“The Anthropocene is the moment at which we humans begin to realise that the correct way to understand ourselves as a species is as a hyperobject…We are faced with the task of thinking at temporal and spatial scales that are unfamiliar, even monstrously gigantic…We have gone from having ‘the whole world in our hands’…to realising that the whole world, including ‘little’ us, is in the vice-like death grip of a gigantic entity—ourselves as the human species. ” –  Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology 

Metanoia. The Greek word meta means change and noia is defined as thought. Essentially, Metanoia has been described as a journey of changing one’s mind, heart, self, and way of being. This journey is one of redemption. You redeem the world by changing the way you pay attention to the world. You redeem the world and yourself when you witness it in the way only you can do so. Meta is also defined as being self-referential. In this case, the word metanoia can also be defined as self-referential thinking. Meta can also refer to the transcendent; the before, the after, and the beyond. 

Through this video essay and the research that inspired it, viewers will personally reflect on their relationship to non-human life forms, their environment, human connections, and their own capacities for destruction and creation. The observation of nature is not separate from the observer of these landscapes. Aspects of balance, harmony, negative space, color, and soundscape will all word toward creating a meditative state in order to acknowledge other living things as sentient. 

One might ask, how is a collection of images and words going to influence such an internal, personal journey? To that I answer that it is precisely because it is a film made up of images and words that it can cause that kind of change. I am placing viewers in the realm of the imagination while grounding them in the familiar. This is a combination of fictitious worlds to create a narrative and images of the material world. 

To capture your attention is to ask you (the viewer) to project your thoughts onto the film. To reveal yourself to yourself. I am holding up a mirror to you as much as I am to myself in making this project. One begins to become familiar with the inner world. In this way, viewers will begin to feel less afraid of oneself and the future world yet unseen. Through this revelation, the path to uncovering layers of emotions from love and empathy to fear and contradiction can be traversed even in great darkness. 

Throughout the film, there is a highly sensitive engagement with quotidian life. The energetic, spiritual, emotional components of these images will be emphasized through experimentation in the editing process. The video will be a combination of text, photographs, and video. The length of the video will be about 8 minutes. The first four minutes will focus on a certain tone and will switch in the last four minutes. 

The synopsis is as follows: Metanoia is a short experimental documentary that explores the quotidian happenings of life through the inner world of a cat and a pair of koi fish. Each takes on a distinctive quality of the human experience that demonstrates our capacity for redemption. The world of Metanoia shifts in a dream-like manner to create both dissonance and synchrony. The film ends in the middle- a silent meeting between the cat and the koi fish. 

My practice toward acquiring the video clips and photographs are through urge and instinct. I am looking at the things I witness every day in new ways in order to make new meanings. This is a shift toward the restoration of nature through the acknowledgement of bodily connection to nature. The film represents this experiential sense making through the feeling and sensorial mechanisms within the human body. The film explores the inseparability between nature and humanity. 

When I began my research into the Anthropocene, I became highly interested in the notion of humans impacting the environment in irreversible ways. The ecological implications of this inspired me to create a fictional story that is showcased through a non-fictional observation of the environment. The film visualizes this layering through factual media recordings and the imaginative storyline placed within it. The value in mixing these genres is to create a piece of media that explores the possibilities of relating to the environment in new ways through the imagination. 

The narratives in the Anthropocene require the willing release of attachment to form. Narratives of what has been have been at the forefront of conversations. However, we do not know what is possible. We can choose where we go from here on out. The importance of this film falls under the ability to create new ways of looking at the world that don’t linger on apocalyptic thinking. I also think that the work is important because current Anthropocentric discourse relegates humans to being a wholly negative force on the planet. However, this is not to claim a utopianist ideal of transcending our humanity to avoid our own destruction but rather create a path toward acceptance of our human limitations and reliance on other beings.

Major disconnects that the Anthropocene has revealed have been between humans and themselves, humans and other people, and humans and the natural world around them. By personally reflecting on these disconnects and coding them into the characters as a representation of these disconnects, I hope to give people the time to reflect on their immediate environment toward a sense of ecological self-awareness for the duration of the film.