Environmental Humanities. His work combines ethnography with ecocinema, and he is currently developing an ethnographic project to be lived with two families practicing permaculture in Italy and Australia. His first film ‘Yuyos’ (2018), co-directed with Giulia Lepori (PhD candidate at Griffith University), has been screened at film festivals and conferences worldwide through 2018-2019. Their new cinematic project ‘LAND/SCAPE’, an experimental multispecies collaboration between humans and donkeys is currently being submitted to film festivals. He combines audio visual artistic research with activism. For more information about Michal’s work please visit: https://vimeo.com/earthcare