Today’s man-made ecological disasters may only be averted through relentlessly innovative solutions, sabotage practices and unconventional remedies. From the naturalist’s heritage to pig farms high in the sky and the sustainability of toxic waste sites, this program shows works by filmmakers and architects on the verge of reality and fiction, empiricism and the visionary.

Sandra Lahire
16MM / 00:15:00 / UNITED KINGDOM / 1986
Is the female worker at the terminals an extension of the plutonium-descanning monitors, or is she a germ in the nuclear plant who grows into self-control? The power of a plutonium speck to enslave her vision and destroy every cell of her body is matched by her power to combat the collusion of state and media. Plutonium Blonde is part of a trilogy of anti-nuclear films in which the filmmaker makes visible the invisible menace of radioactivity.

Sterling Ruby
VIDEO / 00:13:30 / UNITED STATES / 2002
Thoreauian is a fictional representation of Henry David Thoreau, shot entirely in Mt. Holyoke, Massachusetts where the naturalist did his posterior studies. While the Transcendentalist acts out an inherent practice of navigating through the woods, the proximity of Mt. Holyoke woman’s college distracts him into fantasizing about a warmer season and companionship.

Steve Matheson
VIDEO / 00:26:00 / UNITED STATES / 2000
While examining the meaning of health, disease, and well-being in post-industrial culture, the video imagines the development of a culture at the margins, linked by illicit radio broadcasts, toxic waste sites, the highway, and ultimately by the overwhelming desire to find a cure.

MVRDV
VIDEO / 00:10:00 / THE NETHERLANDS / 2001
The study presented in Pig City is one of the first steps towards a sustainable way of reorganizing the sector of meat production.
MVRDV’s design radically deals with the problematic issues of transportation, animal welfare, and environmental pollution, resulting in better housing for the animals and closer attention to the metabolism of the system as a whole.