The Impossibility of a Planet

Abstract

The Impossibility of a Planet is a collaborative, multichannel documentary, produced with artist and researcher Jeremy Bolen. Motion graphics by Adriano D'Aguiar. The project touches on the practices of people whose work, research, practice and thought default to 'planetary magnitudes'. The project canvases international contacts in communities of geoscience, geopolitics, anthropology and journalism, whose practices are necessarily and often in different ways ‘global’ in scope, asking, also through the experience of a pandemic, where and how do we continue this work?

What motivates planetary-scale projects and work, as technologies increasingly mediate our relations to one another and the planet? How do we undertake and understand new lines of communication, trust and intimacy with our collaborators and peers? How do ‘empirical research’ and fieldwork change when access to the field, lab and locales of this research change often and in important ways?

A write up of the project is included in The Whole Life: An Archive Project'sUn-/Learning Archives in the Age of the Sixth Extinction. A set of six video vignettes conjoin to form a contiguous film, to be screened online and in an offline exhibition installation. Initial presentations include an evening screening as part of the Collaborative Practice on a Changing Planet public events at HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt

The Impossibility of a Planet tells a story of how global science and knowledge are composed, and sometimes decompose. Interviews with 'planetary practitioners' are continually added to the work through multiple versions and public exhibitions. Current discussion partners include Tina Sikka, Jim Igoe, Will Steffen, Allison Stegner, Jan Zalasiewicz, Gabriela Barreto Lemos, Tim Lenton, Michael Mazarr, Jinnah Zubar, Peter Haff, Ron Milo, Ana Mizher, Manfred Laubichler, Simon Turner, Mark Williams, Friederike Otto and Cymene Howe, amongst many others.