‘Free’ Life and Bottled Air

‘Free’ Life and Bottled Air

study group facilitated by Lindsay*

ONLINE

In this study session we will be talking about the politics of air from a decolonial and mixed media perspective. Drawing upon recent insights from Black and indigenous studies, we will ask the question: How has air itself become commodified by capitalist and colonist logics, and what forms of resistance are available to artistic opponents of this commodification? What does it mean to cultivate a relationship to the air and its concomitants (the soil, the trees, and the atmosphere) in a way that does not seek to dominate and extract capitalist ‘value’ from these entities, but rather re-sources them for a liveable future?

In order to orient ourselves within these very broad questions, I ask that you watch the following four videos and read one short text. Please consider your own relationship to soil (land), air (pollution) and trees (agriculture/industry) in the place that you come from as you watch/read these materials.

Glenn A. Albrecht

Negating Solastalgia: An Emotional Revolution from the Anthropocene to the Symbiocene (8 pages)

(Link to document will be shared soon)

Pollution and the Commodification of Air (5 minutes):

https://fb.watch/dHRBJmOkQf/

(if you can’t access FB, here is another one: https://www.vicetv.com/en_us/video/most-expensivest-2-chainz-samples-ten-thousand-dollar-air/5a12fa85177dd4702c7a06e9 )

Fatal Pollution and Environmental Justice: The Story of Ella Kissi-Debrah (10 minutes):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ9xO7MeTfs

Connecting to Country: Land as Ancestor and as Host (4 minutes & 8 pages)

https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/welcome-country

Negating Solastalgia: Loss and Activism (text attached)

Re-Wilding and Community-Building: The Instituto Terra (5 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0Aw3JEtQoU