[Commlist] International symposium “Screens and Streams in the Age of Climate Crisis”

*International symposium “Screens and Streams in the Age of Climate Crisis”*

***

International symposium

SCREENS AND STREAMS IN THE AGE OF CLIMATE CRISIS
26 & 27 August 2026, VU Amsterdam

Organized by the VU Chair for Media and Culture

***

What are the planetary burdens of media technologies? What cultural and 
aesthetic frameworks shape how nature is depicted on screen?

The international symposium media/environment: Screens and Streams in 
the Age of Climate Crisis confronts the question of how media both 
represent and materially transform the natural environment in a warming 
world.

Prominent speakers from three continents will present the latest 
research on topics ranging from the materiality of film and the finitude 
of resources to images of extraction, film archives, the colonial and 
environmental history of photochemical cinema, media’s role in the 
environmental transformations of the Great Acceleration, and the 
ecological footprint of digital screen culture and artificial intelligence.

A roundtable brings together perspectives from the media industry, 
cultural institutions, and archives on how these sectors are responding 
to the concrete environmental challenges of media tech.

In collaboration with Rialto VU, the symposium also features a short 
film program exploring the extractive history of celluloid, food 
production, and oceanic dead zones.


Are you interested in media studies, environmental humanities, science, 
technology, history, or the arts? Whether you are a scholar, student, 
practitioner or simply curious, this symposium invites you to join us in 
rethinking media’s planetary footprint from the archive to the 
algorithm, from screen to stream.

***

Speakers:

Michelle Henning (University of Liverpool): Photography’s Broken 
Contract. Environmental Relations and Technological Imaging

Fieke Jansen (University of Amsterdam): Securing the Market. AI, 
Predicting Hazards, and Managing Vulnerability

Sigrid Kannengießer (University of Münster): Environmental Perspectives 
on Digital Technologies and AI Infrastructures

Salomé Lopes Coelho (Utrecht University): Ecologies of Extractive 
Violence Across Non-Fiction Film

Ryo Okubo (Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo): Materiality and Finitude. 
Munesuke Mita’s Theory of Information and Japanese Media Studies

Michał Pabiś-Orzeszyna (University of Lodz): Intertwining Scopes. 
Assessing the Environmental Footprint of an AI-Driven Art Project

Elena Past (Wayne State University, Detroit): Fire and the Archive. 
Climate Change, the Mediterranean, and the Istituto LUCE

Kirsty Sinclair Dootson (University College London): Reverse Engineering 
Climate Collapse. Or Doing Film History Backwards

Hunter Vaughan (Emerson College, Boston): Sustainable Digitalisation? 
The Social Threats and Environmental Costs of a Digital Screen Culture

María Vélez-Serna (Independent scholar): Operative Images and 
Environmental Futures in Extractive Landscapes

Anne-Katrin Weber (University of Lausanne): Entangled Flows. 
Automobility and Television in Postwar Switzerland

Wu Chi-Yu (Media artist, Taipei): Does Celluloid Dream of Camphor 
Forests? Colonial Extraction and the Material Prehistory of the Moving Image

***

Film Screening:

Stories of Celluloid: Phantom Gaze / Terra Nullius Data (2025, Wu Chi-Yu)

Dead Zones (2023, Suzette Bousema)

Agrilogistics (2021, Gerard Ortin)

Bliss Point (2023, Gerard Ortin)

***

To join the symposium, please register via 
_https://mediaenv.ehc-amsterdam.nl/_ <https://mediaenv.ehc-amsterdam.nl/>
For question contact Judith Keilbach, VU Amsterdam, _j.i.keilbach@vu.nl_




---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely. The commlist has no responsibility for any damage caused by its postings. Subscription to the list automatically implies agreement with this rule.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------