A hand-processed portrait of Jake Williams – who lives alone within miles of forest in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Jake always has many jobs on at any one time, finds a use for everything, is an expert mandolin player. He has compost heaps going back many years. He has a different sense of time to most people in the 21st Century, which is explicitly expressed in his idea for creating hedges by putting up bird feeders. It struck me straight away that there were parallels between our ways of working - I have tried to be as self-reliant as possible and be apart from the idea of industry - Jake's life and garden are much the same - he can sustain himself from what he grows and so needs little from others. To Jake this isn’t about nostalgia for some treasured pre-electric past, but more, a very real future.

Slow Action is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film that brings together a series of four 16mm works that lie somewhere between documentary, ethnographic study and fiction.Continuing his exploration of curious and extraordinary environments, Slow Action applies the idea of island biogeography - the study of how species and eco-systems evolve differently when isolated and surrounded by unsuitable habitat - to a conception of the Earth in a few hundred years; the sea level rising to absurd heights, creating hyperbolic utopias that appear as possible future mini-societies. Slow Action is filmed at different sites across the globe: Lanzarote - a beautiful strange island known for its beach resorts yet one of the driest places on the planet, full of dead volcanoes and strange architecture; Gunkanjima - an island off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan, a deserted city built on a rock, once home to thousands of families mining its rich coal reserves; Tuvalu - one of the smallest countries in the world, with tiny strips of land barely above sea level in the middle of the Pacific; and Somerset - an as yet to be discovered island and its various clades. This series of constructed realities explores the environments of self-contained lands and the search for information to enable the reconstruction of soon to be lost worlds. The film’s soundtrack - narratives by writer Mark von Schlegell - detail each of the four islands’ evolutions according to their geographical, geological, climatic and botanical conditions. Slow Action, inspired by novels such as Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, Bacon’s The New Atlantis, Herbert Read’s The Green Child and Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, embodies the spirit of exploration, experiment and active research that has come to characterise Rivers’ practice.

A 70-year old man living in a remote part of Scotland has been obsessed with 'trying to really understand' Darwin's book for many years. Alongside this passion, he's been constantly working on small inventions for making his life easier. The film investigates someone profoundly interested in human beings, but who has decided to live separately from the majority of them.

ECOSYSTEMIC MEMORIES OF THE CITY

NON-SUBMISSIVE LANDSCAPES

ECOSYSTEMIC MEMORIES OF THE CITY

Collaboration with Bornlab (El Borne CCM) for a collective approach to the contemporary imaginary of natural resources and territory, based on the sharing of current geopolitical issues that have an echo in the city of Barcelona.

This edition of the community studies group "Ecosystemic memories of the city" proposes a series of sessions in which we collectively approach the contemporary imaginary of natural resources and territory, based on the sharing of some current geopolitical issues that have an echo in the city of Barcelona.

Natural resources and the territory, based on the sharing of some current geopolitical issues that have an echo in the city of Barcelona. Through the contributions of various entities and people who connect us with critical archives, social actions and cultural initiatives in the city, we will address the recovery of community forms of agricultural social organization in contemporary pedagogies, images and slogans of movements for the protection of the land, as well as the reflection, from various worldviews, on cultural heritage and in connection with environmental issues that affect different international contexts.

The programme is organised in a participatory methodology that includes working groups where knowledge is pooled and perspectives are shared between guests and participants. In the different meetings, cultural proposals are discussed to explore the relationship between memory, community and ecology through collaborative experimentation and public action, which are included in the fanzine that is distributed in the closing session.

The Community Studies Group is a proposal of Bornlab, the community mediation programme of Borne CCM with the support of community mediation programme of Borne CCM in collaboration with Coalició Prou Complicitat amb Israel, La Colectiva de Chilenas de Barcelona, Comunitat Palestina de Barcelona, Laboratorio Móvil, OVNI (observatori de Vídeo No identificat) , Ruangrupa i docents i investigadores de l’Institut Català d’Antropologia, el Col·legi de Psicòlegs de Barcelona, l’Escola Massana and la Universitat de Barcelona.

Further information and registration: elbornculturaimemoria

NON-SUBMISSIVE LANDSCAPES

Thursday 8.2.24 from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Through the audiovisual archive, we will reflect on movements led by communities in Chiapas, Palestine and Ecuador who are

Chiapas, Palestine and Ecuador who are organising themselves against the deterioration of their ecosystems and claiming the right to use and protect their land.

1_ Land and traditions

A fragmented road trip through Britain on the peripheries. Down empty roads, off in the wilderness, a few lone stragglers. My first stop, geologist Jan Zalasiewicz, talking about the Earth in one-hundred millions years time.“What would be left of human action, human traces, human constructions, human buildings and the wider ripple effects of humans after that length of time… assuming that humans disappear in the geologically near future.”