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Paper short abstract:

Material created with the protest groups’ members engaging in actions in remembrance of loss of non-human beings to neoliberal extractive and indifference industries will be presented as affect conveyed through symbolic mourning, but also as struggle with and empowerment from the timeline of losses.

Paper long abstract:

Experimenting with the potential of participatory film making, I aim to explore the field material created with two protest groups: Extinction Rebellion local group members in the UK, preparing for a funeral procession in remembrance of the extinct species in their area, and the forest protesters in Estonia, memorialising the forests lost to rapidly in the relentless push for extensive clearcutting. Along with the affect conveyed through symbolic mourning of the non-human beings, the participants are also mapping and drawing power from the timeline of extinctions, into the past as well as future. Simultaneously acts of grieving and remembering, these actions are also clarifying the briefness of human gain against the timeline of planetary processes.

Whilst both groups broadly see neoliberalism’s ambition for maximal extraction without regard to survival of the non-human, and ultimately, of the human, as the central reason for the losses and dispossessions experienced in the present and the future, there are instructive differences between the regional and national alliances and solidarities in these two settings - which I hope to further uncover.

As the fieldwork is still ongoing and the participatory film making in its early stages, there is potential for but no guarantee of a creative contribution.