What Would Rocks say if Cinema Asked the Right Questions?

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Abstract

Echoing Vinciane Despret’s book title What would animals say if we asked the right questions? (2016), this essay explores what rocks and inorganic matter might express, particularly within the extractivist context in South America. To delve into this subject, we must consider inorganic situated material existences, as conceptualized by Emanuele Coccia’s “point of life”. Coccia notes that all knowledge is “nothing but a point of life [vie] (and not just a point of view [vue])”, stressing that asking exclusively to humankind what it means to be in the world provides a very partial image of the cosmos. While Coccia focuses on the “living” existences, specifically on plants as mediators, I would like to ask the “non-living” what being in the world means. I focus on Cerro Rico in Potosí, Bolivia, a historically significant mountain that was an epicenter of silver mining and wealth during the Spanish colonial period, having played a pivotal role in the development of modern capitalism. Through a dialogue with cinematic works like The Cross and the Silver (2010) by Harun Farocki, Bocamina (2018) by Miguel Hilari, and Look Closely at the Mountains (2018) by Ana Vaz, I suggest the need to combine prevailing aerial depictions of extractivist practices and sites with underground thinking and inhuman intimacy, enabling an engagement with geological rhythms beyond extractivism and progress paradigms.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)online
JournalASAP/Review
VolumeII
Publication statusPublished - 11 Nov 2024

Keywords

  • Cinema
  • Geology
  • Inhuman
  • Geology and Film
  • Latin American Cinema

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