Elizabeth A. Povinelli: Bodies in Motion

Sandbanks, Long Yams, and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Climate Change

This lecture considers the question of the body in motion from the perspective of ancestral Karrabing* beaches. Rather than life and death, "Bodies in Motion" asks us to consider the relations of emergence and submergence as human and the more-than-human worlds react to the long history of the colonial catastrophe, including its present culmination in climate shift.

* The Karrabing Film Collective uses the creation of film and art installations as a form of Indigenous grassroots resistance and self-organisation. The collective opens a space beyond binaries of the fictional and the documentary, the past and the present. Meaning "low tide" in the Emmiyengal language, karrabing refers to a form of collectivity outside of government-imposed strictures of clanship or land ownership. Shot on handheld cameras and phones, most of Karrabing’s films dramatise and satirise the daily scenarios and obstacles that collective members face in their various interactions with corporate and state entities. Composing webs of nonlinear narratives that touch on cultural memory, place, and ancestry by freely jumping in time and place, KFC exposes and intervenes into the longstanding facets of colonial violence that impact members directly, such as environmental devastation, land restrictions, and economic exploitation.

Online-Lecture, Registration: Bodies in Motion - Tanzquartier Wien (tqw.at)