Refracting spectres : deep time mourning in a cinema of catastrophe : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand

Abstract

Refracting Spectres explores sceno-cinema-installation practice to facilitate mourning of catastrophic multirealities. The project uses a framework of deep time thinking to reorientate current climate change paralysis that is influenced by an overload of apocalyptic media, especially films. To mourn climate changing land is to recognise the grief of things already lost, or are in the process of being lost. Beings, landscapes, and ecologies are disappearing without the needed processing through mourning. Deep time is a geologic concept that offers a different understanding of time which is expanding and incomprehensibly slow; It conflicts with modern, fast-paced time evident in many apocalypse films. Multirealism opens opportunities to explore deep time through a tangled weave of possible futures that are lived in differently, and through different perspectives. Refracting Spectres is a haunted transition space – like a cinema – where the audience is immersed by the entanglement of multirealities, and forms a perpetual atmosphere of mourning. This practice-based research engages with projection, film, and scenography to form an atmosphere to mourn. The use of projection and film enables a strong connection to both death and modernity. A film is already part of the past. Within a cinema, films immerse the audience in the spectrality of already ‘lived’ narratives. Scenography and installation allow for people to experience a constructed atmosphere – to create a shift in time and place. Through an exploration of apocalyptic media as multireality presents and futures, this project encourages the release of audience’s hidden grief in a climate changing – and changed – world. It is an invitation to mourn.