School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, Monash University

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Lindy Orthia Themes of environmental disaster and its aversion appeared as dystopian horror scenarios in the television series Doctor Who throughout its history. In this paper, I chart shifts in discourses about the causes and solutions of environmental disaster over the program’s four decades. In particular, I chart a trajectory of increasing disillusionment with the modern West’s capacity to find solutions to environmental destruction. In 1960s Doctor Who, legislative regulation and establishment science were seen as able to provide solutions. Early 1970s Doctor Who cast industrial capitalism as the cause of eco-destruction, but found solutions in problems associated with climate change can be confronted utopian alternative-lifestyle movements built on sustainable science. This was countered by a soft-modernist backlash against environmental romanticism in the mid-70s. 1980s Doctor Who wholly condemned Western technocracy for environmental devastation, relegating sustainable utopian potentialities to non-Western realms. 21st-century Doctor Who is characterised by resignation towards chronic global environmental problems and vagueness about causes and solutions. Lindy Orthia lectures in science communication at the ANU. She recently completed her PhD thesis on representations of the social, cultural, political and economic aspects of science in Doctor Who. Papers based on the thesis have been published in Public Understanding of Science and the Journal of Commonwealth Literature.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Anne Elvey The book of Acts describes an early Christian community living an ideal in which property was held in common and ‘there was not a needy person among them’ (4:34). To this utopian picture, I bring three threads that resonate (sometimes disturbingly) both beneath Luke’s egalitarian account and in more recent ecological and postcolonial philosophies and theologies. The first is the underlying socio-cultural thread of slavery; the second is the question of human/other than human relations in a more than human framework; the third is the apocalyptic imagination. The paper explores these threads through the work of Catherine Keller on ecological postcolonial counter-apocalypses; selected contemporary uses of the peaceable kingdom motif; Val Plumwood’s work on the master-slave paradigm and on being prey; and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, to ask what an ethics of survival might look like in the context of seeking ‘new possibilities for collective life’. Anne Elvey is an experienced theologian and author who has taught at ACU and UFT. Her work in eco theology is supported by the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Monash University. Anne is also a poet of some note who has had her work published in several journals.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Catherine Hannon This paper explores the antipathies at the heart of the relationship between utopian studies and environmental criticism. Lawrence Buell suggested a lack of sophistication in science-fiction writing as the culprit, while alongside this prejudice stands a suspicion of the seeming artifice of speculative fictions in a critical theory heavily reliant upon a reinstatiation of mimetic representation. These critical positions have, however, a great deal to gain through a dialogue with one another. Ecocriticism, as defined by the majority of its proponents, has, at its core, an activist element, as does utopian studies. An engagement with the latter would offer the former the promise of a more diverse, perhaps more contemporary readership, alongside a different perspective on the relationship between human and non-human spheres. Utopian studies, for its part, finds itself reinvigorated by a central concern, pertinent to humanity at large and capable of reigniting a utopianism that has suffered at the hands of global corporate depoliticisation. Catherine Hannon is a PhD student in Trinity College, Dublin, researching representations of politicised environmentalism in utopian, dystopian, and apocalyptic fictions since the 1960s.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Pia Ednie-Brown Can the act of designing fictions contribute to our capacity for negotiating or eliciting change? Might this approach have particular importance in a time of looming, apocalyptic climate change, where the ability to adapt to shifting conditions is high on the agenda? This paper presents a series of provocative design speculations, each aimed at transforming an environmental problematic into a scenario that rides a line between utopic and dystopic imaginings. Proposing a notion of ‘transformability’ as a more productive one than ‘sustainability’, these design fictions confront environmental fears by folding them into scenarios that both delight and disgust. It is argued that these playful, imaginative and inventive fictions are productive of the kinds of plasticity we need to master in this contemporary climate of change. Pia Ednie-Brown is an Associate Professor in the Architecture program and a research stream leader at SIAL, teaching design and theory, and supervising Masters and PhD candidates. She has a research practice, Onomatopoeia, involving art-architecture installations, animation, sculpture, creative writing and theoretical analysis.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Tyson Namow In experimental, non-fiction films such as Fata Morgana (1970), Lektionen in Finsternis (Lessons of Darkness) (1992) and The Wild Blue Yonder (2005), German filmmaker Werner Herzog creates fantastic, science-fiction dystopias. These films deal with relationships between human beings and the natural world, including how human activity is transforming the Earth into an uninhabitable, alien planet. On the one hand, these films suggest that degeneration is built into the evolution of the human species and that there is a course toward environmental catastrophe that cannot be avoided. Time in these films is presented as being in a paradoxical stasis where the end is inscribed in the beginning and vice versa. On the other hand, however, these films counter such pessimism by employing various ironic devices that can result in spectators experiencing a self- reflexive, aesthetic distance from what they see and hear. This distance can enlighten audiences to the nature of their relationships to the external world and the need for them to own and take responsibility for the inner meaning and emotion they ascribe to phenomena. I will argue that this evokes a sense of Albert Camus’ notion of absurd freedom. Tyson Namow is currently completing a PhD thesis on the aesthetics of natural landscape in the non-fictions films of Werner Herzog. He has refereed publications in Screening the Past and Colloquy and has presented a number of papers at cinema conferences since 2008.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Robyn Walton In booming Edwardian England, few cared to recall Voltaire’s lesson in Candide that the unsatisfying Eldorado was within trekking distance of the sugar-works where a slave missing a leg and hand personified the cost of Europeans’ sweet diet. Joseph Conrad did recall, locating his ironic tale ‘An Anarchist’ in just that part of South America and showing the human and environmental degradation associated with the grazing of cattle destined for reduction to meat-extract. In the novel Tono-Bungay H.G. Wells despatched his narrator to South West Africa to steal a radioactive mineral substance that might make the perfect lighting filament. There the young adventurer not only murdered an indigenous man but saw environmental devastation so bad he had an intimation of ‘the end of our planet’. Ultimately, however, such texts were not designed to induce respect for distant environments and populations. Rather, they were moral fables critiquing bourgeois Englanders’ materialist culture. Robyn Walton has undertaken doctoral studies in the English Program at La Trobe University, Melbourne, having completed her previous degrees at the University of Sydney. Her fiction, essays and chapters on utopianism and cultural history have been published in Australia and Europe in several languages.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Virginia Lowe Tison and Taylor’s picture book Barbapapa’s Ark presents a degraded world with animals in danger and pollution affecting people. Barbapapa and his family (huge, amoeba-like shape-changing creatures) rescue the animals and take them to a ‘quiet green planet’, inducing people to clean up to the world with underground factories, tree planting etc. Then they and the animals return. My son and daughter found the text very stimulating, inspiring numerous questions as they tried to understand over a period of years and almost one hundred readings: ‘Why is there pollution?’; ‘Why didn’t they stay on the planet?’ This paper will look at their responses to the book, and how it affected them in their environmental awareness and responsibility into adulthood. The research is based on the record I kept of their book contacts from birth to adolescence (6000 handwritten pages). My book, Stories, Pictures and Reality covers the period from birth to eight. Virginia Lowe has lectured at university, and has been a children’s librarian and a judge for the CBCA’s Book of the Year Award. She runs a manuscript assessment agency (www.creatakidsbook.com.au).

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Andrew Frost The depiction of the sublime in science fiction has relied on a venerable visual language of Romantic art largely unchanged since the 19th century. Recent films such as Knowing (2009), The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and 2012 (2009) are prime examples of this tradition and constitute part of the new ‘eco-catastrophe’ sub- genre of SF cinema. Drawing on the theories of Jean-Francois Lyotard, Frederic Jameson and the writings of artists including Barnett Newman and Yves Klein, this paper asks how contemporary artists have articulated a ‘post modern sublime’ in works with an explicit engagement with science-fictional concepts. Using the work of four Australian video art makers, the paper examines the use of the void – or nothingness – as a state of potentiality, or as an oppressive presence, linking these videos to examples of the void found in landmark SF cinema such as The Matrix (1999) and THX 1138 (1971). Andrew Frost is an art critic, writer and broadcaster who wrote and presented the ABC television series The Art Life. He is the author of the monograph The Boys and is a PhD candidate at the College of Fine Arts, University of NSW.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | David Blencowe Revolutionary praxis is the task, but Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch differ in its conception. A key point of divergence is the role ascribed to subjective intention. For Bloch, an unintended consequence of industrial capitalism has been the new way in which subjective productivity can be thought. This enables collusion between his epistemology and ontology. The true is no longer the object of interpretation, but the result of willed intention on behalf of the revolutionary subject. Benjamin, on the other hand, envisages an intentionless praxis of pure destruction. Justice can never be the goal, but nihilism is the method. Nature becomes an important analogue for both thinkers. For Bloch, it becomes the site of a breathtaking post- Darwinian anthropocentrism, where it is no longer an unknowable, indifferent other, but an ally who shares our aspirations. For Benjamin, nature’s blind, periodic catastrophes could provide precisely the destructive means that he seeks. David Blencowe is an MA candidate in the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University, Melbourne Australia.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Matthew Chrulew In a time of anthropogenic climate change and species extinction, woolly mammoth stories loom large. Whether scientific or fictional, utopian or dystopian, visions of this totemic species speak incisively of our hopes and fears for the future of the Earth and the nature of our impact upon it. In palaeontology, the controversial overkill hypothesis argues for human hunting as the cause of prehistoric megafauna extinctions. At stake is nothing less than anthropogenesis, supposing the sacrifice of the animal at the origin of the human. Today, redemption for this original ecological sin is offered in utopian dreams of restoration: whether the resurrection of the mammoth as a species, or at least the reconstruction of the mammoth ecosystem in an experimental Pleistocene Park. This paper will chart the notable career of the mammoth, which despite its extinction has still managed to exert a significant influence on our thinking, and our dreams. Matthew Chrulew is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion at Macquarie University in Sydney. He has published essays in Metamorphoses of the Zoo and The Bible and Critical Theory, and short stories in Aurealis and Antennae, among other places. He is writing the volume Mammoth for Reaktion books.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Jacqueline Dutton In the classic 1942 film, Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart assures Ingrid Bergman in his inimitable way: ‘We’ll always have Paris’. Perhaps it is precisely because of its reputation as an enlightened Mecca of beauty and the arts that Paris has fallen victim to a significant number of post-apocalyptic projections. Cinematic representations are prevalent in the twentieth century, beginning with René Clair’s Paris qui dort (Paris Asleep) (1924) and Jean Renoir’s Sur un air de Charleston (Charleston Parade) (1927) and continuing through to Chris Marker’s La Jetée (The Jetty) (1962). Through analysing the transformations of post-apocalyptic Paris in these three short films, I will attempt to identify the defining social and environmental characteristics of each futuristic projection of Paris. I will then examine some more recent examples of French cinema to ascertain whether contemporary French filmmakers consider it more or less likely that we’ll always have Paris... Jacqueline Dutton lectures in French Studies at the University of Melbourne and has published widely on utopianism in French literature and thought.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Linda Williams ‘Shadows of the Holocene: transformed creatures and the dystopian animals of the future’ After identifying some of the deep contradictions evident in contemporary views of animals, this paper considers how the dystopian futures of human-animal relations are imagined in recent film, literature and art. The paper considers the view that the Holocene era, unlike any other in the earth’s history, is host to many creatures who exist as shadows of their earlier evolutionary history. Moreover, in many dystopian cultural figurations, these shadows grow darker still. Linda Williams is an Associate Professor in Art History at RMIT University, and curator ofThe Idea of the Animal exhibition (2004) and the HEAT: Art and Climate Change exhibition (2008).

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Laura McLean Recently, contemporary art has seen a significant number of exhibitions worldwide exploring the topics of utopia, dystopia and our relationship with natural and built environments. This current preoccupation with possible futures and systems of living rests upon concerns about climate and energy. It asks if and how humanity will adapt, psychologically and materially, to a warming planet and an impending energy crisis after the explosive growth of the 20th century. While a sense of loss, and anticipated future loss, characterises the arts today, for many artists a reconciliatory utopia may be generated through the singularisation of systems, structures and habitats. This paper will address David Harvey’s consideration of a utopianism of process rather than spatial form. I will look at the expansion of the reconciliation of process-based and spatial utopianism in contemporary art, and work exploring the shape of the future if forecast crises are not successfully mitigated. Laura McLean is an artist, writer and curator, researching the socio-economic and ecological context of art in a post-utopian epoch. She has studied at Sydney College of the Arts, Alberta College of Art and Design, and the Universität der Künste Berlin, and will complete a residency in Shanghai later in September.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Jo Russell-Clarke For software programmer Ward Cunningham, inventor of the Wiki, problems are enlightening while difficulties are distractions. A dangerous dilemma can arise from confusing this distinction. For Karl Mannheim, who distinguished a utopia from an ideology, Fredric Jameson who recognised that utopias allow for consideration of things otherwise inconceivable, and Thomas More who coined a term charged with the paradox of a good place that is no place, utopian endeavour constitutes work on exactly such useful problems. So does design. Landscape architecture is a design discipline with a rich history of responses to environmental concerns. Presently, it is reacting to the challenges of climate change in two ways: enumeration of de-politicised technical solutions to practical difficulties urged by bi-partisan calls for adaptation, or by uncritical positioning of change itself as logically inescapable, essentially apolitical, and therefore utterly unproblematic to begin with. Neither approach constitutes a design response or a utopian one. Jo Russell-Clarke is a registered landscape architect and lectures in landscape architecture and design. She has worked in a small design practice on several award-winning projects and a multinational firm on a range of larger projects with a focus on residential subdivision. Her PhD under examination looks at the design of suburbs.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Kim Stanley Robinson ‘Utopia In the Age of Climate Change’ A discussion of the problems facing the utopian novel in particular, and utopian thinking in general, during a century certain to be experiencing serious climate change. Kim Stanley Robinson is a distinguished science-fiction writer, winner of two Hugo Awards and author of the Orange Country trilogy, theMars trilogy, Antarctica,The Years of Rice and Salt, theScience in the Capital trilogy and Galileo's Dream.