Toxic Climates: Earth. People. Movement. Media

Planet Earth is toxic. Its atmosphere unbreathable. Its environments deadly intoxicated by the dehumanizing forces of xenophobia, environmental degradation and violence. As its peoples are increasingly on the move to make a worthy living exclusion, borders and conflict is a norm rather than an exception. And – as toxic substances dissipate and spread through media and circulating representations they cloud the sight of the human beings in front of us. In the face of the intoxicating and dehumanizing forces at play we need remedies for sobering up rather than intoxication. Remedies for living with contamination and hybridity rather than altering these states.

Partly inspired by Levinas and his ethics of the “nakedness of a face, the absolute defenseless face, without covering, clothing or mask” and partly by Anna Tsings’ more recent call for “contamination” as a catalyst from which future ”world-making projects, mutual projects and new directions – may emerge”, we propose a radical humanizing intervention in - and beyond - institutions. A contamination of academic institutions and media with testimony from people living the change. A contamination of thought with action. A contamination of activism with thinking.

In a cooperation between academic performance researchers and media activist collective Other Story we explore media activism as ways of expressing and enacting citizenships. Conceiving of thinking as a practice that “interrupts all ordering activities and is interrupted by them” (Arendt) we think through and with embodied others and their material lives rather than about them. Hence, the presentation will address interventions and evidence of staging a “radical softness” in the meeting with people who live through current planetary change and explore potentials for emerging shared sensibilities affecting our own embodied citizenships in the encounter with others in these toxic climates.