Shrishtee Bajpai:

Today’s conversation will be between Ashish Kothari and Janet Solomon, our guest for this webinar. Janet Solomon is a passionate environmental and climate activist, artist, and award-winning filmmaker. Transcending the boundaries between activism and art, Solomon’s compelling interventionist approach includes forging links between collectives, mobilizing public awareness, fostering collective action and documentary film critique. Her unique technique combines evocative auditory sequences with a painterly visual aesthetic. By making the extremity of unliveable conditions imposed by offshore petroleum development on those who live in and depend on the ocean understandable, Solomon’s process provokes public dialogue, and the imagination to envision another future and to advocate for it. We’re really grateful that you’re here with us and you’ll be speaking to us about your process, your work and what is this relationship that you’ve been documenting with the more-than-human world and what is it telling us about the times we’re living in. 

We are also very grateful to Ashish Kothari, an Indian environmentalist working on development environment, interface, biodiversity policy and alternatives, part of Vikalp Sangam, Kalpavriksh and the Global TapestryThe weaving of networks of Alternatives of AlternativesAre activities and initiatives, concepts, worldviews, or action proposals by collectives, groups, organizations, communities, or social movements challenging and replacing the dominant system that perpetuates inequality, exploitation, and unsustainabiity. In the GTA we focus primarily on what we call "radical or transformative alternatives", which we define as initiatives that are attempting to break with the dominant system and take paths towards direct and radical forms of political and economic democracy, localised self-reliance, social justice and equity, cultural and knowledge diversity, and ecological resilience. Their locus is neither the State nor the capitalist economy. They are advancing in the process of dismantling most forms of hierarchies, assuming the principles of sufficiency, autonomy, non-violence, justice and equality, solidarity, and the caring of life and the Earth. They do this in an integral way, not limited to a single aspect of life. Although such initiatives may have some kind of link with capitalist markets and the State, they prioritize their autonomy to avoid significant dependency on them and tend to reduce, as much as possible, any relationship with them. (GTAGlobal Tapestry of Alternatives). I hope it will be enriching to hear both of you speak about this important and provocative work. 

Ashish Kothari: Thanks a lot Shrishtee, and to the GTA and Kalpavriksh team for organizing this fifth episode in what has really been an exciting series. 

Hi, Janet. It’s great to see you again. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet Janet a couple of times on trips to South Africa, including at the premiere of her film _Blue Burning_ at WITS University in Johannesburg. This was a few months back when my hosts at WITS University told me that there’s a screening of a documentary on the oceans of South Africa that’s one and a half hours long. I said, I’m not so sure that I’ll be able to sit through it. But when I did sit, I could not get up at all. I was stunned, moved to tears, and occasionally infuriated by what’s happening to the coasts. Yet through all of that, I felt hopeful because the agency of communities along the shore and civil society organizations was coming through very strongly in the film. I’m hoping some of that will also come into this conversation.

Let me begin with my first question. Tell us a little bit about your journey towards becoming a filmmaker, and intertwined with that, your journey towards being an activist, especially with movements like Oceans Not Oil and many others.

Janet Solomon: Greetings to your audience. Salam and Namaste. It’s wonderful to be here. I’ve been an artist all my life. Film wasn’t part of my basket of media until 2016, when we had an excess of humpback whale strandings along our coastline. I’m based in Durban now and I’ve lived on this coastline all my life, so this was highly unusual. I knew at the time that there was a seismic survey for offshore oil and gas happening coincidental to these strandings. One day, I was curious so I grabbed my camera and went down to see these stranded whales. And so, I began this journey of investigation mainly for myself. 

But also something didn’t feel right. There was a sense that this was not normal and that was borne out by many more strandings later. Whales are these enormous, exquisite animals who become signs or symbols of something not right with the world when they strand. I was deeply conscious of that. _Becoming Visible_ became this 33-minute short film that was experimental and had multiple screens so that I could constantly include the ocean in the dialogue the whole way through. 

At the same time, we had government intention of fracking in our Karoo area. South Africa is an arid country as a whole and if you overlay a map of our water sources with a map of the government’s intention to frack, the two maps pretty much match. Once you start fracking and pollute a water source, it is poisoned forever. That water source is gone. So we had anti-fracking NGOs and groups. Since my research was looking at the sea and I was connecting with marine scientists, activists and fisherfolk along the coast, these groups decided  it was time to start talking to each other and becoming aware of this barrage of applications for offshore oil and gas. We formed a loose coalition called Oceans Not Oil. Because of my research, I was elected as a spokesperson for the campaign which has developed into a movement over the years with more international focus as well. So yes, the two are intertwined – my filmmaking turned me into an activist at the same time. 

I’ve made a second film, Blue Burning that stemmed from frustration because I was deeply involved in the sector that was constantly engaged with environmental impact assessments. I soon realized with the first film that this was a captive space. It was captured by international oil companies and government agencies. The subaltern can’t speak in that space; it’s a kind of closed environment. There was a real need to open it up to social opposition, to take this discussion into public spaces. 

Blue Burning became a tool for mobilization. It came out of this frustration of hearing a wide variety of people – from marine scientists to communities who believe in the sacredness of the sea – who were concerned about the intangible marine heritage we were losing. The film features these objections from interested and affected parties who were sounding the note of precaution, alongside proponents of offshore oil and gas. Then of course, we include the sea the whole way through and sounds of the sea and marine life.

Ashish: We’re just going to get back to Blue Burning in a second. Janet, you said that you didn’t begin as a filmmaker. You had other art as part of your repertoire. Can you share a little bit about the other art forms and if you’re still using them?

Janet: Sure. I suppose I’ve always been a painter – I paint anything from watercolours to oil. I’ve had a number of solo shows where human interaction with the environment was part of my early work. The more I became aware of climate issues and global warming, I found it important to engage those issues in my artwork and aspects of loss, that is, highlighting what we are losing. In these static images, I was always explaining and engaging with the public around them. I kept thinking it would make so much sense if these images moved and explained themselves more. This was in the back of my head during my last show, where I was working with curated images. 

In natural history museums, most of those animals are shot, skinned, and then stuffed to make them look life-like. Then they are put in an environment that replicates the same environment where the animal lived, we create a faux representation of the animal. Somehow in the human psyche, this is supposed to be pedagogical, it’s supposed to inform and educate us. This dead animal that we’ve killed is supposed to function as some symbol for life out there. My master’s degree was focused on this bizarre process. I took several photographs that highlighted that work with a lot of reflection and intrusion in the image. I began to understand some of the dynamics around the politics of representation of animals and how it is so terribly orchestrated. For instance, David Attenborough spent years of his life showing us that we didn’t need to worry, that there was so much life that was magnificent and proliferating everywhere. Then John Berger in the 80s highlighted the fact that there is an increasing  loss of animals in our lives alongside the proliferation of images of animals. He raised interesting questions around that. Those are some of my concerns too while I make films and art.

Ashish: Leading on what you shared about so-called taxidermy and other alienated, disjointed ways in which we look at other animals,  do you feel that nature has been in some way talking to you, influencing your work and creativity, giving you some directions in which to go? For instance, in the film Blue Burning, did the beings of the sea communicate in some way and were they almost like co-directors with you in the film?

Janet: As an intersectionist eco-feminist, it is absolutely vital that all affected parties to human-centered development are given consideration. That’s the starting point for me. It’s not just all about us [humans]. Capitalist systems and regimes of impact assessment usually center the benefits accrued to the elites. But the impacts trickle all the way down. What we’re finding in South Africa is that projects are just rubber-stamped and authorized. These terms of consideration just fall by the way. There’s an aspect of invisibility around fence line communities and animals in the deep sea. According to capitalism, the deep sea is an empty space – we don’t need to care about it, we can do what we like out there. But we’re only just beginning to understand how meaningful that biome and those zones are for us. We’ve got technology saying that we need those rare minerals down there and we’re going to vacuum that sea floor. But some of those corals are thousands of years old in that deep, cold, dark zone. There are processes that we do not understand yet and how valuable they are for our survival. For me, it is important to highlight those areas as best as I can and to show that the life in those spaces is beautiful, bizarre, and extraordinary. A lot of it [life] is very small, grows extremely slowly and is magnificent. 

I’ve found the need to not only engage with that extraordinary life but also show its vulnerability to the toxins, the hydrocarbons, the lubricants that are tossed overboard in these offshore oil and gas spaces. The drill cuttings that smother for kilometers around these platforms, the traumatic sound from drillings and the exploration processes.  There are many aspects of vulnerability and precarity with life in the sea. If we’re going to have conversations around human development in these spaces, it’s very important to appreciate life and what we stand to lose if we continue on this path.

Ashish: Thanks. Maybe this is a good time to show one of the clips. 

Janet: Before we start, I want to talk about the importance of voice and sound throughout the film. This clip is part of a court case against Shell brought by the Wild coast community on the east coast of South Africa. Here you will see that I have included a whale shark in the court case to invite the sea in and to keep these other affected bodies on the top of our minds. 

Ashish: I think that that short half a minute clip is such a teaser. There are stingrays and there are advocates in black suits. The way you’ve interspersed the court proceedings with life in the oceans and with what communities are saying is riveting.

In your interactions with coastal communities all across South Africa, have you got a sense of whether these communities are still living or have lived a life of kinship with other species, including species in the oceans? For instance, I know they talk about their own ancestors being in the oceans. But beyond their own human ancestors, what’s their relationship with the rest of nature? How does that reflect in their worldviews, their art, their music, their languages and so on? What are your observations on that?

Janet: In South Africa, we have a diverse population. We have human skin colour that goes all the way from milky tea to black coffee. And in that diversity, we have a diversity of cosmologies. What the Oceans Not Oil campaign has shown is that kinship with the ocean is very deeply felt across this diversity. It is rooted in thousands of hearts for a variety of reasons. 

I would like to show two clips where the communities answer this question. The first clip is an interview with two Sangomas who traditional healers in South Africa. You get a sense from these two members of the traditional healer community about their strong relationship with the sea. The second clip is narrated by a leader and activist, Sinegugu Zukulu, who is from the Wild Coast community. He is explaining the cycle of the human soul.

Ashish: Amazing. Thanks, Janet. It’s kind of hard to say anything after that clip. 

Janet: It’s beautiful that the cycle of souls is intrinsically linked to the water cycle. The ancient souls eventually reside in the very deep and they mustn’t be disturbed. That’s the warning that Blue Burning holds – you don’t disturb the ancestors in the deep. 

Ashish: Absolutely. I think these were some of the clips I was really moved by. 

One last question – in both films, there’s sound of various kinds, especially the sounds of the sea and whale songs. Is that an attempt to enable nature as a whole and also specific species within it to be talking to the audience? Are you conveying something through those sounds? Or is it aesthetics? Or perhaps both? How have audiences who have already seen the films reacted to the music, sounds and audio?

Janet: A filmmaker knows that the skeletal structure of a film is sound. You edit into the sound. My first film, Becoming Visible, was about seismic surveys. And when I first started talking to musicians and mixing artists, I was talking about this continual explosion, these seismic surveys blasts – 260 decibel compressed air blasts – that produce a sound and pressure wave that is so intense that it can go five kilometres through seawater and forty kilometres into the seabed bouncing off whatever it finds and picked up by hydrophones ten kilometers behind the ship! These are massive. So when I started work with Becoming Visible, it was an ear-opening experience for me.

In the 1950s, oceanographers like Jacques Cousteau made one of the first underwater films called ‘The Silent Sea’. But the sea is not silent, it cannot be silent. Everything in the sea is adapted to sound. From finding your mate, your offspring, your prey to understanding when there’s a predator around to navigate – all of it depends on sound. We now know that coral polyps will start heading towards the crackle of the reef because they understand that that’s where home will be. 

So sound is absolutely intrinsic to life in the ocean. Then white men come along with the intention to extract oil and gas, plowing over the sea surface with these traumatic sounds that go off every 10 seconds for up to six months, all day and night. The films raise questions around strandings and ocean health and how sound can be used as torture. This project has alerted me to sound. It really did open my ears. I don’t presume to mediate the animal world, but there’s no doubt about the fact that there’s a politics of film and representation that will articulate my worldview. My intention is to change the configuration around invisibility and silencing and to facilitate visibility and voice, to use both visuals and sound to just highlight how much we have to lose. A silent world is a dead world. This is why I do the work that I do. 

Ashish: Thank you, Janet. I think about how many decades back Rachel Carson brought us the same message from the terrestrial world with her fantastic book Silent Spring. Do you have any final thoughts you want to offer before we close?

Janet: Sure, if I may. Oil and gas and violence are marriage partners. A number of the people in my films have been threatened or have lost family members. There was also a whole community who were going to be impacted by oil and gas development where I had some anonymous interviews that I didn’t include in these films for security reasons. This is the nature of the beast. Oil and gas and violence go hand in hand. This is why it’s important that we have tools for visibility and that we engage in such extraordinary conversations across time zones in the world and support each other. 

Thank you for this platform and for sharing the film. Thank you to the team and to the audience for such wonderful, rich questions to engage with. 

Ashish: Thanks, Janet. I think you are brave. Activists here in India who are also on the frontlines are often asked if they are scared. Their response is that we have to do what we have to do. If we’re not going to stand up now, when is anybody going to stand up? 

Thanks a lot again, Janet, for your work and thanks to our team for everything that went into the back end of making this happen. Thank you all.