Within the ‘race for what’s left’ in extractive zones, the queer critique of contract is useful for radical media practice as a way to think and ‘screen’ justice coalitions infrastructurally, beyond intimate self-management, ideal object and policy identifications. This talk based on a case study will consider the role of different ontologies of images within a specific power/knowledge formation of ‘remote research’ in North Australia. Remote to what/who? Here, attending to groundwater is attending to struggles for narrative supremacy that play out in scenes of ‘Culture’ as (re)production and (as) ‘environmental regulation’ -ideas which have been spatially and racially abstracted since C19th and which are regionally paramount. How can engaged film antagonise value and be concerned with ‘how worlds are made, how forms of life are sustained and made viable’ (Mitropoulos) without assuming the colonial ‘transparency thesis’ (da Silva) of modern scientific representation?

14-04-2022
10.00-12.00
Online via Zoom