img: still of Paisaje del retroprogreso (Jose Luis Tirado, 2010)

The contribution of numerous thinkers – including Descola (2014) and Viveiros de Castro (2004) – to the ontological turn was significant in that they challenged the historical separation between culture and nature, or between humanity and nature, and invited us to pay attention to other worldviews through which we learn and broaden our understanding of reality. Specifically, Amerindian perspectivism has given a voice to other, usually unexpected agents – such as rivers, rocks and jaguars – and demonstrates that these too construct their own realities beyond our own, which is centred on humanity. These perspectives reveal relationships with the world that some had already forgotten, involving all the agents that make our lives possible. Some of the leading voices are Davi Kopenawa and Ailton Krenak, both indigenous leaders and extraordinary philosophers, who denounce the ecological crimes taking place across the vast Amazon region – crimes that threaten the survival of more than two hundred indigenous communities – whilst teaching us to view the world from a non-Western and unconventional perspective. Indigenous communities have asserted their rights to the land and its protection, establishing themselves as a powerful force in the fight for environmental rights and becoming symbols of resistance to the unchecked extraction of resources. It is appalling to think that the lives of people who simply live differently are being put at risk in the name of so-called progress that seeks to turn rivers into waterways and deforest the Amazon.

→ El sistema / The system (Marco Godoy, 2022)

The film El sistema / The system draws attention precisely to this broken relationship between humankind and nature. Here we are confronted with a landscape devoid of human beings, in which a voice-over recites Eduardo Galeano’s text El sistema for a different audience: the trees, the ground and the animals, the generator and the loudspeakers – vestiges of our presence. The words echoing through the jungle seem to warn the natural world of something that is yet to come. Could this be a prediction of the total destruction of our natural world? When we speak of the ‘natural world’, we are also referring to the world of humans and our societies, which, without memory, will be nothing more than a mirage.

→ Bestiari (Albert Merino, 2017)

In Bestiari, we are presented with a city in which only the memory of human presence remains, without a single human body in sight. The inhabitants of this all-too-familiar city are that ‘other’ we have always looked down upon and threatened: the animal world. Amidst deer, gorillas and rhinos, the landscape seems to present us with an apocalyptic vision in which humans no longer exist in cities and the natural world has regained its original balance. I interpret this as a lesson in humility in the face of humanity’s immense arrogance in considering ourselves the centre of the world, superior to every other form of life. In the end, we see a ‘herd’ of humans walking on all fours, a sign that we are not so different from the four-legged animals we constantly endanger.

As we seclude ourselves in cities and lose sight of these elements, our connections with the natural world are severed and replaced by others of greater influence – ideas of progress such as consumerism, the accumulation of capital and the valorisation of individualism. Krenak, in his book-lecture *Ideas to Postpone the End of the World* (2019), says something that, in my view, is revolutionary: ‘Modernisation has driven these people out of the countryside and the forest to live in slums and on the outskirts, to become a labour force in urban centres. These people were torn from their communities, from their places of origin, and thrown into that blender called humanity.’ I believe it is time for us, the West, to listen to the other and to learn.
 

→ Pasaia Bitartean (Jonander Aguirre, Ana Aitana Fernández e Irati Gorostidi, 2016)

Pasaia Bitartean is a Basque documentary that reflects on the way we relate to the land and searches for methodologies for thinking about the city collectively. After all, what is the purpose of cities? The film explores the present-day situation in the municipality of Pasaia, revealing the temporal conflict of an industrial landscape in decline, like so many other cities that experienced demographic growth in this way. These areas, once hubs of employment that led so many people to leave their places of origin, now seem deserted. The film thus raises pertinent questions through its architecture, brilliant editing and voice-over which, blending poetry and narration, recounts a vulnerable relationship with the inhabited environment.
 

The term ‘Anthropocene’ refers to a concept which asserts that human activity has now surpassed the planet’s geological and biological forces in terms of its global impact, and that ‘geological and biospheric time has been fundamentally transformed by human activity’, as defined by Moore (2022). But by placing human beings at the centre of this system, “it has consequences for the idea of nature as something separate from the human sphere” (Natálio, 2012). We are once again distancing ourselves from nature, perpetuating the same dichotomy. Krenak explains it best: ‘We have become increasingly alienated from that organism of which we form part—the Earth—and have come to think of it as one thing and ourselves as another: the Earth and humanity. I cannot perceive where there is anything that is not nature. Everything is nature. The cosmos is nature. Everything I can think of is nature’ (2019). Instead of the Anthropocene, Moore argues that it is important to think of capitalism as the central axis of the epoch in which we live, ‘the epoch of capital, the historical era marked by the infinite accumulation of capital’ (2017), and that it is necessary to consider capitalism as a ‘situated, multispecies global ecology of capital, power and reproduction’ (Moore, 2016a and Haraway, 2016 in Moore, 2017). In this vein, I would like to reflect on the role of anthropology and art as mediators and agents capable of creating possibilities for future life in the face of a bleak future, and on how indigenous movements, artistic practices and multispecies ethnographies have led the debate on what it means to live with the earth, taking into account other experiences on the planet. ‘Humans are not the only interesting beings who have a perspective on existence. Many others do too” (Krenak, 2019).
 

→ Paisaje del Retroprogreso (José Luis Tirado, 2010)

An audiovisual essay that challenges the world order: democracy, capitalism and the environment. José Luis Tirado creates an oneiric universe, rich in sound, in which the written word bursts through the montage like a provocative discourse that instils courage and commitment, highlighting the scourge of neoliberalism on our planet. The electroacoustic sound composition by Fran mm Cabeza de Vaca and Ariadna Castells creates the dramatic atmosphere that tells the story of this humanity headed for destruction, which prioritises the accumulation of capital over any form of life, including human life. Halfway through the piece, a phrase catches our attention and reminds us of the importance of discernment: ‘rediscovering the meaning of limits’ (22’41). We need to understand the limits of our actions and reverse the destruction of the world, driven by this global economic system which insists on viewing nature as an obstacle to the unbridled exploitation of resources, and which regards the workforce solely as a resource to be exploited.
 

The tension between the artistic object – in this case, films – and the ethnographic object is interesting, as both can be viewed beyond systems of representation, as ‘systems of action’ (Gell, 1998) that act upon and/or intervene in a specific reality. What is produced, both in an ethnography and in a work of art, is regarded as an agent. There are various examples illustrating artistic practices that advocate for rights, expose crimes, raise issues and challenge the established order of things. Some are more explicit, others less so, but all act as devices that create a situation in which a relationship is established (Sansi, 2015) and something changes or is altered. Art is a way of acting upon the world. Thus, there are several artists engaged in the debate surrounding the Anthropocene, the end of the world and the capitalist system.

Art opens up new visions of the future, just as anthropology does. For García Canclini, ‘contemporary society lacks a project, a vision of the future in political and religious terms, (...) in this situation, art presents itself as a possibility’ (Canclini quoted by Sansi, 2017). Images and sound possess a special power, particularly when we consider otherness, in capturing unique moments of our planet’s destruction, such as melting glaciers and other environmental disasters. Not all audiovisual works serve a purely journalistic role of ‘showing’ what is happening. Some genuinely challenge the way the climate crisis is portrayed in the media and in digital popular culture. They propose that, rather than generating fear and paralysing panic in the face of the climate emergency, we need to create projects that point towards solutions – as ways of stimulating our imagination to achieve more constructive outcomes. Cinema, in particular, is a powerful tool for influencing the world. Its darkened auditorium and amplified sound system create a space in which we are completely immersed in the film.

Collaboration across disciplines is essential to subvert the logics and power structures that characterise hegemonic thinking. Faced with the prospect of collaborative survival in the Anthropocene, as outlined by Tsing (2015), I believe that interdisciplinarity is key to fostering greater reflection on the world in which we live and the direction in which we are heading. It is my hope that this will be achieved through ethnographies, narratives and works that have a positive impact on the world.
 

→ Manifestació de Bicicletes (Video-Nou, 1977)

‘Let’s make the city liveable’ was the slogan under which the first demonstration in support of ecology, the environment and a sustainable city was held in Barcelona in 1977. We conclude this essay with a short documentary filmed by the legendary Barcelona collective Vídeo-Nou, to recall the strength of organisation and collective power in the struggle for a better world shaped by the masses and the working class. In this video, we see thousands of people taking to the streets on bicycles to protest for a city worthy of its inhabitants, in favour of cycle lanes and against roads reserved exclusively for cars. This documentary, like others by the Vídeo-Nou collective, constitutes an important reference archive on film and video, and their potential to intervene in social life as tools capable of bringing about change. These are practices we must not forget if we are to fight for a more dignified world for all forms of life.

Sources

• BOREA, G., & YAHUARCANI, R. (2020). Amazonian Waterway, Amazonian Water-Worlds: Rivers in Government Projects and Indigenous Art
• DESCOLA, P. (2014). Modes of being and forms of predication
• GARCÍA CANCLINI, N. (2010). La sociedad sin relato: Antropología y estética de la inminencia
• GELL, A. (1998). Art and agency: An anthropological theory
• KRENAK, A. (2019). Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo
• MOORE, J. W., & BREDA, T. (Orgs.). (2022). Antropoceno ou Capitaloceno? Natureza, história e a crise do capitalismo
• NATÁLIO, R. (2022). Antropoceno ou o eterno garimpo do ou(t)ro
• SANSI, R. (2015). Art, anthropology and the gift
• TSING, A. (2015). The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins
• TSING, A. (2021). O Antropoceno mais que humano

AUTHOR

Diogo Pinheiro (Portugal, 2001) is an audiovisual artist and anthropologist. He combines sound and image with ethnographic practices to reflect on and explore visual culture, the development of future projects, the role of the city and ecology.