LSE Law School Cinema: Movie Nights – Fragile Ecologies

Organised by Marie Petersmann (LSE Law School) and Maria Christina Achilleoude (LSE LLM student), in the presence of director Susan Shuppli, curator María Montero Sierra (Head of Program at TBA21–Academy) and artist Leonard Maassen

How do we come to terms, and how can we make sense, of fragile ecologies? How can aesthetical representations and performances help us relate to vanishing ecologies and experience their slow disappearance, when our legal vocabularies and procedures fall short? Join us for a screening and discussion – in the presence of film director Susan Schuppli, curator María Montero Sierra, and artist Leonard Maassen – of five short movies that address the limitations of international environmental and climate law and propose different modes of sensing and relating to deep, hidden, and often invisible water-based ecosystems and their agential properties, as suggested by Indigenous feminist practitioners. The event will end with a reception for all participants.

Susan Schuppli, ‘Cold Rights’ (2022) [13:25mins]:

From the thawing of permafrost to the melting of polar ice caps, from the disintegration of sea ice to the disappearance of mountain glaciers, the changing material state of ice has direct consequences for rights-based thinking and action under the accelerated conditions of global warming. The ‘right to be cold’ is one such provocation. This demand, as it was popularly referred to, was dismissed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2005 when Inuk activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier filed a petition ‘Seeking Relief from Violations Resulting from Global Warming Caused by Acts and Omissions of the United States’ on behalf of herself and sixty-two Inuit people living in the Arctic regions of Canada and the USA. Yet the transformation of a thermostatic condition into a political and legal claim for ‘cold rights’ has never been more urgent. Cold politics thus demands an engagement with a climatic sense of justice rather than a partitioning of rights.

Leonard Maassen, ‘Heart of Glacier’ (2023) [8:49mins]:

Heart of a Glacier explores the notion of ecological grief. How do humans come to terms with environmental change? Video and sound recordings made at a depth of 30 metres in the receding Morteratsch Glacier create an immersive space that invites us to attune to the textures of this remote water world. Uncannily evocative of microscopic biological matter, the work brings into focus our emotional responses to the lives of landscape forms at the microscopic scale. Documenting the rapidly vanishing and rarely accessible ice draws attention to the melting process as much as it formulates a way of perceiving the environment not as a passive envelope for human action, but an evolving more-than-human co-creation. We can come here to dwell and reflect as we, as a species, rapidly and irreversibly change our environment. What is the role of nostalgia in a time of environmental turmoil? What are the ethical consequences of looking for beauty in the environmental changes we are driving?

pantea, ‘⚪’ (2022) [5:44mins]:

This short movie marks the artistic research about/with ⚪ on the plant Sundew living in wetlands. Three distinct dialogues join together to form the narrative, which also serves as an invitation to acknowledge and further the collective effort done around wetlands, mainly in the context of the ‘Becoming Fresh & Salty Drops (of water)’ programme supported by TBA21–Academy and curated by María Montero Sierra.

Inhabitants (Mariana Silva and Pedro Neves Marques), ‘What Is Deep Sea Mining? (2018-2022)

Episode 1: ‘Tools for Ocean Literacy’ [6:45mins]:

What is Deep Sea Mining? ‘Tools for Ocean Literacy’ is a cartographical survey of technologies that have contributed to ocean literacy and seabed mapping. Structured around a single shot along a vertical axis, the episode inquires about deep sea mining and the types of geologic formations where it is set to occur, particularly hydrothermal vents. Understanding the process of deep sea mining demands not only a temporal investigation – its main dates, legal and corporate landmarks, and scientific breakthroughs – but also a spatial axis connecting the seafloor to outer space cartographic technologies. After all, we know less about the ocean depths than about the universe beyond this blue planet.

Episode 5: ‘The Pacific Precedent’ [6:27mins]:

The first deep sea mining tests took place in the Pacific in 2015, in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea. This has brought strong contestation by local communities, whose lands have been expropriated and whose economy depends on fishing. Resistance by local and Indigenous groups has been exemplary in territorial waters of Pacific island nations states, where numerous initiatives – among them PANG and Solwara Warriors – have emerged to inform the population and protect its common resources. While mining itself never began commercially, the mining company’s recent bankruptcy has reportedly left the Papua New Guinea government with a $120 million debt. Now that Pacific nations have seen the exploitative outcome of the corporate Global North’s deep sea mining intentions in Papua New Guinea’s territorial waters, PANG and others are advocating for a deep sea mining ban. This episode is narrated by Maureen Penjueli from the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG), a regional watchdog, established in 2009, that promoted Pacific peoples’ rights to be self-determining, advocating for free, prior, and informed consent for Indigenous peoples of the Bismarck Sea in accordance with international law. Addressing issues of scale, political representation, and resource politics, Penjueli reiterates the importance of the oceans’ role in securing the carbon equation and contributing to planetary resilience. As such, she calls for the possibility of making politics from an oceanic point of view, that learns from the Pacific Nation’s perspective.

Please note: Places will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.