Most recent video!
Animal ontology and philosophical ethology - after Roberto Marchesini
A short, yet deep dive into Roberto Marchesini's animal ontology. Exploring Marchesini's thought, this video essay brings forward many of his philosophical and ethological concepts that end up paving the way for a new and vital model of animal subjectivity. Enriching our understanding of what it means to be an animal being, Marchesini's philosophy offers an anti-anthropocentric and anti-speciesist conceptualization that frames the human as a particular kind of animal, rather than a "special" one, while reframing animality as an open condition.
Into the Planthroposcene - together with the photosynthetic ones
How present are plants in your life? Do you notice them, or consider them part of the background? This video explores the relationships we have with the photosynthetic ones - those beings thanks to whom we can breathe, and thus be alive. By learning to listen to the vegetal world, the Planthroposcene pushes us to explore other ways of being human and thus disrupt colonial and anthropocentric understandings of what plants are.
Letters to our multispecies kin - 12 writings to other animals
This video was produced after a workshop about imagining multispecies worlds, and its text was written by its participants. The film is a work of collective imagination that reflects with curiosity, kindness, and awe over a series of relations the participants had with other animals.
Children & Animal Companions: Care, love, and grief in multispecies families
How do children and “pets” live together? Do they challenge or reinforce human-animal boundaries? In this video we explore the complex relationships existing between children and their “pets” by following the questions and findings of the CLAN research project. The research looks at the affective practices existing between children and animal companions, how empathy and relationships develop, how they are defined, how families and households change, and how care plays a vital role.
Ways of thinking about animal issues - after Matthew Calarco
Based on Matthew Calarco’s book "Thinking Through Animals: Identity, Difference, Indistinction" this video explores three essential philosophical approaches reflecting upon the human/animal distinction and other animal issues.
Where are the pigs? African Swine Fever in Deadly Assemblages
This is an exploration and commemoration of a deadly pig pandemic and the lives it touched. It’s created by humans who believe it is important to find ways to respond to this catastrophe.
Beyond speciesism, beyond humanism, beyond
Can we think and act beyond speciesism? Maybe, but to do so, we must first look back at what brought us here. This video tells us about a story: the story of the Human who saw himself as different from all other animals, separate from all nature. Inspired by posthumanist, feminist, queer, antiracist, and antiableist theory, this video essay tries to conceive of multiple visions for the future of antispeciesism.
The Roma woman, at the edge of the world
What shapes the life experiences of a young Roma woman? In this video essay, izabela marin interlocks stories from their own life with feminist and antiracist theory, to account for the multitude of oppressions and the particular sufferings of these embodiments.
A political theory of animal rights - after Sue Donaldson & Will Kymlicka
Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka wrote a remarkable book of political philosophy called "Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights." In their work, they argue for a future where other animals are not only protected but enabled to shape society as well. A future where nonhuman animals are recognized as political actors instead of moral patients for which humans decide. In this video, we'll explore some of these exciting ideas, along with some of the critiques the book has raised.
Indigenous Knowledges and the Teachings of Plants - after Robin Wall Kimmerer
Reading and listening to Robin Wall Kimmerer already feels like a gift, and it reminded us to hold deep gratitude for this Earth. In turn, we wanted to give thanks by sharing her ideas, the Teachings of Plants, her ways of looking at mosses, and mingling Indigenous Knowledges and Wisdoms with Western Science. This video follows her ideas from her online speeches and her two books, ”Braiding Sweetgrass” and ”Gathering moss”, with the hope of spreading the seeds of gratitude further.
Our streets: queer & Black bodies in movement and protest
The video touches upon the concept of choreopolitics – a theory of body and movements, specifically in the context of protesting for Black lives. It has two voices, two writers, Grey & Zane. Grey Armstrong shares his experience as a Black trans man in the USA, focusing on one encounter with the police. Zane McNeill criticizes the insufficient engagement of the LGBTQIA+ community with antiracism, and talks about his responsibility as a white trans person to be in the streets, opposing white supremacy.
Critical Pedagogy Beyond Humanism - After Paulo Freire
Paulo Freire was an inspiring, amazing thinker, and a true believer in people’s capacity to self-organize and to create their own, transformative knowledge. However, his pedagogy is deeply rooted in humanism and uncritical to it. In this video, we explore some of his ideas regarding critical pedagogy and point further towards a pedagogy that's not rooted in anthropocentrism.
Care ethics against Neoliberalism
How can we think up better responses to resist neoliberalism? And what if, maybe, these responses are actually actions, happenings, as proposed by care ethics? This video was made in collaboration with Riley Valentine, who is a Ph.D. student in Political Science. They study political rhetoric and ideology, using care ethics as an alternative to neoliberalism. Drawing from care ethics literature, Riley argues how care is one way of doing and acting morally towards those around us.
we fly, we crawl, we swim: a short film about climate justice
A short animated film that explores different ideas of justice through anti-speciesist lenses. The film engages with ideas taken from environmental justice, political ecology, political philosophy, posthumanism, and anti-speciesist thought. Its main aim is to seek out possibilities of making climate justice with other animals.
"The human" is political!
This animation pricks and thrusts at the eurocentric, patriarchal, rational human concept, with many voices denouncing its authority and asking for its abolition. The video twists around a falling of Anthropocentrism within certain philosophical thought while trying to push towards its final peak within the factual, material reality.
Mountains of Harm: Biopolitics and the Re-Claimed Body
We are glad to be having Z. Zane McNeill to debut our new series of collaborations with other scholars and activists! In this piece, he wrote about how structures of oppression (and thus, liberation) are etched within our bodies, using theory from Eli Clare and Michel Foucault and speaking honestly about personal experience.
Animal & Disability Liberation - with Sunaura Taylor
Sunaura Taylor is an artist, writer and activist for disability and animal rights. In this video we explore the central argument of her book, ”Beasts of Burden”, that aims to show how ableism and speciesism are intertwined, working with one another as oppressions.
The wild things are coming
This is a story inspired by our deep connections with each other, with our mothers and with earth, through and with our bodies. How do we learn to love what we eat, and how do we learn what, or who, is edible? Take a seat and listen to this life-long conversation between a mother and a daughter.
A Litany for Survival in Pandemic Times - after Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was a Black lesbian feminist poet. She was a fierce activist and listening to her can be both empowering and soothing in these times of crisis - a crisis of capitalist exploitation that led us to a climate crisis and a pandemic that makes deeper the already existing inequalities. But one can learn to live with fear and beyond it, with disease and beyond it, and most importantly, with each other - care and organize, for each other.
The end of endings - with Timothy Morton’s philosophy
Timothy Morton puts us on a path where the white western version of the world is gone. The smooth and blank stuff that can be changed as “we” please is no longer here. Massive entities like global warming are pushing us towards this realization as they are slowly changing our habitual pattern. Anthropocentrism is shaken from the ground because existence just is coexistence with other lifeforms.
Making kin beyond babies - after Donna Haraway
What does „Make kin, not babies” mean? Why is it relevant and why is it dangerous? The video takes into account the critiques it has received from feminist marxists and others. Moreover, it tries to show how the concept was expanded by other feminist philosophers and thinkers, as well as how Haraway herself enmeshed it into her own work about living and dying and about staying with the trouble in the Chthulucene.
Everything is equally weird - On Graham Harman's philosophy
A brief overview of Graham Harman’s weird realism and his object oriented philosophy (OOP). This is our first piece that is part of a new series of videos on thinkers and concepts. The playlist explores different theoretical concepts covering some of our own interests and are recorded with our own voices.
Solidarity is coming to town
A small webcomic we've done with a carol for our times.
Climate Crisis - The final exam!
This year has been rowdy, people have risen all over the globe in a wave of climate protests. We’ve had more and more talk of what actions to take, and more hope, despite the heat-waves, despite the fires and the destruction. But how should we teach, and learn, in a world affected by greenhouse gas emissions? In a world changed irrevocably, a world we need to steer into another direction?
Alienation - Eat while you work, work while you commute
It often feels like the only way we can keep up with the world’s speed is to eat while we work, work while we commute, multitask to exhaustion. Why is this world so sped up, we wonder, what is it about our economic, material, social condition that keeps us running in lanes? There are many causes to our alienation, some, deeper than others. Let’s slow down today, slow down collectively.
Voicemail to the hungry epoch
Incoming voicemail from an uncertain future. Pick up. Is it still human?
Anthropocene - The Great Party
What does it mean to be human in an age of anthropic induced climate change? What words should we use, what actions should we take and how did we get here? We’re just wondering, but just wondering is not enough right now. So let’s wonder whereto, and then act.
Older videos
What's cybersurveillance got to do with you?
So much of our lives are online, and yet we understand so little about what this means. How are our identities handled in cyberspace? How can we newly conceptualize privacy, who owns our data, and how much control do we have over what we share with friends and strangers? Big data is getting bigger by the second, and we might need to decide what we want to do with it before something or someone else makes the choice for us.
Towards an ontology of the commons
Have you ever wondered about what we all have in common? Not just breathing - but beyond that, what are our commons, our human commons? And beyond that - the commons of living things, all living things? In this essay, we’re exploring the idea of the commons down to the ontological base. Come, think with us.
How does culture shape our bodies?
What’s up with this thing we sense through, our body? Hearing, seeing, smelling, accessing the world, all done through a bunch of complicated flesh with nervous networks within it. How is this body shaped by the very different cultures, times and spaces it inhabits?
What beliefs shape our lives?
How did humans get to be such a successful species? And more urgently what's next in store for them? Here are some possible answers, based on historian Yuval Noah Harari's new book, Homo Deus.
Meditation against consumption
You might think that day-to-day activities have enough alternatives for your boredom, but is it so? For sure, the world brings you interesting experiences, but for the long run, you might just be silent and alone from time to time...
What is food?
Whether you look at it from an individual level or on a global scale, the choices you make have an impact on you and on others around you. In a capitalist market, we constantly have to choose, so why not choose better if that's our only option. Instead of choosing what will appease our appetite at a given moment, why not choose foods that are nutritious to our bodies, better for the environment, and less harmful to other living beings?