Aldo Kempen, Cambridge
In this lecture I wish to explore the question ‘What is radical film’ with a Deleuzean twist — thus rather asking “What can radical film be(come)” or “What can it do?”. Approaching this question from an ecological perspective, one can extrapolate a novel potential of film making/activism that I will coin ‘Parasitic Activism’ through probing the (originally Berlin-based) eco-porn platform Fuck for Forest. Investigating this platform will open up how sex, porn, activism, and nature are entangled and potentially reconfigured in new ways in this platform. The pornography of the platform gestures towards a potent and effective form of film making that blurs and renegotiates the boundaries of the human and its relation to nature, which will show new ways of thinking the objectives and possibilities of radical ecological film making. Moreover, through extending the concept of ‘the parasite’ towards the realm of activist and radical film making, it allows us to see how an unconventional practice of filmmaking can create new forms of change and resistance, in a time when resistance seems futile, or even impossible.
Aldo Kempen is student of Philosophy in Film and Screen Studies at the University of Cambridge and active in grass-root environmental and queer activism