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An Elegy for Ecology

Author

Sharbendu De

Birth year

1978

Place of birth

India
Kolkata

Year of creation

2021

Dimensions

137 x 91 cm

Information on media/technique

digital photography

Section

Photography

More information

www.desharbendu.com

Biennale

25th Gabrovo Biennial of Humor and Satire in Art

Short description

My medium is digital photography. I worked with a production team of 12-15 members comprising Production Managers, Assistants, Light Designers, Gaffers, light Boys, Interns and Actors. I wrote scripts for each scene, created storyboards, made sketches, de The hyper capitalistic machinery of megacities, our myopic self-centrism and disregard for nature has made human extinction a fait accompli. Propelled by a fossil-fuel economy, which brought in its wake calamities like, global warming, glacial ice-melting, crop failures, air pollution etc., we are headed for an unsavoury ending. Artistic responses to climate change (and thus our extinction) today has encountered a unique problem — one of disbelief. Amitav Ghosh in The Great Derangement offers a searing insight, ‘The problem of climate crisis despite being the biggest threat to human existence today is still not accepted as a reality when portrayed through cinema or literature’. Difficult to be accepted as reality, they are reduced to genres such as sci-fi and cli-fi, thus ‘othering’ climatic concerns. How can we visualize issues like air pollution & global warming, something that not only unfolds over a prolonged duration, but also eludes visuality or easy categorizations without resorting to sensationalism? Can our artistic responses create sensorial experiences to aid in forging a deeper understanding of climate change and its adverse effects? Determined to find a way, I began working on An Elegy for Ecology in 2016 (finished in 2021). I followed a cinematic approach and worked with a production team comprising lighting designers, gaffers, light boys, set & prop designers, actors etc. Designed as a trilogy, in the first part, I speculated a future where heat waves and air toxicity has accelerated extinction of floral and faunal species and confined us indoors. Estrangement from nature has amplified loneliness and solastalgia. Trees and animals have entered private spaces, and clean oxygen has entered the commerce of human relationships. Usin

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