'Images of Ecology' and 'Ecologies of Images'

Abstract

Building on Guattari’s three ecologies – the mental, natural and social –, and recently emerging discourses in documentary theory on interactive media making, co-creation and polyphony, this presentation discusses both notions of ‘images of ecology’ and ‘ecologies of images’ to fathom the potential of mobile, networked documentary media assemblages to encourage multilogue, to affectively and cognitively embrace complexity and to instigate transformation. Taking a project which is currently work in progress – the transdisciplinary polyphonic artistic research Mind the Gap! –, tentative answers are suggested to the question of how to face a situation of intermingled crises: the crisis of representation in the representation of crisis. Guiding questions are: How can one raise alert to immanent ecological risks and at the same time co-creatively awaken a desire for a more sustainable world? How can one promote awareness of ecological topics when risk is immanent but often invisible and when fundamental transformations are vital, but when, at the same time, the complexity of matters thwarts responsible action-taking? The hypothesis underlying the approach of this paper is that interactive documentary media configuration bear the potential to face both crises, especially those configurations which are based on principles of co-creation, polyphony and multi-perspectivity. This openness, I will claim, does not only do justice to the entanglement of issues at stake, but it also teaches us to listen to and to consider various viewpoints as openers to possibility spaces for negotiation and solution finding rather than fixed resolutions. Still, meaningful engagement requires multimodal competences and literacies, involving system thinking, socio-emotional aptitudes, and a cognizance of the interwovenness of the symbolic, material, phenomenological and political dimensions of ‘images of ecology’ and ‘ecologies of images’ (cf. López 2020). Hence, Mind the Gap! combines mindfulness and self-reflection with competences of mobile media making and artistic self-expression as well as socio-emotional skills to encourage experiential and experimental learning. Participants are invited to use their smartphones to create visual haikus while mindfully being in Nature. Analogousue to the literary haiku, they take three images or short videos which are shared and negotiated on a co-creative website. This growing collection serves several functions: 1) it documents the title-giving ‘gap’ that we risk due to a loss of biodiversity; 2) it presents a creative strategy to cope with a situation which either usually remains abstract and far away, or which is overwhelming and often causes resignation; 3) it is meant as a point of departure to stimulate exchange and to form a community of concern for further action taking; and 4) from a methodological perspective, strategies are deduced for multimodal eco-media literacies, responsive listening and understanding. Discourses from various traditions are brought into dialogue: theories of interactive media are reconsidered through the lens of ecocriticism and environmental humanities; concepts of mobile media making and “emplaced interaction“ (Aston 2017) meet reflections on the epistemic dimension of documentary; and principles of co-creation are related to theories of self-reflexive mindfulness and nature observation, creative expressivity and agency.