Documentary Habitats

"What I find particularly compelling about this book is its balance between the marginalized human (e.g., Indigenous, Daoist, Asian and African diasporic, etc.) and nonhuman (e.g., plant, animal, machine) sources of knowledge and ethical standards. It concludes with a clarion call to embrace community and employ new technologies for the greater good. Its passion for transmedia in the service of progressive social change encourages readers to take the examples found in the book and employ them in their own critical practice as filmmakers, media artists, curators, educators, or community organizers." - Gina Marchetti, author of Women Filmmakers and the Visual Politics of Transnational China in the #MeToo Era
"From record-breaking wildfires across Canada to record rainfall in Abu Dhabi; as billionaires offshored immense profits while so-called essential workers risked their lives during a pandemic; and as resources, knowledge, and even life itself are increasingly privatized, disruptions seem to have become the status quo, rather than exceptions to it. Documentary Habitats rejects this status quo, arguing that these overlapping crises demand strategies for the long term rather than short-term technocratic pivots. By redefining humans as one species of many in shared habitats rather than as an exceptional species with unchecked domain over the planet, authors Dale Hudson and Patricia R. Zimmermann offer a powerful counterpart to understandings of documentary conceived almost exclusively as centered not only on humans but on humans with faith in modern systems. Documentary is thus conceived as community oriented, dialogue driven, place based, and research led. Across eight categories of relationships - entanglements, polyphonies, contaminations, iterations, navigations, extractions, adaptations, and infections - Documentary Habitats traces local and Indigenous knowledge within documentary practices using augmented reality, community participation, interactive and mobile technologies, film and photography, and video installation. Featuring works by artists and filmmakers from over 25 countries and drawing on two decades of curatorial collaborations, Documentary Habitats is a rallying cry to documentary studies to focus attention on environmental and social issues that may seem new and urgent to some people but are all too familiar to others." -