Presenting the ecocidal eye in Melbourne: and ecocide motion adopted by The Green Party of England and Wales

Thanks to the Irish Arts Council for supporting my presentation with a 2012 Visual Arts Travel and Training Award

It has been great recently to share my work in the southern hemisphere (I grew up in New Zealand but have spent last 18 years in Ireland) with new friends and colleagues in the developing field of ecocultural criticism. Thanks for the warm welcome from the Australia-New Zealand/Aotearoa branch of the American Society for Literature, Environment and Culture (ASLEC-ANZ) and for organising a great conference on Regarding the earth in writing and image at Melbourne recently (31 Aug- 2 Sept 2012). I will be involved with the ANZ committee in the future, helping with raising awareness of this developing organisation and field through social media as this group has a significant focus on bringing ecocritical focus to wider aspects of cultural endeavours beyond literary theory.

While some of you may have seen my slides about the general outline and key terms of my art & theory phd on ‘the ecocidal eye: beyond the anthropocentric gaze to a relational gaze in cinema’ before, at Melbourne I expanded the talk a little and gave more attention to defining the history and definition of ecocide and the image above show how I am personally linked to the ongoing slow violence and ecocide in Vietnam (my father was in the Vietnam war before I was born and later died of a cancer related to the widespread use of the Monsanto agent orange defoliant – the card I now possess entitles me to cancer advice if I should ever need it as so many families are still affected).  At the end of my talk I mention my key articles on the anthropocene: 10 000 years of ecocide, ecopornography, deep sustainability that I have recently put in an easier to read online format at issuu.com/cathyart

my audio slideshow talk at melbourne

I also have added the audio from my presentation from the Melbourne conference, see below – the talk is now about 30 min. I know this is a bit dry but any comments welcome (for those at the conference who didn’t see my talk or films, you can see my films here. For those new to my work, I gave a general overview of my work’s development over the last ten years through my background in science, forest work, green politics and art, in a recent talk in Dublin at the Red Stables art & ecology summer school here.

News: I have just received news this morning from the team working with UK environmental lawyer Polly Higgins

Polly Higgins – Lawyer for the Earth (Photo credit: Metrix X)

,  who is championing an international law for eradicating ecocide (and who I have written about before), that the Green Party of England and Wales this week has given  its wholehearted support for an international law of Ecocide – a crime against nature, humanity and future generations – to be established and recognised as an International Crime Against Peace.”

You can be sure I will be putting a similar motion to our own Green Party in Ireland and New Zealand/Aotearoa pronto 🙂

Related articles

• Cartoons against Ecocide by Stephanie McMillan (spiritandanimal.wordpress.com)
• ecology without nature and the eco-cosmopolitan (ecoartfilm.com)
• Ecopornography, slow violence and the deep, slow art of place (ecoartfilm.com)
• Art & ecology at the Red Stables Summer School, Dublin (ecoartfilm.com)
• Eradicating ecocide in Ireland to make sustainability legal (ecoartfilm.com)