Screening: Moving Earths
Bruno Latour is sitting on a stage at a desk. Behind him is a canvas with a geoscientific image.
A play by Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït Touati
Sun, November 22, 2020 9.30 pm CET, Theater
Online

»Moving Earths« is a performative lecture which interrogates set attitudes to Planet Earth and reflects upon what it means to live in the world instead of on it.

The play explores the parallels between two perspectives on the moving Earth: the perspective as understood by Galileo Galilei ca. 1610, and the perspective from which we view the Earth today. Galileo’s farsightedness serves as the backdrop for this comparison, because one invariably searches for comparable events in the past when a catastrophe occurs. Today the ecological and political movements of young people are loudly drawing attention to the climate catastrophe. Scientists are explaining how and why the climate is changing and what effects climate change is having on the Earth and living organisms — the Earth is on the move. On the basis of many thought experiments and observation Galileo came to the conclusion that the heliocentric model was correct and the stars did not move around a static Earth. Legend has it that after being forced to recant his theory, he muttered defiantly in the courtroom »Eppur si muove!« »And yet it moves!«

The shock caused back then by a moving and sensitive Earth is comparable to that experienced by humankind today who appear finally to have woken up to the fact of climate change. In Joseph Losey’s 1947 film version of Bertolt Brecht’s play »Life of Galileo« the world is turned upside down: a carnival of inversions takes place. In »Moving Earths« these parallels, of people being swept up by the mobility and changeability of the Earth, are reflected upon from both a close-up and distant perspective.

Colophon:

Filmed in public on 07.12.2019 at the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers.

Patrick Laffont de Lojo (camera, sound recording, editing, video, lighting), Frédérique Aït Touati and Bruno Latour (concept, mise-en-scène), Bruno Latour (text), Patrick Laffont-DeLojo and Frédérique Aït-Touati (set design), Zone Critique (production), Centre Pompidou and Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers (coproduction).

Special thanks to Sean Hardy, Geoffrey Carey, Camille Louis, und  Robert Woodford for his »Deep Time Cards«.

Supported by: NA Fund, Fondation Carasso, and DICRéAM.

Look into the performance

  • An abandoned stage with a table and a chair, from the left fog is streaming through the picture and it is written large in the foreground: "Moving Earths".
  • Bruno Latour is sitting on a stage behind a desk. Behind him is a large screen showing two large circles, with a long, vertical line between them.
  • Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït Touati sit next to each other at a table, they seem relaxed and satisfied. It seems to have been created during a rehearsal.
  • A photo on a large canvas showing Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock
  • A photo on a large canvas shows the scientist Lynn Margulis.
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Organization / Institution
ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe

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