The lecture explores ecomedia – a category born at the intersection of researching visual culture, environmental humanities (including humanities analysing culture’s associations with the logics of a fossil fuel-dependent society), postcolonial theory and media theory. Expanding beyond eco-criticism, it opens up to numerous approaches undermining dominance- and exclusion-based worldviews: feminist and queer theories; de-colonisation, and the perspective of disability studies. The ecomedia approach offers a relevant response to notorious issues of the Anthropocene, including climate crisis, and neocolonial extractivism policies disregarding their ecological consequences or social cost, the logics of Plantationocene, and the elimination of biodiversity (occasionally referred to as the sixth extinction, a term coined by Elizabeth Kolbert).
The ecomedia-based perspective is a proposition that allows for understanding inter-relations connecting fibre optics, clouds, soil and oceans (and anything in-between). It is one of the research practices calling for a verification of anthropocenic and extractivist ideologies our worldviews are based on.
Should one adopt Marshall McLuhan’s classic propositions as a point of departure for modern media theory, one might well claim that they had initially been highly anthropocentric. Media were originally perceived as a tool of expanding the human sensorium. Is the anthropocentric perspective unavoidable in media theory? Could earth, air, water and fire be considered media? Is Gaia a media platform? On the other hand, can we afford to exclude the ecological cost of basic media-related infrastructures in any research of media-based cultural practices? In what way does the media theory fit into the ideology of extractivism? The lecture raises these and other questions, following the less frequented paths, and reaching for theoretical propositions offered by John Durham Peters, Cajetan Iheka or Melody Jue (among others).
Martín Arboleda, Planetary Mine. Territories of Extraction under Late Capitalism (Kopalnia planetarna. Terytoria wydobywcze w czasach późnego kapitalizmu), Verso, London-New York 2020.
Anna Barcz, Environmental Cultures in Soviet East Europe. Literature, History and Memory (Kultury ekologiczne w radzieckiej Europie Wschodniej. Literatura, historia i pamięć), Bloomsbury Publishing 2020.
Ewa Bińczyk, Uspołecznianie antropocenu. Ekowerwa i ekologizowanie ekonomii (Socialising the Anthropocene. The Eco-Verve and Ecologising Economics), Nicolaus Copernicus University Press, Toruń 2024.
Cajetan Iheka, African Ecomedia. Network Forms, Planetary Politics (Afrykańskie ekomedia. Formy sieci, polityki planetarne), Duke University Press, Durham-London 2021.
Melody Jue, Wild Blue Media. Thinking Through Seawater (Błękitna dzikość mediów. Myślenie oparte na wodach morskich i oceanicznych), Duke University Press, Durham-London 2020.
Andrzej Marzec, Antropocień. Filozofia i estetyka po końcu świata (The Anthropo-Shadow. Philosophy and Aesthetics after the End of the World), PWN, Warsaw 2021.
Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology. For a Logic of Future Coexistence, Columbia University Press 2018.
Justin Parks, “The poetics of extractivism and the politics of visibility” (Poetyka ekstraktywizmu i polityka widzialności), Textual Practice, vol. 35 No. 3, 2021, pp. 353-362, https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2021.1886708
Lisa Parks, Nicole Starosielski (ed.), Signal Traffic. Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures (Ruch sygnałów. Badania krytyczne infrastruktur medialnych), University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago and Springfield 2015.
John Durham Peters, The Marvelous Clouds. Towards a Philosophy of Elemental Media (Wspaniałość chmur. W stronę filozofii żywiołów jako mediów), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2015.
Thea Riofrancos, Resource Radicals. From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Radykalni zasobów naturalnych. Od petro-nacjonalizmu do post-ekstraktywizmu w Ekwadorze), Duke University Press, Durham 2020.
Susan Leigh Star, “The Ethnography of Infrastructure” (Etnografia infrastruktury), American Behavioral Scientist vol. 43, No. 3 1999, https://doi.org/10.1177/00027649921955326
Nicole Starosielski, The Undersea Network (Sieć podmorska), Duke University Press, Durham 2015.
Maristella Svampa, Neo-Extractivism in Latin America (Neo-ekstraktywizm w Ameryce Łacińskiej), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2019.
Imre Szeman, Jennifer Wenzel, “What do we talk about when we talk about extractivism?” (O czym rozmawiamy, rozmawiając o ekstraktywizmie?), Textual Practice vol. 35 no. 3, pp. 505-523, https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2021.1889829
Michael Truscello, Infrastructural Brutalism. Art and Necropolitics of Infrastructure (Brutalizm infrastrukturalny. Sztuka i nekropolityka infrastruktury), The MIT Press, Cambridge-London 2020.
Selected reading on Shelley Jackson’s Snow project:
https://www.instagram.com/snowshelleyjackson/?hl=en
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/17/shelley-jackson-writes-snow-story-tattoos
Anna Nacher, The Creative Process as a “Dance of Agency”. Shelley Jackson’s Snow: Performing Literary Text with Elements (Proces twórczy jako „taniec sprawczości”. ‘Śnieg’ Shelley Jackson: interpretacja tekstu literackiego w oparciu o żywioły), [in:] Digital Media and Textuality, ed. Daniela Maduro-Cortes, Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2017 https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783839440919-011/html?lang=en&srsltid=AfmBOooiHM1Wjp9yWNqOcVDnndJeko291hU1QUW16sn5Jzn8mFG1pjyq (open access)
Selected reading on the Rare Earthenware Unknown Fields project:
https://liamyoung.org/projects/rare-earthenware
Selected reading on Justyna Górowska and Ewelina Jarosz’s Cyberwedding to the Brine Shrimp (Cyfrowe zaślubiny z krewetkami solankowymi) project:
https://justynagorowska.com/Cyber-wedding-to-the-brine-shrimp
https://fundacjachmura.pl/cyber-wedding-to-the-brine-shrimp
https://sprinklestephens.ucsc.edu/2021/09/21/wedding-to-the-brine-shrimp/
