| dc.description.abstract | A View of Things to Come explores how bacteria, fungi, and plants can produce cinematic art, with or without us. I approach these beings as artistically and pedagogically insightful companions, interrogating, rethinking, and stretching cinema through bacterial, fungal, and vegetal forms of consciousness. Analysing biological phenomena (e.g., biofilms) alongside media co-produced with bacteria, fungi, plants, and even weather, I challenge traditional concepts of consciousness and cinema as exclusively anthropogenic phenomena whilst articulating all beings' non-exceptional ability to express their subjectivity. I do not render beings’ differences insignificant. Rather I exalt beings’ differences, mutual dependencies, and individual gifts. I advance terms by which cinema can be explored through bacterial, fungal, and vegetal interventions, and delineate the conceptual and material parameters of a justifiable film practice, which can never fully exist. If cinema requires consuming earthbound materials, how can we justify its continuation amidst accelerating climate crisis? Furthermore, I propose the option, perhaps necessity, of the cinema industry’s abandonment, whilst exploring the existence of film practices that might exist in perpetuity or, alternatively, post-industrial scenarios, alongside the possibility of cinematic experiences in the absence of anthropogenic paraphernalia. I subsequently intervene in critical plant studies, and debates concerning cinema’s materiality and environmental impact. | en_US |
