Ecofictions

An analysis of the cinematographic imaginary of possible eco-social futures and the alternatives proposed by speculative narratives

Abstract

Decades of science fiction cinema have formed an archive of images of the possible futures that forge the collective imagination. In this text I present an analysis of the future ecosocial scenarios that are deemed possible from the Western socioeconomic model and that are reflected in mass cinema. I pay particular attention to the fictions and aporias of capitalist realism as revealed by cinema, the limits of our dichotomous paradigm that constrain the imaginary of the possible, and the cinematographic narratives for transgressing them. Finally, I present the Ecofictions workshop, a collective artistic practice for analysing the range of possibilities that mass cinema offers us, and transgress it through the creation of alternative imagery. One product of the workshop is the ecofictions catalogue, which responds to the apocalyptic future that the Western paradigm sketches for us by proposing multiple speculated realities that are far removed from anthropocentrism and the supremacism of our species.