The Cybercene: The Othering of Europe's Black and Brown Migrants and Pathways towards Ecocultural Healing

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;36;10

Unknown

Hi, everybody. I am Laurie Kane Hart. I'm a professor of anthropology and global studies and co-director of the center for European and Russian Studies. So I want to welcome everybody here today, to this talk by our new colleague. I want to introduce Professor Vetri Nathan. And, give a little background, just, a couple of minutes, which we'll probably sort of, anticipate some of the things he will say himself, but I'm going to describe him anyway.

00;00;36;13 - 00;01;06;11

Unknown

So, Professor Nathan is associate professor in the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies, born in Mumbai, India. Professor Nathan holds his PhD in Italian from Stanford University. Prior to becoming a Bruin in 2024, Professor Nathan was assistant professor of Italian at the University of Massachusetts Boston and associate professor of Italian and Mellon Chair in Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University.

00;01;06;13 - 00;01;53;05

Unknown

Professor Nathan's scholarly interests range from the study of the cultural foundations of environmental injustice to the exploration of national, racial, and diasporic identities, particularly and not limited to Italy and the wider Mediterranean region. He's the founder and director of a new humanities lab at UCLA. So that's really exciting. The Cybercene lab this lab is envisioned as a gathering space to study the current eco cultural era in our planetary history, which includes multispecies well-being, healing and habitability, and the connections between cultural discourse, manufactured conflicts, climate change and habitat biodiversity loss.

00;01;53;07 - 00;02;38;09

Unknown

His initial research focused specifically on Italy's fraught response to migration from the global south of the world, is analyzed in his first book, Marvelous Bodies Italy's New by Migrant Cinema that was, out from Purdue University Press, which explores 13 key full length Italian movies released between 1990 and 2010. His forthcoming book project, The Cybercene Multispecies Healing and Habitability in a Transformed World, proposes a new eco cultural sub era of the Anthropocene, called the Cybercene, to analyze the intimate connections between the global digital revolution and eco cultural health and sustainability.

00;02;38;12 - 00;03;00;12

Unknown

So I really want to welcome our new colleague and, introduce him to speak on the Cybercene, the othering of Europe's black and brown migrants and pathways towards eco cultural healing. Thank you.

00;03;00;14 - 00;03;31;15

Unknown

Well, thank you very much, for that wonderful introduction. Thank you. Especially the audience. Thank you, professor Morosini for bringing your students to the talk today. And, of course, everyone in the audience. It's it's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. So I really appreciate this even more, that you're here. And, I know some of you in the audience, will be taking, my graduate seminar next winter.

00;03;31;18 - 00;04;18;17

Unknown

And so, in a way, this will be, a bit of an appetizer to the main course, that you will, be, experiencing with me. And I really look forward to that as well. I change the title a little bit and called it the Cybercene Lab notes, because, like a lot of, the projects that I hope to, open up in the lab, they are open ended and experimental and ongoing projects, and I really like the open mindedness of a lot of my projects, if not most of my projects, because they promise, collaboration.

00;04;18;20 - 00;04;47;27

Unknown

They promise, potential, ways of growth in the future. And they also promise, ways in which the work we do is not kind of closed up in a product and then just ends up being, there, you know, and maybe talked about maybe not, but, that was the idea to have nodes to which people can add their own notes to perhaps in the future, including people in the audience here today.

00;04;48;00 - 00;05;12;04

Unknown

So, as, you know, in my introduction, we were talking about I wanted to give you a basic overview of what the lab, hopes to do. And, in terms of timeline, this quarter has been this moment of, you know, having these different meetings and trying to set up the basic connections, at UCLA.

00;05;12;05 - 00;05;40;24

Unknown

I'm so excited to be here, to set up the lab. It'll start more in earnest with the first graduate seminar, that is connected and incubated by the lab next quarter. And, part of the lab ethos is to have those kinds of new methodologies and, kind of also creative elements that can be infused within graduate students projects.

00;05;40;27 - 00;06;09;19

Unknown

In investigating these connections between nature or the realm that is considered, non-human and cultured, which is considered, unfortunately, exclusively the realm of anthropos and human and how can we go beyond that divide is is an interesting, and I think, key feature of the future of the humanities as, as I see it personally. So therefore the word eco culture.

00;06;09;19 - 00;06;37;06

Unknown

Right. And I define the cybercene, as an eco cultural. It's a, it's an eco cultural gathering principle. We're all gathered here today, all bodies in this room. And, I see there an importance in doing that, an idea as to our ways of gathering and coming together and maybe understanding things that are so complex that not one person can accomplish and should just one person be accomplishing them.

00;06;37;06 - 00;07;12;04

Unknown

So, it's a gathering principle to help analyze the current cultural moment in our planetary history. Hence the hence the suffix cene. Of course, taking from the Anthropocene. Right. There are planetary consequences, I believe, of what I call the sub era, roughly the first two decades of the 21st century and still ongoing, in which online discourses and onscreen digital representations have quickly and effectively transformed identities and values of actual bodies and living ecosystems.

00;07;12;06 - 00;07;42;16

Unknown

And so in this kind of eco cultural moment, belonging questions of belonging, affinity, care and attention have accordingly shifted. Is my hypothesis. So what does that mean? I think there is kind of a dis discursive and technological acceleration. One can also say also affective or emotional transformation in the classification, commodification and othering of bodies, lives and ecosystems.

00;07;42;19 - 00;08;14;13

Unknown

These are my hypotheses. I call it an eco cultural rather than a techno scientific definition. Because here is where the humanities come in, and here is where the qualitative aspects of what we do in the realm of culture fit into our understanding of what the cybercene could possibly mean. And what are its consequences. So having an eco cultural definition allows attentiveness to fall on the epistemic, discursive, psychic.

00;08;14;13 - 00;08;47;23

Unknown

And I can also add affective mechanisms of knowledge production and its impact. So what is the impact of that knowledge production on bodies, lives and ecosystems? I am not proposing an entirely new eco cultural era beyond the Anthropocene. We're still very much in the Anthropocene. It's a sub era of the Anthropocene, or the capitalist -cene, or the waste -cene, which is, wonderful definition given by the scholar Mark Cormier, who's also wonderfully on the advisory committee of the lab.

00;08;47;25 - 00;09;11;18

Unknown

And he defines the waste or -cene, not in terms of waste products that we're generating. For example, CO2 being one of the most important, gaseous waste products that is causing anthropogenic climate change. But he defines it more as, as the wasted lives that it creates. So I think that is a very interesting definition.

00;09;11;20 - 00;09;38;03

Unknown

And, he sees CO2, the rise of CO2 levels in the atmosphere as an effect of the inequality and wasted lives that we are producing on the globe. So, I see it as a sub era. I really thought hard and loud, but I wanted to create another terminology that is seen because there's plantation. I've seen there's others, but I felt it was a useful gathering principle.

00;09;38;06 - 00;10;04;25

Unknown

So after many years of saying, I don't want to have another -cene, I said, well, maybe there's something useful about it. So in this initial part of the talk, I very quickly go through some ideas and then go to the very specific case study I'm going to talk to you about, because I think what the cyber -cene has done has transformed the way in which stories are told.

00;10;04;27 - 00;10;29;29

Unknown

It's transformed the way in which we tell each other stories over the globe. And it's transformed the way in which we tell ourselves stories to, to ourselves as well. So how I call it this kind of a way of capture and control. So the first cluster in the lab looks at the cyber -cene, studies, looks at the capture and control of Multispecies life.

00;10;30;01 - 00;10;56;12

Unknown

One of the conclusions I am sadly reaching as I kind of deploy some projects and courses through the lab. Is that the word post-colonial might be outdated or not very useful anymore, because I think the cyber -cene has just accelerated what has been the colonial moment, and we are still very much in the colonial moment, as we move forward in this subject called the cyber -cene.

00;10;56;14 - 00;11;21;00

Unknown

Because essentially, what is colonialism if not the capture and control of lives of many different forms, human and more than human. So there are some old new there's nothing new, but there's also something new, the old new value systems. That's an effective it's a psychic and a discursive and a technological apparatus. I won't have time to describe all these things in detail.

00;11;21;00 - 00;11;50;20

Unknown

And this is a very quick snapshot. However, I think the case study that I, that I show you after, this quick brief overview will illuminate some of these aspects in, a much more concrete way. So what is this first cluster examined in the lab? It examines theoretical framework, sort of help us understand the intimate it complex connections between the virtual versus embodied eco cultural identities and relationships.

00;11;50;22 - 00;12;28;20

Unknown

So it questions whether we can continue to sustain some of these epistemic foundations, the foundations of these these very contrasting dichotomies that have a power relationship also involved within those dichotomies. So I have culture being in bold versus nature. I have meaning in bold versus matter. I have human in bold, anthropos versus non-human. I have the nation. We have the huge resurgence of nationalism and the nation state in the cyber -cene, as opposed to the transnational, we have man and boat versus woman.

00;12;28;20 - 00;13;00;02

Unknown

So it connects to many other, forms of identity. So it has repercussions on questions, on people studying many different kinds of identities, including gender and sexuality. Us versus other very broad, broadly speaking, I have some images here, and it shows this kind of it's all connected to a hierarchical, categorical, categorization system. You can see it already in the Linnaean system of categorizing life.

00;13;00;05 - 00;13;32;20

Unknown

And ultimately it is hierarchical, in nature. You can see it also in the trophic map that you see in biology, in biology texts today, they're very important. Foundational, criteria for on which we understand natural ecosystems. In the trophic level, we have the apex predator. And then below you have these many trophic levels, and you have the primary producers at the bottom, which might be phytoplankton, for example, if you're looking at a marine ecosystem.

00;13;32;23 - 00;13;55;16

Unknown

So we're talking about knowledge creation. What are the basic structures. And you kind of I kind of start seeing, in all of those, a form of hierarchical classification and that leading to some kind of a capture and control, commodification and use of this life in some way. I've put there some examples on virtual ways of doing that, too.

00;13;55;16 - 00;14;32;20

Unknown

You can unfriend someone on Facebook as you can swipe left or right on Tinder. So, just very quick examples of, of that kind of hierarchical. Yes. No connection that can be made. So it's important, I think, to, think of the cyber -cene as an opportunity. I think, to think about life, and, and go beyond that nature and culture divide and look at questions of multispecies import and or connections, because, here I have two quotes that, that, that I think go to the heart of the matter.

00;14;32;22 - 00;15;16;14

Unknown

Practice says, well, contemporary market economies. And of course, if cyber seen as part of the capitalist -cene, contemporary market economies profit from the control and commodification of all that lives, the result in hybridization, erasing categorical distinctions between human and other species, seeds, plants, animals and bacteria. Everything is up for profit. We have Christopher Peterson, who has done some incredible work on the foundational principles of, the invention of race and the invention of hierarchical forms of racial categories.

00;15;16;16 - 00;15;45;20

Unknown

And, of course, the traces are best show for him. In his book Bestial Traces, he says deprived of the human animal hierarchy, racism and other forms of exclusion would lack the pejorative metaphoric that animal authority provides. So in some ways dehumanizing, discourses. What does that even mean? Is it less than human to be not human?

00;15;45;23 - 00;16;06;22

Unknown

So these are kind of foundational questions, even in the way we speak about, even migrations into Europe, or, and other parts of the world. What does it mean to dehumanize? Well, the word more than human is being used in the environmental humanities for that reason, to kind of speak about. Well, what does it mean to not be human?

00;16;06;22 - 00;16;29;29

Unknown

Can it mean more than human? So after this slide, I promise you I will go to that my concrete example rather than being so abstract. So bear with me. Just one more slide and then we will probably look at what I mean in the with the story I'm going to tell you about a man named Satnam Singh.

00;16;30;02 - 00;16;54;00

Unknown

As I was trying to understand these connections, and how does one capture and control via even the smartphones that you hold in your hands? I was thinking about. Well, it allows the customer, the viewer of the smartphone to have this kind of personal curation of stories. And, I use this. I come up with this term hyper convergence.

00;16;54;03 - 00;17;22;22

Unknown

Convergence is in which, you know, you have this kind of convergence between different kinds of screens. You might have screens seen screens pop up more and more in the cyber cyber -cene. You have even refrigerators have screens nowadays, you know, why does a refrigerator need a screen? I don't know, but it's something people want. Okay. So, hyper convergence is when this media specificity dissolves, screens converge, but hyper can.

00;17;22;22 - 00;17;48;16

Unknown

That's convergence. What is hyper convergence? There's also convergence between screens. Screen content and embodied realities. And there's this kind of confusion between is this real or is this not what is virtual versus what is real. Now? How does the mechanism work? Cyber citation I think, is key to legitimizing magical thinking. So I saw it on the internet. It must be true.

00;17;48;20 - 00;18;15;14

Unknown

I borrow from Edward Shaheen, who says that Orientalism is basically has a citation or a quality to it. So if you want to imagine something and make it real, you cite we all do it as scholars, okay? We cite and what the cyber -cene does, it gives us the possibility, in some ways, to really ground confirmation bias through citation.

00;18;15;16 - 00;18;42;18

Unknown

Okay. You can approach something in your own curated way and create this kind of eco cultural citation that makes it true. Okay. Well, I have an example here, that that I put up on the slide, migrants, this was, a fake news, and so it can happen in terms of disinformation as well, but that's just not the only way in which, the stories have been transformed.

00;18;42;18 - 00;19;12;00

Unknown

There is disinformation. This one is, fake news saying, migrants ate my four dogs. Someone, you know, a land, a land owner in the island of Lampedusa who, said that, you know, there were migrants in our property in the court and ate my four dogs. So, again, that kind of, dehumanizing, quality that makes the migrant bestial, through fake news.

00;19;12;07 - 00;19;45;20

Unknown

But yet it also has this interesting multi-species connection that allows the human to not become human. At the same time. And so you have these discourses that then the acquire the power of reality through citation. Okay. And I cite and you can see these citations going and of course the algorithmic quality of these discourses, give them even more, reality, the second image is clip from Bollywood film donkey, which I'm going to talk about.

00;19;45;22 - 00;20;09;25

Unknown

And in terms of my case study, but this is another example of convergence of hyper convergence, because the film I will discuss talks, it was very popular. You know, it was a big commercial success in India and beyond, least within the diasporic community, big budget, director who's really approached, you know, social issues in great ways in the past.

00;20;09;25 - 00;20;35;03

Unknown

This one is a little bit iffy, but he still was a successful product. Speaking about what is called donkey migrations, donkey, it has few different meanings. Some people connect it to donkey, but it's this different way. There's a number one way of migrating, which is the legal way of getting a visa, getting a green card. And there's the donkey route, which is connected to donkey.

00;20;35;03 - 00;21;02;07

Unknown

But I'm not so sure, because donkey also means to glitch something to do. Do things in a detour. In Punjabi. So I know a lot of scholarship connects it to donkey, but I think it's connected to detour. It's taking an alternative path. This is another form of convergence because this is on the big screen, but it can be taken used in many different ways depending on who you are.

00;21;02;14 - 00;21;43;01

Unknown

And so this one story that is that is on the big screen in Bollywood, I will show you how it's been used and changed depending on who's curating it, on what screen. So that takes me that's the visual spectacle part of it. But really the question here, for me, I think the most interesting part is agency. Because very often when we're talking about misinformation, disinformation, fake news, you know, it's been in the center of our thoughts, as we as we look at the political climate both in Europe and, and in North America and really the whole rest of the whole world, in terms of how what are the effects of,

00;21;43;04 - 00;22;11;16

Unknown

disinformation on, the foundations of what we understand, as, you know, the Fourth Estate, journalism and the importance of that for democratic, sustainability. But what I'm saying, and I'm noticing in some of the projects in my lab as I work through this, is that the spectator consumer of cyber -cenes are an active subject. They're just not passively receiving disinformation and being.

00;22;11;18 - 00;22;39;01

Unknown

Oh, okay. Yes, I believe you. It can be the case sometimes, but rather than, being passive consumers of disinformation, the spectator and cyber -cene interaction is affective. It's a there's an emotion and a affect is affected. Is really interesting to look at that and how emotions have an impact on then what we do. It's then tactical though.

00;22;39;01 - 00;23;14;21

Unknown

After that it is in which you choose to accept that emotion or not, and then you weave it into your own story. That's where the curation of stories comes in, okay. And so it's selective, it's tactical, it's creative rather than passive or spontaneous or just random. And that's no, it's no wonder then that fact checking is not does not work because there are ways in which you can create your own epistemic world around you through this kind of citation or equality, that that the cyber -cene allows you to have.

00;23;14;23 - 00;23;50;15

Unknown

So what's nice is that the second cluster in the lab, is not so depressing. Right? And the point of the lab for me was to really have the second cluster, which is multispecies healing and habitability. And I purposely wanted to glitch that famous, quote by Mark Zuckerberg. He said the mantra, one of the mantras in 2012, I think he said was, you know, the key to success in Silicon Valley is to move fast and break things.

00;23;50;17 - 00;24;17;27

Unknown

Well, cluster two is saying, how can we move ethically and and build relationships? So how do we move from, a resource based approach to a relationship based approach? Some of the basic premises of the lab are really come to, fruition here. It's that analysis of nature, culture not separating the two as much as we have in the humanities in the past.

00;24;17;29 - 00;24;58;13

Unknown

But in all the fields, really, utilizing this hybrid constellation of decolonial epistemologies, including bringing what is the better way to decolonize than to look at indigenous epistemologies? I think so, a lot of that has been undervalued and is of increasing interest to me. I'm seeking this material from what is called the material term, and you'll hear a lot about in the environmental humanities is to basically, if I have to say it very easily and not in too many big words, is to understand what we do in the humanities, especially in cultural studies, is to see how meaning, how we understand the world affects matter.

00;24;58;13 - 00;25;34;08

Unknown

Material things such as our bodies, our objects or things or ecosystems, and vice versa. How do objects and landscapes and ecosystems impinge upon the way we understand the world around us? So that kind of connection, is is really important for the lab and then highlighting and limiting anthropocentrism, as a way to kind of, recoup maybe some of the ways in which we have these, blind spots due to that, that limitation.

00;25;34;10 - 00;26;01;12

Unknown

Anyway, so that's just a basic outline of those two clusters. And what I want to do. But here, I think is, you know, the proof is in the pudding, as they always say. And so, I wanted to start, finding proof with one case study, one of the many I'm looking at. But I thought this would be a good case study to bring today to you.

00;26;05;18 - 00;26;30;04

Unknown

I as I bite into a piece of melon, cucumbers. Melo. And I wrote this down because I wanted it to be specific. There's an images of a brown skinned, severed right arm that accompany the honey. Sweet taste of melon in my mouth. So that arm belongs to a specific individual. And his name is Satnam Singh.

00;26;30;06 - 00;26;57;25

Unknown

And in my mind, I cannot avoid picturing, the pale musk orange of the melon, mixed with the deep red of blood and the white of shattered bone. Flesh of two species, all wrapped within the transparent elasticity of unbreathable sterile plastic wrap. So Mr. Singh was a 31 year old man, originally from the state of Punjab in India.

00;26;57;27 - 00;27;41;21

Unknown

And he was a worker hired at a farm in the agro container, the pond marshes area of Lazio. It's a central Italian region. In which of which? Rome is the capital city? He was just one of the thousands of migrant workers who provide Italian and European consumers their daily foodstuff at an affordable price, through what is called the Mercato Nero or Green Job, because Mercato Nero would be the black market, as in their hire, without documentation, without a contract, or you have the Mercato Grigio, the gray economy, which actually is a huge percentage in which on paper they might be paid one amount, but actually, it is way

00;27;41;21 - 00;28;20;15

Unknown

below minimum wage, sometimes even €2 a day. Something crazy, so this widespread practice of sourcing, recruiting and managing these workers in the Italian agricultural sector is called corpora lato. And, it's like gang mastering of some kind. And it's basically a modern form of slavery, that parts of the economy rely on, its facility, it, it by problematic immigration, labor laws and as well as an economic need and and greed, that keep labor costs inhumanly low and profit margins unnecessarily high.

00;28;20;17 - 00;28;50;14

Unknown

So the Teagle, which is the Italy's largest trade union, was estimating that about, 250,000 people, or about a quarter of the agricultural workers, do not have a formal employment contract. So, this is just one of the unspoken mechanisms of, you know, your beautiful, delicious Italian food that we all love globally. So, you know, I think of melon and I think of prosciutto melon, one of my favorite dishes in the summer.

00;28;50;16 - 00;29;16;04

Unknown

And it's really an incredible dish. And so, I think of that, but I can't eat it in the same way anymore because, on June 19th, 2024, Satnam Singh died at the San Camilla Hospital in Rome after spending, two days in agony. His right arm had been crushed by a plastic wrapping machine that he was operating to wrap the melons.

00;29;16;06 - 00;29;44;03

Unknown

And, so that standardized look of the shrink club melon. I look at it in the supermarket, and it seems to almost. Delivery mask or make invisible to the consumer the complex food base and the many species, substances and persons, that coax the melon plant to create that perfect looking fruit which that ends up magically on your supermarket counter.

00;29;44;06 - 00;30;20;06

Unknown

Mr. Singh could have been saved. Possibly, if he had received immediate medical attention. However, the farm owners, dumped them like agricultural waste in front of his home, along with his severed arm in a fruit container in one of the fruit baskets, and drove off, possibly, in order to avoid facing any legal repercussions for participating in this kind of Mercato grigio Ornato one of the two, some news, sources interestingly, mentioned that Mr. Singh was picking strawberries.

00;30;20;06 - 00;30;56;22

Unknown

So that is for agrarian answer rather than melons. Giving me one more fruit species to link with a specific example of immense suffering. Others vaguely mentioned generic vegetables, now implicating possibly any fruit or vegetable species that I might eat. So a story that begins with one person's avoidable death and one fruit species carefully controlled life has suddenly unleashed a web of stories that that touch entire multi-species systems of interconnected affects, values, and interests.

00;30;56;24 - 00;31;42;28

Unknown

So I was looking at this example and story, and I asked myself, could exploring the past and present multispecies resonances of the agro container region provide deeper context to place value on Mr. Singh's hopeful life and wasteful death? Could starting from the local eco cultural system of the agro container of the Pontine Marshes? And, could I start there and then move to a more transcultural web of affect of knowledge, creation of discourse in the cyber -cene to help us humanize and contextualize these movements that seem like, too big to count, too many people to count.

00;31;43;01 - 00;32;12;29

Unknown

Could a humanistic and qualitative analysis of how cultural identity politics impinge upon the destinies of individuals or regions, or economies, or entire systems add to our understanding of how cultural, natural and economic configurations are mutually interdependent and co becoming, I think the answer is possibly yes.

00;32;13;01 - 00;32;42;01

Unknown

The ponto and marshes at led me. This one story started to lead me to understand well, why are melons grown? There? Why is there so much need, And why is this such a fertile region? And it led me to what I call understanding Mr. Singh's story as the current endpoint to what is the long Italian Anthropocene.

00;32;42;03 - 00;33;13;08

Unknown

So it's an incredible region. And, you know, the the the timescales are vast. You can really zoom out as long as far as you want. We can go back to the Pleistocene because those marine terraces that create that, topography of the pond and marshes, were created in that era. It has low sedimentation because compared to other Italian estuary systems, because, the river flow isn't that great.

00;33;13;10 - 00;33;37;13

Unknown

And so it has led to these organic sediments rather than inorganic steroids. So if you go to the Tiber River valley or the Arno, you have a very different kind of estuary marshland system. You also have the pyroclastic flows from the volcano Lutetia, the volcanic volcanic complex that is dormant, and has created this really rich soil.

00;33;37;15 - 00;33;59;20

Unknown

You also have something like the Borgo and Mother Lagoon, which was created in the last, glaciation, period. And, you can see all of that in this wonderful study done by, the geologist Jan Sieving. And you can see here, you have, you know, the Borgo Amada level. On one level, you can actually see the map.

00;33;59;27 - 00;34;33;10

Unknown

You have marsh deposit with many post holes. And of course, you also have the early Roman Republic in period. So you're thinking about the third century BCE, when actually you have the construction of the via Appia and the beginning of the first drainage systems to kind of use this unusable area because there were so many, marine and terrestrial, interactions that was really hard to agriculturally make this place productive.

00;34;33;13 - 00;35;06;08

Unknown

Although, of course, naturally, it was one of the most productive ecosystems. And the Mediterranean wetland ecosystems are the main breeding ground for all the fish that we eat in the Mediterranean, and that we love basis of all the seafood and the cuisine and the culture that is developed around that. So, the connections are great with also the early Roman Republican period when they started draining the marshes, that's when subsistence began, because you do not have the natural kind of land water interactions, and the ground begins to subside.

00;35;06;10 - 00;35;30;07

Unknown

You have the very famous Benfica Integrale in the fascist era in which they actually had this. It's a wonder of engineering in the 1920s and 30s. The object also being to kind of get rid of the, the malarial mosquitoes in the area. But of course, the mosquitoes were part of a very flourishing ecosystem. So that's also that's a whole other story, right?

00;35;30;07 - 00;35;54;27

Unknown

Malaria and the Pontine Marshes and the use of technology and nation building in the fascist era, and how that all connected to a total transformation of the Pontine Marshes into what they are now, the foundation of these many important fascist cities, such as Latina. Then the word Latina, you know, the foundations going back to the great Roman Empire.

00;35;55;00 - 00;36;18;00

Unknown

So German soldiers interestingly reflected the marshes to stop the Allied advance at the end of World War two. So you have this kind of refloating of the topography for, for very specific reasons. But then that was taken care of by the pumping of the water out to the ocean. And so subsistence is still an issue.

00;36;18;00 - 00;37;02;02

Unknown

And you have a lot of power, electric power being used to pump out water, in the Pontine Marshes to make it agriculturally viable, and then to have people such as Mr. Singh, go and make this place extremely productive and rich, to get the food began on the table, as we do. But I wanted to not just connect things so locally and look at the affective systems that take the story of Mr. Satnam Singh from a very specific region of the ponton marshes to, the land of origin that brings people to the pond and places such as the, the these agriculturally rich lands, in, in Europe.

00;37;02;04 - 00;37;23;12

Unknown

And so there are these kinds of incredible multi-species links that one can make to the region from which settlements and comes from the Punjab. As a citizen, as a previous citizen of India. Oh. I'm not get used to that. As a private citizen of India now said now an American citizen, I think of the Punjab as an Indian state.

00;37;23;14 - 00;37;53;01

Unknown

But then when I started thinking about it, well, it's just no, Punjab was spread between what what is now India and Pakistan. And, of course, was the zone of one of the biggest, human migrations in human and in modern history and one of the most violent divisions of any land border as India, as, India under the British India was split between India and Pakistan.

00;37;53;07 - 00;38;19;05

Unknown

And you have a great map of the partition of Punjab, which was divided equally almost with to West Punjab, which is now part of Pakistan, and East Punjab, which is now India. This severed one, Punjab means land of the five rivers. It severed the five rivers, into two. There are so many border conflicts between India and Pakistan because the source of the water is now in India.

00;38;19;07 - 00;38;44;23

Unknown

But of course, it's dependent on the, the, the reverse flowing across the borders into, what is now, Pakistani Punjab. Of course, you had this in credible, huge movement of refugees as Muslims, moved, to the west and Hindus moved to the east because that was the way in which these this region was split.

00;38;44;25 - 00;39;18;20

Unknown

And so you have this kind of colonial history. And, the implication of that within the, history, both colonial and post-colonial, of the Sikhs who really have been also wondering, well, where is our nation if we're going to divide these countries based on religious lines? And the Sikhs, of course, were considered, as a subset of generally the Hindu, you know, religion and were what were given, as, their homeland as being part of India.

00;39;18;22 - 00;39;46;13

Unknown

So all those kinds of complexities are now in play, even in Sikh identity and their migration. And what is so interesting to find out is all the the delicious mozzarella that you might love coming from Italy, most of the mozzarella producers and then the caretakers of the buffalo, the water buffalo, which is, by the way, originally from Asia, but the water buffalo are Punjabis and mostly from Punjab because it is the breadbasket of India and Pakistan.

00;39;46;15 - 00;40;16;25

Unknown

It is one of the major regions where all those multi-species, knowledge that comes from the agricultural communities in the Punjab are now being utilized, in, Italy, because they are this is important interspecies, you know, multi-species knowledge. I have another picture here to speak about those kinds of affects in which all of a sudden you have these convergences, hyper convergences and movements across borders.

00;40;17;01 - 00;41;06;01

Unknown

And this is a picture of, an agent and overseas kind of dream factory agent in which you are able to learn English, pass the IELTS test, the International English test for language, which allows you to even apply or get a visa to, the UK or, or North America. So you have study visa and for me, this is kind of just as a there is an out, there's an, there is a creation of a Punjabi ecosystem in Europe with through these migrants, there is this creation of an eco cultural system, of Europe, an offshoot of Europe in the in the cities and towns in Punjab, you know, you have

00;41;06;01 - 00;41;45;18

Unknown

study in Germany, the UK study visa. You have France and Italy, Latvia and Germany for just 6.5 lakh rupees. So you have all these value systems and, and ways of maybe moving to Europe, through these different systems. Of course, what this has done is it has also created a loss of labor and a loss of, multispecies and agricultural knowledge from the Punjab and a lot of issues with, who is going to actually work the land in the Punjab when all these migrant workers are working the lands in other countries.

00;41;45;20 - 00;42;05;20

Unknown

So you have this huge loss of, vitality, energy, new generations and that kind of energy in the actual regions. I wanted to show you, as part of this affective map of convergences, two clips.

00;42;05;23 - 00;42;33;25

Unknown

One is, of course, that, the, the the fantasy created by, these Bollywood, the Bollywood film donkey. And I'll show you a quick clip because it is important to see that the cyber -cene not only has its material effects within bodies and ecosystems, but also has a soundtrack sometimes and sometimes a soundtrack is a Bollywood soundtrack, and it all kind of is personally curated then by different people.

00;42;33;25 - 00;43;04;02

Unknown

So I was able to see the main citation, which is the song recited, not or recited in different forms by actual migrants who are filming themselves on smartphones as they undertake these migrations. And they have put the soundtrack of the movie to as a soundtrack to their life. Okay, so the years, the years where I see hyper convergence really work, in, in an actual way.

00;43;04;04 - 00;43;33;09

Unknown

So you have this, it's this -cene in which there you have four friends, and they are trying to find any legal way of, of getting a visa to go to Europe for many different reasons. But they're in an English language class and they're not able to learn English. And it's, of course, in true kind of formulaic Bollywood fashion, it is closely entwined with, within a love story of the main characters.

00;43;33;12 - 00;44;05;03

Unknown

And, so it's almost as if the their love is po becomes, along with this new understanding of, transnational spaces, and, of course, that love crystallized in the song, because, Manu stands up for Hardy. Manu is the girl. She stands up for Hardy and says, no, you're not an idiot. You can learn English, and stands up against the teacher in this English class.

00;44;05;05 - 00;44;36;07

Unknown

I'm gonna just bring it up to here. A when she stands up, and then he falls in love with her at that moment because she's such a strong stuff woman. And it leads to the song sequence. But the song sequence is also interesting because it also, hybridize is the space of the, of the Punjabi village that they show and the and the mansion or the building in which they live with, European and American and Canadian flags.

00;44;36;09 - 00;45;07;01

Unknown

And of course, the the song's lyrics, too, are speaking about how it is through his love for, to Hardy's new love for Manu that he is in pieces and reconstituting himself. So it's very interesting how they use the formula of romantic love, but also bring in these questions of becoming into pieces, reconstituting and curating in some way your own story through these kinds of citations.

00;45;07;01 - 00;45;27;16

Unknown

It's then that there's a citation within the citation because you have these actual migrants undertaking these really difficult journeys, a lot of them perishing or not making it, but they are. And meanwhile, uploading a video of them in the jungles of Panama, and then with the soundtrack of the film. So I'll just quickly play your song.

00;45;27;16 - 00;45;43;25

Unknown

Correct. And so thank you. Tell me that, I mean, for the tiny, tiny woman who knows. That stuff. But she's leaving.

00;45;48;05 - 00;45;55;01

Unknown

I love.

00;45;55;03 - 00;46;08;24

Unknown

This.

00;46;08;26 - 00;46;48;20

Unknown

I have to deal with that. But that is because back home, the other thing might go back. Then it's like I'm gonna think the love of is around. Let's go get. Money to develop a pretty good category. But I am a deep, dark guy. But I see, I put together a my book. I like to put the guy, let's put you guys, let's go.

00;46;48;20 - 00;47;26;20

Unknown

Guys, and go. You put the guy, put it down. But if you got, I got put together, you put the guy up and I. So there is the citation. All right. And, then you have, you have all kinds of, citations re citations. You have examples. Here's an example of someone, in, you know, a YouTube shark who's actually undertaking.

00;47;26;21 - 00;47;48;29

Unknown

And possibly, again, there's no verification, right? This could actually be staged, but there are all and that's what's most interesting for me is the analysis of the comments. And, once there's a YouTube posting and that's where I look at, well, how are these discourses understood, received, analyzed and then deployed by the people in their own different ways?

00;47;48;29 - 00;48;12;09

Unknown

And here's that here's where that citation and that agency comes in for the people consuming this content. And then using it to fit their own story of either deciding to migrate or not deciding to migrate or staying or saying this is a bad thing to do, or this is a good thing to do, whatever it might be. So here's your coffee and I'm enjoying it.

00;48;12;12 - 00;48;22;01

Unknown

This is another song. It's Punjabi, but it's another Punjabi movie song on the.

00;48;22;04 - 00;48;51;28

Unknown

Ice. Again, I can't take it back on it, but it's a no brainer to do a film with. I did and to find this video I just typed Donkey Success, you know, or whatever. You can find this all over the place right? Here's another example. And I think, a lot of the comment, it's interesting because here you have, I think, I suspect it's staged, because you have a group of, these four, youth who are saying, you know, don't do this.

00;48;51;28 - 00;49;16;19

Unknown

You know, we're in the middle of the forest. We paid a lot of money there. I mean, we're in Mexico and, you know, citing, you know, saying just urging people to not undertake this route. And, why is everybody in the long, great in America? Why doesn't it? Whatever you do, you have a way to get back, you know, come back on them.

00;49;16;21 - 00;49;38;06

Unknown

You know, you're saying we only had one pack of bread and we've been, you know, eating that for five days as we cross the forest? A lot of the comments below. And, you know, the, the, the, the account also of the person who's uploaded it just I'm not sure of the provenance, but that's the point.

00;49;38;09 - 00;50;04;20

Unknown

That's the point is that a lot of these are citations that just hang and then are used by the commentators, a lot of prayers for their safety. In the comments, a lot of people saying, oh, this is totally fake. A lot of other people saying, well, you guys look really well-fed for having, you know, not eaten for five days or, you know, where do you get that haircut?

00;50;04;20 - 00;50;34;19

Unknown

You know, it looks perfect. So, there's many different ways. There's a lot of other people saying, oh, this is I'm going to do it anyway because, you know, why not give it a chance? So you have this kind of acceleration, but this kind of really interesting interaction. So I wanted to bring and show those two, examples, as this kind of new eco cultural kind of discursive affective system that you have in the cyber -cene that's that's affecting these people.

00;50;34;19 - 00;51;01;19

Unknown

And then going back to Mr. Singh story, do I know what what what compelled him to undertake a trip? Do I know the means in which he took it? I do not, but I think it's very interesting to see that, you know, from what I could read of the interviews also, from his wife, and the other people who helped him and tried to save his life was that, you know, they were they had found their way.

00;51;01;21 - 00;51;44;02

Unknown

They managed to kind of either be in the gray area between, documented or not. And they were hoping to kind of eventually, you know, build a life in Italy. And of course, that was not possible. So some conclusions, I guess, very quickly, I think the future research and analysis of eco cultures in the cyber -cene, I think they can be especially productive in, providing this kind of inclusive comprehension of the practices of damage, resilience, healing, and habitability, within marginalized biopolitical and eco political multispecies communities.

00;51;44;04 - 00;52;12;04

Unknown

The first step that I will start taking with students, for example, in the new course, in the new seminar next winter, is to understand, well, how do we even understand, the value, of non-human cultures? Is that is there such a thing? How do we understand if there is such a thing or not? And, so these pathways to healing and habitability are of value, I think, not only to that particular community.

00;52;12;06 - 00;52;43;26

Unknown

I think it's important to underline that, it's important for the overall health and well-being of any just democratic and biodiverse multispecies eco cultural systems globally. And, I hope through different projects to show how qualitative research and the humanities that examine individual or group affect meaning, knowledge production and dissemination, will be key to kind of confronting the unique eco culture circumstances of the era.

00;52;43;26 - 00;53;29;13

Unknown

I'm calling the cyber -cene. So this kind of research, I think, I hope, will become much more of a valued complement to qualitative analysis. Analysis of our social, cultural and economic systems. So there are some examples of like near-term projects that are either starting up or ongoing. So I'm working on a project, in Agrigento, it's Agrigento 2025, and this was something I had planned already, starting a year and a half ago or two years ago, because Agrigento, this incredible city, city in Sicily, that has one of the most intact Greek temples of Greek architecture in all of the Mediterranean world, is has been, selected

00;53;29;13 - 00;53;52;05

Unknown

as the Italian capital for culture in 2025. And so I was brought in, along with the professor at Montclair State University, to kind of have an academic component to it. But I thought, well, how interesting would it be to do a tech mapping eco culturally of 1 or 2 areas of that and look at it at things through time and through multispecies systems?

00;53;52;07 - 00;54;14;20

Unknown

And, and provide a resource to the community rather than just making it an academic project just for me. There I have a documentary that I have a lot of footage on, and it's in post-production as I try to kind of edit it together. And that is, called our Multispecies futures, and it's human bison relationships in the greater Yellowstone eco cultural system.

00;54;14;20 - 00;54;46;05

Unknown

So what's interesting for me is how this work can look at Europe's broad reach globally, through time, and also look at ways in which that broad reach, has resulted in a certain set of circumstances, eco culturally. But as also resulted in some kinds of changes and alternatives that are that are being brought in after, all these interactions have happened.

00;54;46;05 - 00;55;16;27

Unknown

And that's an example of looking within this country and looking at the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem and and look at the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes and the incredible work they are doing to revive their lands, with the American buffalo or the bison lab courses. So I have a global food studies course. Because food, I think, is that great inter, concrete interaction between multispecies relationships, which, are often not talked about.

00;55;16;27 - 00;55;39;17

Unknown

Food is a multi species relationship. When you go after this event today, you are engaging in a multi-species relationship by, you know, unless you're a cannibal. But you have you know, we are assuming we are not, and you're engaging in a multi-species relationship when you eat. I'm thinking of, a summer course for it, for undergraduate students as well.

00;55;39;17 - 00;55;56;18

Unknown

And, of course, there's a new graduate seminar. So how to integrate more research and teaching as well? Thank you so much. And, for your, presence. And if you have any questions, thank you so much for being here.

00;55;56;21 - 00;56;20;12

Unknown

Oh, yes. Please follow the lab. I'm saying this non ironically on Instagram, Facebook right, is talking about, the cyber -cene. And I, I will start posting more stuff. But it's a great way to kind of just follow and and tell people about it. But we'll, I'll be rolling out more stuff about the lab, and, this is just the beginning.

00;56;20;12 - 00;56;48;01

Unknown

The first time I even kind of speak about it. Other than when I did my job. But, about the lab and what I would love to do with colleagues and students here at UCLA. So, yeah, thanks. Any questions? Thoughts? Would you like to feel your presence? You know, I'd love for you here. Okay. So let's, let's start in, particularly if there are some students I know.

00;56;48;06 - 00;57;15;18

Unknown

That was really cool. I have a question about the presentation itself. Did you use AI generated photos and you're. Yes. Can I ask why you made that particular artistic choice? Because there has to be a good reason for that. Yes, because I think the point of the cyber -cene is that it's here. Okay, okay. Here. And then what are ways in which, we can interact with all these kinds of knowledge creation?

00;57;15;18 - 00;57;47;04

Unknown

Because images are knowledge creation. And I was like, oh, what what is the way for me to use like especially, you know, to show what, what I meant, I could sit and try and design this, you know, but it's so much quicker to kind of talk in one image. So that kind of stickiness between embodied and virtual relationships and, and test out these systems and see what they're like and what does it even feel to use them, you know, and so, yeah, that's that's a good question.

00;57;47;04 - 00;58;14;17

Unknown

It's I think the lab is not technophobic. It's certainly cautious and asking us to think about what we're doing. But but certainly not not technophobic as in but it is very, very cautious and trying to understand also what are all those, techno fixes that are so commonly talked about in cultural discourse? Oh, there's climate change, but we'll find the technology to fix that.

00;58;14;19 - 00;58;58;01

Unknown

Technology can be the solution to everything. So, you know, so the cyber -cene study is the first cluster would love to find, you know, or or stimulate graduate students or researchers to think exactly about how those techno scientific, utopia discourses work, because the, the dominant discourse I feel, in most cultures today, we'll figure out a way and that'll be a way to capture carbon and and we'll harness the power of the sun's nucleus or something and figure it out or I don't know what whatever.

00;58;58;04 - 00;59;24;23

Unknown

Yeah. Good question. Thank you so much for this wonderful prompt. And I was very interested in this idea, visual spectacle and this idea of through and through your model of analysis and this idea of the cyber seeing the cyber -cene, you become, consumer with agency and that visual spectacle. And I was wondering, because you brought up YouTube, and part of my research is also associated to consuming YouTube videos.

00;59;24;25 - 00;59;53;16

Unknown

Oh, how does it feel as a consumer of the cyber -cene yourself to evaluate how other consumers of this? I received perceive these videos because you said that a big part of it is reading your comments. Reading the likes. Yeah. Sharing, aspect of YouTube also. So how how does it feel to do that? How does it feel in terms of me as a poet, as a human or as a researcher?

00;59;53;18 - 01;00;27;02

Unknown

Yeah. Making those, I guess. Yeah. How does it feel to to know. Yeah, to reconcile that to both as an academic and also just as a consumer, because I receive I think it's, it's important to, include the affect in the research. And that's another factor especially is very open to understanding that affect is central to the work we do.

01;00;27;04 - 01;00;55;24

Unknown

So that idea that one can be dispassionate and objective, and has been the basis of scientific inquiry. Right. But it's important to kind of pay attention to that, and acknowledge that there might there there is all sorts of, intermediate filters, both affective and then psychic. So, so they're both both pre mean and making and then post also.

01;00;55;26 - 01;01;27;09

Unknown

So when I look at the comments though, I kind of am able to use just the meta methodology of colonial discourse analysis or discourse and answer the general. And I'm able to kind of say, okay, this is qualitatively what I'm seeing, broad categories of comments and where are these discourses and how diverse they are. And that allows me to look at it and say, okay, now there is a way to kind of, make,

01;01;27;12 - 01;01;58;04

Unknown

Make some rational claims. On the work I'm looking at, without it being quantitative, there is a way to make rational knowledge claims without quantitative analysis. And that's what I'm most interested in understanding how to make. And I mean, the humanities are is what it's kind of what we do in cultural studies and are often put downward. Where's the data, on this and I was very interested.

01;01;58;04 - 01;02;25;03

Unknown

I'll give you an example. The main economist, economic advisor, and I forget his name, unfortunately, because it's not connected to the stock. But I'm thinking of an example, one of the chief economic advisors under President Biden was shocked by the election results. He could not understand how a lot of the policies that he helped enact, which really helped the working class and the middle class.

01;02;25;05 - 01;02;50;02

Unknown

He is having cognitive dissonance. He's like, how is it possible that all this kind of policies that we put in that are really going to help, you know, everybody understand and here's all the data. And as an economist, he was providing, you know, inflation is down and all this kind of curve charts and everything. And I was like, oh my gosh, there's no one there.

01;02;50;04 - 01;03;26;23

Unknown

That you don't understand how human beings were to show up. And this is that perception is so important. Perception is so important. And you could see that dissonance. And that's where I think a factory where psychoanalysis or discourse analysis can really help these. If we were given the table on the economic policy, table to understand well as human as well, how are you going to then communicate this and in a proper way, and understand and make people understand on an emotional level.

01;03;26;25 - 01;04;03;08

Unknown

On a social level. On a cultural level, this is what we're undertaking. What we're doing then would have been different. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. So thanks for the nice question. Yes. Yeah. I was just wondering, the category of cultural is, sorry, the category of eco cultural. It's a really it's a really useful one. I think, I'm wondering, how do you, in your in your own research, how did you define that in such a way that, you didn't get overwhelmed by it like it is?

01;04;03;09 - 01;04;21;24

Unknown

It's like, do you do you look for specific examples of the eco cultural, when you're doing your research or do you try to see it in, in everything? Because, I mean, to me, it's so useful that, yeah, you can see it in a lot of different things. But what are you doing in terms of, like, trying to find examples?

01;04;21;25 - 01;05;01;25

Unknown

What's the what's, your strategy? Some of the best examples I was trying to, you know, find these theoretical definitions. Thank you for that question. It's, it's, it's lies at the heart of what's then going to be the methodology. Right. What we're going to work on. I started by looking at, well, new materials and then there's a lot of work on that and the post-human and, you know, looking at also these connections that Donna Haraway makes, for example, with companion species, there's, Stacey alignment with this idea of trans corporeality, also that looks at this idea of, you know, bodies and how bodies are a product.

01;05;01;25 - 01;05;39;21

Unknown

Our bodies are a product of both nature and culture coming together in this, in this, in this form. So there's a lot of that. And then I started more and more, though, being attracted to a lot of indigenous thought, that that looks at, even inanimate, features such as rocks, being more or less inanimate, you know, this is just, just a very different way of thinking that that, again, has been highly rejected, you know, or actually suppressed.

01;05;39;21 - 01;06;06;16

Unknown

Right. As, you know, you can just think of all the, the colonial schooling of the Native American communities and children and, you know, like, so it started as a project to kind of just look up, look at all of those unusual ways of thinking of our relationships between society and what's around that and that kind of division.

01;06;06;19 - 01;06;41;06

Unknown

So there's a lot of that, affect theory, really goes to the heart of it as well, understanding how our affect affects, more than, one species. So that is certainly not the realm of humans. And then all these, research that's being done. Oh, Wales have language too. But my question is then, well, haven't all many different forms of human beings to being being degraded to a higher level or lower level based on either intelligence.

01;06;41;08 - 01;07;08;16

Unknown

I mean, think about, you know, how migrants are given an English test. Right. Either intelligence or they're tested right for it's the value system is based on these quantifiable measures. And how all of that kind of connects. And then all of a sudden you have a system that isn't looking at that and just saying, no, this is all sacred, and we're all connected and, you know, here are the ways and and ceremony as research.

01;07;08;19 - 01;08;03;09

Unknown

What does that even mean? You have a ceremony. And that's the way of understanding the world. So it's really kind of breaking apart a lot of these, foundational ways in which, methodologies in which we build our research. And I can certainly say that it's not easy, and it's kind of destabilizing to me, too. But I'm curious, and I think that kind of there's a lot of great work and global indigenous studies, that of scholars that are now embedded in academia who are legitimizing, a lot of these, you know, decolonial and pre-colonial forms of connecting with the world around us and connecting culture and nature together.

01;08;03;11 - 01;08;31;26

Unknown

Okay. Are the questions. I have I'm okay. So I was curious that second part of the that's not going down your lab, where you are doing the opposite of Zuckerberg, where you're going slow and making relationships, do you? I mean, what is your approach in relationship to technology in that or replicating these systems or having developed an ethics or do you really mean how do you plan on moving forward?

01;08;31;26 - 01;08;59;09

Unknown

That's probably a large question. I mean, different talk in future talk. Could I ask a little bit to restate it? In terms of what what would the relationship of the lab be to technology? Yeah. How are you thinking of approaching those kinds of projects? Are you going to replicate what's out there, what you're critiquing? In other words, you know, or you are you going to use some things and not others according to some sort of ethics you create?

01;08;59;16 - 01;09;34;22

Unknown

Or is it more like, let's let's, you know, use ceremony, along with something that, you know what I'm saying? Like, how were you thinking about those kinds of projects and how to deploy these things, yet you are critiquing any systems. You are critiquing? It's an important question. And I think the form, I think we have to use technology to establish presence, but then a lot of the work that will be done hopefully will, allow theory to connect with embodied, kind of relationship building.

01;09;34;24 - 01;10;02;27

Unknown

And, the, the, the kind of only way to do that is to maybe, also go beyond, talking about theory and looking at different forms of media, different forms of, people also who are not academics, for example, moving into the community. I think that will be a really important aspect, maybe celebrating, people in the community who are doing that kind of work.

01;10;02;27 - 01;10;38;25

Unknown

So, for example, I know right out here in Compton, I saw an article of someone in Compton who's built, who's used, their backyards to start a whole gardening community. And it's really feeding a lot of, a lot of people in the community with fresh vegetables. So, kind of looking at those examples of resilience and survivants and kind of multi-species and, and intercultural relationship building, and, to kind of showcase those bodies and those relationships as the experts.

01;10;38;28 - 01;11;13;19

Unknown

So I think, the foundation of the conclusion of this lab is, if there is one will be that, will be that of epistemic humility. If there's a way to be humble, be open about, ways of approaching the issues of the cyber -cene. Because that has been the problem if one looks at it even in a multi species level, is that know, you know, we're assuming where human exceptionality, you know, at the top of the species Homo sapiens.

01;11;13;19 - 01;11;36;06

Unknown

So we're right from that. The only way to glitch it is then to be humble in some way. And if I can also be humble and say no, the lab is not only what I want to be, but there's the advisory committee. There will be students, there will be other people who will also talk to me and tell me, you know, what are ways in which this can be done properly, or different ways of doing it?

01;11;36;09 - 01;11;47;14

Unknown

I think those are different ways of approaching it. Yeah, that's a good question. Important consideration.

01;11;47;17 - 01;12;19;18

Unknown

Yes. I'm interested to hear you talk more about how and why you use images. The one that we're looking at right now is intriguing. I wonder what your instructions to, I were to create this computer image. I'm also wondering whether what you're talking about is, you know, science related to that question. It kind of relates to the question about technology.

01;12;19;21 - 01;13;00;10

Unknown

But using these new forms of image creation, imaging to connect present and future, to connect the problems of the present to the possible solutions by and if manipulating or invoking these technologies to present possibilities to people of solving certain problems. So I'm concrete level. I'm thinking about, for example, place where I work, where there where there is a classic eco systemic human problem.

01;13;00;10 - 01;13;27;26

Unknown

It's actually a park that's kind of touted as a human nature relationship park. In other words, it's inhabited. It's a it's a natural national park, but it's inhabited by humans who work there. There's fisher people and and being farmers and people who like to hunt. And of course, all these people have fantasies about one another, one another's evil intentions to appropriate the place and so on.

01;13;27;26 - 01;14;01;22

Unknown

And they're in conflict. There's a lot of conflict. So I'm just I'm just sort of free floating questions. One about the kinds of images, what the function of your images is, or how you see images functioning in your project. And then the second one is, is more of a kind of a problem solving, a real world problem solving question about sort of do you imagine invoking something from this to problem solving, some of these, you know, kind of real world contradictory and seemingly intractable situations that we face?

01;14;01;29 - 01;14;30;27

Unknown

Yeah, the images were to, I mean, images. We work with images in cultural studies and, you know, especially coming from film studies background, you know, I think images are a way to hopefully communicate something that sometimes words can't, you know, poetry does that as well. You know, it's a way of indirectly maybe, eliciting something that I could maybe say on all the page.

01;14;30;27 - 01;15;08;09

Unknown

But, you know, the images are 2000 words. So, again, I the way of what I, what I input here, it was dialog that, it was that, I, that was there that was producing. I put in real give me a realistic image of a, of a hand holding a smartphone, and there are, human and animal parts, coming out of the smartphone screen, you know, and, a lot of the examples weren't great.

01;15;08;09 - 01;15;22;12

Unknown

And then then you tweak it and you suggest, and then it just gives you something, you know, better and better. Based on that. So that was the input I gave in.

01;15;22;14 - 01;16;09;10

Unknown

Concrete solutions. The concrete solutions. That's the thing with epistemic humility. I think it would be great to just listen to the people who have already been through eco cultural upheaval in the past and who have been able to actually be there, experience those upheavals and come up with solutions. So I have, and there's a way in which a lot of, for example, when I was shooting the documentary on the bison project in the Greater Yellowstone area, the main, ecologist, and, tribal member who was working on bringing the bison back, he has formed his this wonderful chart that he has built, which connects all these

01;16;09;10 - 01;16;31;02

Unknown

different knowledges. And he doesn't differentiate between indigenous and non. And it's like, what works, what seems to have worked when actually bringing the bison back and make it work. So it was a whole lot of biology and a whole lot of, you know, ecosystem science. Because that's the field he, he worked, you know, he got his, his masters, I believe, and, you know, environmental studies.

01;16;31;04 - 01;16;54;22

Unknown

And then he brought in all the cultural stuff, you know, storytelling was a really important component of that system of knowledge that brought to, you know, the stories that are exist. And then, you know, the, for example, the Lakota have their origin story, connects them to bison as cousins, you know, and it's a really interesting story.

01;16;54;24 - 01;17;27;10

Unknown

So how do you bring those stories to connect with, the actual, you know, rewilding? There are all those very intricate political and legal questions. And so you have these members in the tribe, for example, who are working on that and who have had to fight and who have had to go through a lot of, suffering, a lot of backlash, both within the tribe and outside, for the changes that they would like to institute.

01;17;27;12 - 01;18;09;16

Unknown

Because just as the cyber -cene, I mean, colonialism shows its most potent forms within the colonized sometimes, and the ways of system of, of thinking that are there within the colonized as well. So, talking to these people and treating them, not as, subjects to, research, do research on, but standing with them as experts has been really moving, has been really uplifting to me and has been really humbling because they're like, okay, all I'm doing is just maybe then collecting these and trying to make sense of what you're doing when you're already doing it.

01;18;09;18 - 01;18;24;14

Unknown

Yeah. Hi. Thank you for my time. You attention was very interesting. And actually, the questions about that show, at least about the. Sorry that the agricultural you.