First Ever Sustainability Jam from Sust Enable on Vimeo.
On July 14th, 2011, “Sust Enable – the metamentary” hosted the first ever “Sustainability Jam,” an open workshop and discussion focusing on issues of sustainability. The event was a huge success and everyone had a blast.
The protagonist of “Cool It,” Bjorn Lomborg, is vilified perhaps because this is his premise. Through actually engaging with our complicated state of things, which he feels might creatively combine high-tech and back-to-simplicity methods of counteracting climate change, and treating seemingly unconnected issues like poverty in order to have an effect on environmental sustainability… this kind of passionately engaged, horizontal, critical and independent thinking is what seems to agitate his opponents the most. He seems to be saying: What we need to do is engage right now, not continue to play superficial political and economic games that have little relevance to the actual condition of our sustaining ecosystems. On this, with Bjorn, I agree.
To live fully, to feel, to engage in discourse, intercourse, to reflect and respond, to analyse and alter–to engage. These are the actions and reactions of life. Yet why do these things feel so socially subversive… and yet, strangely, so internally accessible and invigorating? If our world is defined by the irreducible sum of interactions and engagements… Dive in.
This is the kind of revolution that cannot be threatened. It is not publicly announced. It happens through individuals and communities redeeming their birthrights–the right to be alive, here, now, in the fullest way possible, which implies a richness of ecological diversity and robustness as the foundation for any other forms of human wealth/quality of life. Governments cannot effectively suppress such action. Economies cannot trade it. Artists work to coax it. This shift is increasingly happening (or more accurately, we are happening it.)
Watching “Cool It” has reminded me that as a filmmaker and film consumer, I’m not interested in illusions. Entire fantasy film-only worlds based around computer generated imagery create–for me–a phony experience, not unlike artificial flavoring in candy. I’m interested in reality. But I’m especially interested in the illusion of reality.
Each of us filters reality, through our own particular complex of judgments and attitudes developed over time. Propaganda films mimic this universal psychological process. Propaganda is effective for the extent to which it successfully creates of the appearance of reality, constructed in such a way, however, as to manipulate an audience’s emotional responses to the false “reality” depicted. Yet science in recent years has illustrated that even our own memories cannot be entrusted as fair perceivers of reality. In the past ten years, numerous studies have illustrated that memory is surprisingly fallible–vividly recalled and sworn testimony can, in fact, be completely unreal, the mere product of suggestion, not occurrence.
Perhaps the only source of information that may not lie to us is direct experience from our bodies in the moment. The more we engage with our bodies, the more we feel them, pay attention to them, embrace them, etc. the more power we have. Through honoring our authentic selves, we divest power and influence from meaning-generating social authorities, and reinvest it in our best source of meaning, about what REALLY matters–life.
Life is in peril. Millions of species are facing extinction. The greatest asset for the suvivability of any system is its adaptability. The more diversity, the more interactions you have of different types/experiences, the more your adaptability is tested. ENGAGE. Get comfortable with complexity. Face the false edges of what you think is holding you back, and watch how they tend to flex. Recognize your talents and capacities. Don’t be afraid to share them. Here I am, world. And I can help.
With this attitude, and this grounding in our bodies, we will thrive.
The Sust Enable team would like to welcome Meg Koleck and Sarah Megyesy to our project! Meg and Sarah will be serving as Assistant Producer interns for this semester. We really look forward to working with you. And thanks for being so inspired, and for appreciating–or at least tolerating–our ever-in-flux “organic” filmmaking process.
With the help from these two new producers, Sust Enable’s production capacity has expanded! We are looking for people who would like to share their definition of sustainability with us from around the Pittsburgh area. What does it mean to you to “live sustainably?” What parts of your life are “sustainable?” Why does sustainability matter to you? If you’d like to be interviewed, or know someone who should be interviewed, contact our director Caroline at carolinesavery [at] gmail [dot] com.
Belated thanks to Kevin May (Phil Osophical) for teaching at our last Sustainability Jam on August 11. The topic was “How to Conduct a Gift Circle” and how gift circles relate to sustainability. Our next Sustainability Jam will be on September 8, and the topic is “Maintaining your Bicycle”. You’re invited! Check out the full invitation here.
In other news… Caroline Savery, our director, will be teaching a workshop on “applying the wisdom of sustainability to activist organizing” at the Building Change Conference in Pittsburgh, PA on Saturday, October 15th! Check out the amazing initiative behind the Building Change conference, and read about Caroline’s workshop here.
We are also proud to announce that we have just received our LLC status from the state of Pennsylvania. Hooray, we’re legit! A lot of good things are happening now, with much forward momentum…
Thanks for your involvement!
- The Sust Enable Crew
Release: I cannot claim to be a scientist, but I do claim to be an inquirer.
Recently, I had the pleasure of holding a pre-interview with Aleco Christakis, co-founder of Institute for a 21st Century Global Agoras and cybernetician/social systems thinker extraordinaire, for Sust Enable: The Metamentary, my feature-length experimental documentary about the meaning of sustainability. I was excited to speak with Aleco about his understanding of sustainability in terms of human organizations. He was excited to speak with me, however, about the content of my film.
“The Metamentary, huh? What a good name. Did you think of that?” he asked. I conceded that I had, but with some embarrassment, commenting that it was only an unwieldy working title. “You do know what meta- means, don’t you,” he probed. I asked him to enlighten me.
“Meta- comes from the Greek word for beyond. It was first used to describe metaphysics, a field of study that went ‘beyond physics,” he replied. “Your film is so exciting because it is trying to go beyond documentary. No?”
I was floored. What did Aleco mean? What does it mean to go “beyond” traditional filmmaking? What would that look like, and why try? This essay is an attempt to reconcile emerging movements and social trends with a parallel movement in cinema, and to explore how my own film, Sust Enable: The Metamentary, may contribute to this socially and creatively significant moment in time.
What is the hallmark of a sentient being? What differentiates human consciousnesses from other life forms? In what ways is human consciousness an evolution of consciousness in general?
These are some of the questions addressed in Douglas Hofstadter’s boundary-smashing literary fugue on meaning between forms (and indeed, between minds), 1989’s Godel Escher Bach. Still a classic, many who have read it will remember it for its fascinating explanations of how learning, meaning, and creativity occur, using a special style in which careful exposition is paired with narrative examples that embody the concepts discussed.
Hofstadter holds that all learning–whether done by a human or by a computer–consists of essentially the same process. Forming analogies, using symbolic language, and an increasing capacity for reflexivity (self-reference) are hallmarks of a developing consciousness. Then halfway through the book, Hofstadter delivers a shockingly anti-climactic climax. After painstakingly building his case for how the human brain understands anything at all, reinforcing Turing’s theories about critical size, he suddenly reveals that once a certain level of complexity of associative connections is made within a brain, the brain becomes self-aware.
…This does not elevate consciousness or awareness to any ‘magical’, nonphysical level. Awareness here is a direct effect of the complex hardware and software we have described. Still, despite its earthly origin, this way of describing awareness–as the monitoring of brain activity by a subsystem of the brain itself–seems to resemble the nearly indescribable sensation which we all know and call ‘consciousness’. Certainly one can see that the complexity here is enough that many unexpected effects could be created.2
It’s a tremendously intriguing claim. No matter whether it’s a brain or a computer, once a certain level of complexity is reached, the entity becomes aware of its own processes (by creating a “self” subsystem within the complexity of symbols it utilizes to understand the world). This is what distinguishes humans from animals–the knowledge that we exist–and this is what amplifies our pleasure and our pain–our deductive knowledge that we will, in all likelihood, die. One could argue that the purpose behind Buddhist spiritual practice and transcendental meditation is to abide in that “meta-cognitive” realm, by directing one’s concentrated attention to one’s own processes, simply observing but not identifying with the emotions, thoughts and sensations that pass through the body. The underlying faith is that nourishing one’s awareness in this way provides inherent, if unpredictable, rewards.
So when we talk about our hope for “evolving consciousness,” is this intrinsically but mysteriously rewarding process what we want? What we relate to? What we mean?
1Fuller, Buckminster. Critical Path. 1st ed. New York: St. Martin’s, NY. Print.
2Godel Escher Bach, pg. 388
Sust Enable: The Metamentary Begins Filming July 30th With Author & Professor Charles Eisenstein
On July 30th a new Pittsburgh-based film collective, headed by director Caroline Savery, officially launches production of feature-length documentary “Sust Enable: The Metamentary” at the University of Pittsburgh’s William Pitt Union, Lower Lounge, 5:00pm, documenting a lecture and subsequent interview with author and professor of sociology Charles Eisenstein.
Eisenstein has written extensively on personal, social and ecological sustainability in his books The Yoga of Eating and The Ascent of Humanity. He will be visiting Pittsburgh to give a presentation on his latest book, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition.
Sacred Economics, releasing July 12th, explores the economics of separation and consumption, while offering hope of transition to a new monetary system. Sacred Economics is being touted as the baseline for a ‘meta-book’ – each chapter is posted online, and all comments and responses informing the ‘meta-media’.
“Sustainability is the first step toward a new way of thinking,” says Charles. “As we come to understand that we are not, in fact, separate from the rest of the planet, we want to create a society that contributes to a healthy planet. What is it that we want to ‘sustain’? Not only ourselves, but all of life in the fullness of its beauty. The question is not, ‘How can we live sustainably?’ as if survival were the only goal, but rather, ‘What do we want to create?’ and, ‘How shall we apply the gifts that make us human?’”
Sust Enable: The Metamentary is pioneering similar concepts in film. Called ‘The Metamentary’ after the ‘meta’ filmmaking movement of recent years, SE:MM will attempt to embody its story’s core question–what does sustainability mean, and what does it look like to embody sustainability?–not just on the level of their story (which will bring together interviewees from academia to radical activism to spiritual leaders) but within the stylistic construction of the film itself–and, radically, the film’s own production processes.
“By considering how successfully our production incorporates the wisdom of sustainability principles, such as adaptability, holism, diversity, and dynamic balance, we will strive to innovate a model for authentic sustainable filmmaking through the creation of this engaging film,” say director Caroline Savery. “While telling the story of the struggle to define sustainability, we will be applying what we learn to the film itself.”
###
If you’d like more information about Sust Enable, or to schedule an interview with Caroline Savery, call Aaron Fraser at 412-608-7389 or e-mail Aaron at info@sust-enable.com.
To Everyone Who Has Supported Us,
THANK YOU for helping to make Sust Enable: The Metamentary possible!
Thank you for believing in our commitment to a holistically sustainable film, thank you for wanting to join us on this journey to discover deep truths about sustainability, thank you for sharing this message with your friends. You are an integral part of the dialog we are hoping to create through our film.
Lots of things have been happening. I have some big news to share…
And in preparation for production, Sust Enable is hiring for crew positions! Please get in contact with us if you would like to volunteer or work for Sust Enable by emailing sust.enable@gmail.com.
We have come a long way since the naive Sust Enable episode series in 2008. After three years of development, I couldn’t be more proud of how far this project has come. But we still are shy of our $5,000 that will truly help us be ready for our production launch. Please share this site with your friends and encourage them to donate! We are dedicated to a flexible, transparent and inclusive filmmaking process. We believe that by committing to a sustainable process, we ensure that we can tell the fullest possible story about what sustainability may mean. Your engagement at this time is critical!
THANK YOU!
Sincerely,
Caroline & The Metamentary Crew
If we are to assume that in a sustainable system, all aspects of the system (what comprises its identity) are somehow unified, somehow all-one, and are in fact irreducible (holistic), then it follows that in that same system, anything the system does ends up impacting itself in some way. Therefore, if an organism pollutes its environment, it will end up polluting itself. If an organism enriches its environment, it improves its chances of survival overall. In a sustainable system, meaning and value come from the system’s own processes.
Reflexivity and holism are particularly important themes because their influence pervades through all levels of our film. By seeking to embody sustainability at one level (the story), we are compelled to apply it reflexively on all levels (the style and the process).
On the level of the story, we choose to follow the organically evolving lifestyle of the film’s director, and, to a smaller extent, the film’s own processes, in looking for evidence of the generic claims about sustainability made by our interviewees. For example, if an interviewee argues for why a sustainable system must be adaptable, that section of the narrative will explore how our director Caroline’s life now, and in contrast to her extreme lifestyle-change project in 2008, incorporates (or fails to incorporate) said principle.
On the level of the style, as the film’s story progresses from simplistic to increasingly complex facts and models of sustainability, with each sustainable feature comprising a small sequence, the film’s style will adapt and mirror the feature being discussed in the narrative. For example, while an interviewee discusses the significance of stakeholder participation to a sustainable system, the camera may passed around to several different crew members to “show” their perspectives and the role they play in the story.
On the level of our processes, we will constantly challenge ourselves to consider how our own processes incorporate the principles of sustainability that we learn about. Since we can never know absolutely what the meaning of sustainability is, we will closely analyze our own processes to determine what works best for us, and with this knowledge, we will shape our narrative structure around which themes resonate most with us.
For further resources on reflexivity in art: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/MC30820/reflexivity.html
HolismIn a holistic model, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. At first impression, this theme suggests that everything is unified. We are all one. Any human being is actually a complex of other organisms, and the natural environment from which we receive sustenance, is made up of other organisms. Thus, all living things are profoundly interconnected, and the boundaries between us are fluid. This requires a shift from the way we tend to view the world, as clearly defined objects and patterns that can be rationally reduced and parsed. In a holistic situation, breaking the system down into parts actually obscures a more subtle nature of the system, that can only be understood when considering the system as a dynamic whole. Interviewees that will touch on this theme include Phil Seneca, Dr. Michael Ben-Eli, Dr. Allenna Leonard, and more. Holistic Design aka “Systems Thinking,” or Having A “Process Orientation”The means must reflect and embody the ends. You must have a sustainable process to achieve sustainable results. Holism is perhaps the theme that most profoundly influences the design of Sust Enable: The Metamentary. We will interpret this theme in the story by drawing attention to the unity of purpose in the two Sust Enable projects, despite their vast differences in approach. We will illustrate how my current lifestyle holistically incorporates sustainability choices in dynamic balance with other goals in my life—for example, commuting by bicycle is an integrated daily choice that balances my needs for fitness, transportation, community, acquiring skills, and conserving fuel. Stylistically, we may begin the film with a scene that we revisit at the conclusion with deepened meaning. Or we may, when appropriate, look for parallels between ostensibly divergent points of view and show how they line up conceptually (for example, juxtaposing an indigenous activist’s interview commentary with that of an academic specialist to illustrate agreement.) Our production processes reflect this theme through our film’s unique approach of seeking to embody sustainability principles (including holism!) at all levels of the film’s creation. We must consider how every decision incorporates sustainability principles as much as possible, and how a choice regarding the story layout, for example, has implications in the real world, and vice versa. Tune in next weeks for a blog about holism’s partner theme, reflexivity… thanks for reading! |
MC Escher - Hand with Reflecting Sphere
Since reading Lord of the Flies in ninth grade I have been obsessed with the idea of allegory–of encoding one meaning within another, like Russian nesting dolls. Analogy, allegory, simile, metaphor… learning is building on analogy. Being neglected : You :: Pain : Your Body. So what if you simply increase the complexity of analogies to the point where you have to reference the system itself that is thinking in order to contextualize a point?
After over 100 years of cinema, audiences are primed for the next level of movie experiences. Some folks in Hollywood have interpreted this to mean IMAX and 3-D. I see cinematic innovation a little differently. A film’s story is enhanced when the story references the framework of its “container”– the medium, thereby referencing our expectations of that that medium. Further, it references our social and cultural constructions of meaning — our “reality” — that is partially embedded in each one of us. Documentaries and avant garde narrative films from the likes of Christopher Nolan, Darren Aronofsky, and Charlie Kaufman do well at challenging our projections of a normal, predictable world by challenging our expectations for a film and meaningful story. You can reference the system and yet still the system can morph from the feedback. This is the process of how creating new film products “locks in” a certain style standards while simultaneously altering the conditions from which following films are made. In this way, film evolves.
Film is a highly technical and petroleum-based medium, but at its roots it is not a new medium. At its roots, film is a sophisticated form of performance and storytelling, which are archaic (no negative connotation) methods of communication that are foundational to the way we relate to the world. The function of sharing stories is to encode social values — that’s why, even in elaborate fantasies, the underlying structure of the story will often involve a hero, a villain, a mentor and so forth.
Some have argued that even the quality of the movie theater environment — in a dark room with other rapt bodies, gazing at a flickering screen — likens to our biological history of gathering around campfires to share crucial survival information through storytelling. All the Hollywood film industry is doing with its billion-dollar budgets, fanatic celebrity culture, and massive exploitation of humans and environment… is telling the same damn Hero’s Journey in fancy dressing (though I’m not one to deny that film is profoundly beautiful and sophisticated).
However, when a society’s values are shifting as they are right now, we storytellers are pressured to tell meaningful stories. We need new kinds of film, new stories encoding our new sources of meaning. I draw my inspiration from the reflexive (self-referencing) narrative and documentary films which in the last ten years have expanded into new dimensions of self-reference, subjective narratives, and non-chronological construction of narratives.