Animated Ecofictions. Imaginary results of the workshop by Paula Bruna

At the end of February, a group of people met for four afternoons to discuss, through science fiction films, the imaginary of the future and its limitations from the contemporary Western paradigm. Why is it so hard for us to think about non-apocalyptic futures? To what extent are the futures we are facing conditioned by the current model of social organization and the idea of progress of modernity? Can we imagine alternative scenarios to those proposed?

After unveiling the fiction of capitalist realism that mass cinema inoculates us with, we dared to outline a new paradigm from which to pose other imaginaries of the possible beyond the anthropocentric dichotomies. From the hybrid, the complex, the fluid, the game, the error, the systemic and a long etcetera, we speculated on other possible realities in transversal times and created a series of ecofictions, that is, fictions of the possible that are presented as an alternative to what the current ecosocial model offers us.

It turned out that, at the same time as we were imagining our ecofictions, without knowing it, another fiction was being made; the same one that now has us (in the best of cases) confined to the house, and probably revisiting science fiction stories in a kind of groundhog day or expanded workshop time loop. Paradoxically, the supposed fiction that has imposed itself on what we understood to be real has exposed much of the fiction of globalized capitalism. Rebutting it through counter-fiction was just what we were experiencing in the workshop, and it was happening outside in a big way.

Now, from our confines, we want to share the alternative imaginations created during the workshop. Let these serve as small windows to other possible ones, openings through which we can escape for a while from our confinement and even from our own humanity, and travel through speculated alternative realities that could be happening parallel to ours.

The four imaginary worlds created during this recent workshop, and which we present to you here, form part of the Ecofictions Catalogue, which is fed by all the alternative imaginary worlds created in all the editions of the Ecofictions workshop, and which is now approaching twenty. The Catalogue of Ecofictions is a collection of possible speculations that seeks to refute with a multiple, open, and potentially infinite response Jameson’s famous phrase that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Thus, in the face of the apocalyptic future of anthropocentric correlationism, the Catalogue of Ecofictions presents a multiplicity of speculated realities.

Thank you to all the people who participated in the sessions of this Ecofictions workshop for your contributions during the workshop and your involvement in the proposal.

Ecofictions Hangar 2020:

Amnoustarkich: Anouchka Skoudy, Agustín Ortiz Herrera, Marta Garcia Sierra

 

Marmutar: Marzia Matarese, Jordi Martínez Vilalta, Gabriela Dimaro, Albert García-Alzórriz, Adrianna Quena

 

The future was a lie (video + text (in Catalan)): Ricardo Padín

 

Untitled Ecofiction (reproduction in loop): Kàtia Llabata, Àlex López Noguera, Helen Torres, Sara Álvarez