Overview

As record-breaking wildfires moved across eastern Canada and record rainfalls flooded Dubai; as billionaires offshored immense profits while so-called essential workers risked their lives during a pandemic; resources, knowledge, and even life itself are increasingly privatized—and disruptions have become the status quo to ensure as much. Documentary Habitats argues that overlapping crises demand strategies for the long term rather than short-term technocratic pivots. They require local and Indigenous knowledge, derived from extended living with a place, rather than faith in techno-solutions designed to generate profit elsewhere. By redefining humans as one species of many in shared habitats rather than as an exceptional species with unchecked domain over the planet, authors Dale Hudson and Patricia R. Zimmermann offer a powerful counterpart to understandings of documentary conceived almost exclusively as centered not only on humans, but on humans who exploit modern systems. Across eight categories of relationships—entanglements, polyphonies, contaminations, iterations, navigations, extractions, adaptations, and infections—Documentary Habitats follows documentary practices that are community oriented, dialogue-driven, place-based, and research-led, using augmented reality, interactive and mobile technologies, film and photography, and video installation. Featuring works by artists and filmmakers from over 25 countries and drawing on two decades of curatorial collaborations, Documentary Habitats is a rallying cry to documentary studies to focus attention on environmental and social issues that may seem new and urgent to some people but are all too familiar to others.

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9780253075512

Table of Contents

Reviews

""What I find particularly compelling about this book is its balance between the marginalized human (e.g., Indigenous, Daoist, Asian and African diasporic, etc.) and nonhuman (e.g., plant, animal, machine) sources of knowledge and ethical standards. It concludes with a clarion call to embrace community and employ new technologies for the greater good. Its passion for transmedia in the service of progressive social change encourages readers to take the examples found in the book and employ them in their own critical practice as filmmakers, media artists, curators, educators, or community organizers.""—Gina Marchetti, author of Women Filmmakers and the Visual Politics of Transnational China in the #MeToo Era ""Documentary Habitats completes decades of curation and research in collaborative Indigenous, activist, and community film and interactive media, unlearning fixed ideas and values, exposing the specificity of places and connections, and pursuing documentary's tangled polyphony towards a more-than-human future. Onward!""—Seán Cubitt, author of Good: Aesthetic Politics

""What I find particularly compelling about this book is its balance between the marginalized human (e.g., Indigenous, Daoist, Asian and African diasporic, etc.) and nonhuman (e.g., plant, animal, machine) sources of knowledge and ethical standards. It concludes with a clarion call to embrace community and employ new technologies for the greater good. Its passion for transmedia in the service of progressive social change encourages readers to take the examples found in the book and employ them in their own critical practice as filmmakers, media artists, curators, educators, or community organizers."" - Gina Marchetti, author of Women Filmmakers and the Visual Politics of Transnational China in the #MeToo Era ""From record-breaking wildfires across Canada to record rainfall in Abu Dhabi; as billionaires offshored immense profits while so-called essential workers risked their lives during a pandemic; and as resources, knowledge, and even life itself are increasingly privatized, disruptions seem to have become the status quo, rather than exceptions to it. Documentary Habitats rejects this status quo, arguing that these overlapping crises demand strategies for the long term rather than short-term technocratic pivots. By redefining humans as one species of many in shared habitats rather than as an exceptional species with unchecked domain over the planet, authors Dale Hudson and Patricia R. Zimmermann offer a powerful counterpart to understandings of documentary conceived almost exclusively as centered not only on humans but on humans with faith in modern systems. Documentary is thus conceived as community oriented, dialogue driven, place based, and research led. Across eight categories of relationships - entanglements, polyphonies, contaminations, iterations, navigations, extractions, adaptations, and infections - Documentary Habitats traces local and Indigenous knowledge within documentary practices using augmented reality, community participation, interactive and mobile technologies, film and photography, and video installation. Featuring works by artists and filmmakers from over 25 countries and drawing on two decades of curatorial collaborations, Documentary Habitats is a rallying cry to documentary studies to focus attention on environmental and social issues that may seem new and urgent to some people but are all too familiar to others."" -

Author Information

Dale Hudson is Associate Professor of Film and New Media at New York University Abu Dhabi, a digital curator for the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF), and coordinator of the Films from the Gulf at the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Film Festival. Patricia R. Zimmermann was the Charles A. Dana Professor of Screen Studies at Ithaca College, director of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF), co-curator (with Louis Massiah) of We Tell: Fifty Years of Participatory Community Media, and editor-at-large of The Edge.

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