Accepted Contribution:

Climate action surveillance  
Bente Castro Campos (Justus Liebig University Giessen)

Contribution short abstract:

The year is 2050, and the International Climate Observatory is using AI to reconstruct the events of a forest clearing in Germany. The animated short film uses original material and reactivates existing and free fictional material and thus follows a climate-conscious production.

Contribution long abstract:

The year is 2050, and the International Climate Observatory is using AI and new surveillance technologies to try to reconstruct the events of a forest clearing for the construction of the A49 highway in Germany. The events of the forest clearing, which took place between 2020 and 2021, saw the democratic order disrupted by extreme actions of activists and the police, leading to detentions and a general distrust of the police in the region. The AI's personality is to scan and analyze the police press reports and the activists' interviews to reconstruct the different realities and initiate a dialogue between the opposing parties. The AI is to solve the task of finding a new way of protest culture without creating victims and mistrust.

AI concludes that the constructed realities of the extreme activists and the extreme police, who make up only about 5 % of all those involved, are so opposed that no agreement could be reached. However, since 95 % of the activists involved are peaceful and the police involved are within the law, dialogue could be possible if the media stopped focusing on the extreme cases. Journalists are called upon to bring the different realities together instead of separating them.

The animated short film uses original material and reactivates existing and free fictional material and thus follows a climate-conscious production. It is fictional but reconstructed based on interviews with 42 activists and residents as well as 166 police press reports and 54 newspaper articles on the subject.

Workshop W05f
Work-in-Progress: Speculative
  Session 1 Monday 6 March, 2023, -