Utopias of Sustainability – The Sustainability of Utopias: A Multimodal Intervention
Edited by: Christine Hämmerling, Alexander Koensler, and Marion Näser-Lather
The collection deposited here in the EthnOA media repository contains the audiovisual projects of the multimedia anthology ‘Utopias of Sustainability - The Sustainability of Utopias. A Multimodal Intervention’, edited by Christine Hämmerling, Alexander Koensler, Marion Näser-Lather. This book project was published in open access in 2025 by the Morlacchi publishing house in Perugia, Italy, under the DOI (in preparation): https://doi.org/10.61014/PoliticalImaginationLaboratories/vol1.
Six of the 13 text contributions in the book contain audiovisual projects in addition to the text, which you can view here. You can find out which film project can be assigned to which author in the anthology in the table of contents, which also lists the film titles.
About the Project
As utopias of a better world appear increasingly as ephemeral, precarious and fragile, concepts related to sustainability, the environment and rurality seem at the forefront of contemporary impulses for social change. This volume collects both paper and ethnographic film contributions of the fourth Political Imagination Laboratory. The core theme is ‘Utopias of Sustainability – The Sustainability of Utopias.’ Examples include experiments with self-production, new forms of horizontal cooperation, new understandings of rural-urban and nature-culture relations, and reflections on the longevity of social movements.
We ask: Which more or less visible utopian impulses haunt contemporary forms of activism? How are, for example, concepts like sustainability, rurality and nature employed by different actors? To which ideologies and/or utopias are these connected? In which context is and is not sustainability, rurality or ecology invoked? How can discourses and practices of sustainability, rurality, ecology and similar concepts be made visible by ethnographers?
Content
Introduction https://doi.org/10.61014/PoliticalImaginationLaboratories/vol1
Christine Hämmerling, Alexander Koensler, Marion Näser-Lather: Utopias of Sustainability – The Sustainability of Utopias: Introduction to a Multi-Modal Intervention
Reflections on social aspects of sustainability and longevity in social movements
Marion Näser-Lather: How Sustainable can a movement be? Structural conditions and contexts of engagement
Christine Hämmerling: A sustainable place of work? Voluntary activism in NGOs
Madeleine Sallustio: ‘Staying with the Trouble’ in a self-managed agricultural collective. An ethnofiction
Piotr Goldstein: Commentary: Spółdzielnia/Cooperative: an experiment in longitudinal visual ethnography of migrant activism; Film: Spółdzielnia/Cooperative
Film: ‘Spółdzielnia/Cooperative: An experiment in longitudinal visual ethnography of migrant activism’ https://doi.org/10.18450/ethnoa-medien/44
More than Human perspectives on sustainability projects and activism
Claudia Terragni: Multispecies Disobedience. Vegetables-activists relation in Italian social movements
Nikolaus Heinzer: What does a ‘good’ river look like? Sustainability and aesthetics in river restoration
Alexander Koensler: The Border. Resisting monocultures in Central Italy
Film: ‘The Border. Resisting Monocultures in Central Italy’ https://doi.org/10.18450/ethnoa-medien/46
Exoticising Western everyday practices: Audio-visual documentations of sustainability projects
Cristhian Caje, Cornelia Eckert, and Carmen Silvia de Moraes Rial: The Utopia of recycling
Film: ‘The Utopia of Recycling’ https://doi.org/10.18450/ethnoa-medien/61
Carlos Fonseca da Silva: Setting the scene for two sustainable projects in a French eco-hamlet
Film: ‘Setting the Scene for two Sustainable Projects in a French Eco-Hamlet’ https://doi.org/10.18450/ethnoa-medien/47
Sarah Ruth Sippel and Timothy D Weldon: Un sacrificio: Gabriele’s cheese. Fighting for the impact and sustainability of research: Filmic and artistic forms of activism
Film: ‘Un sacrificio: Gabriele’s cheese’ https://doi.org/10.18450/ethnoa-medien/42
Fighting for the impact and sustainability of research: Filmic and artistic forms of activism
Cahal McLaughlin and Siobhán Wills: Right now I want to scream: Using participatory film with communities in Haiti and Brazil in order to expose state violence and make connections across countries
Film 1: ‘It stays with you: Use of force by UN Peacekeepers in Haiti’ https://doi.org/10.18450/ethnoa-medien/41
Flim 2: ‘Right now I want to scream: Police and army killings in Rio – the Brazil Haiti Connection’ https://doi.org/10.18450/ethnoa-medien/45
Konstantina Bousmpoura and Paula Serafini: Aesthetic and affective practices in Latin American feminist movements: transnational perspectives from the intersection of art, activism, and research