Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman (2023). Video still.
Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims is a film by artist, filmmaker, and writer Arjuna Neuman and philosopher and past GRSJ faculty member, Denise Ferreira da Silva.
Since 2016, the duo has collaborated on a series of films that each follow a classical element (water, earth, wind, fire) to reimagine the world speculatively and reparatively. Their “elemental cinema” merges poetics and critical theory, to propose a poignant and emotional take on the ethical-political challenges of the global present, through human and non-human perspectives. A new addition to their series, Ancestral Clouds, Ancestral Claims follows the wind and what it carries — dust, clouds, ideas, stories and voices — as both a guide and an analytical framework.
Filmed in the Atacama Desert in Chile, it explores the entanglements and overlaps of historical events, past present and future, at this site. Taking us on a visual journey through a large-array facility in an international astronomical observatory called ALMA, as well as the lithium mines of the Atacama, Denise and Arjuna consider how material trajectories are deeply entwined with the pursuit of foundational ideas from the Enlightenment and their mutation into aspects of modern neoliberal authoritarianism—all through their dissemination on the voice of the wind.
The film is being presented as part of the Images Festival in Toronto on April 13 @ 2pm.
