Review of Home by Yann-Arthus Bertrand

           

June 9, 2009 ·  

10 Comments

           
            I often wonder if it would be possible to do any kind of serious
            study into urban morphology without the help of Google Earth.

            I know it has been indispensable to my studies, perhaps as
            indispensable as the microscope is to biologists. Google Earth is
            our macroscope, it allows us to see what is too large to see with
            the naked eye. But no matter how useful satellite photography is,
            you cannot truly see depth without aerial photography, and the
            master of aerial photography is without a doubt French
            photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, famous for enormous
            coffee-table books filled with photography so rich as to be
            overwhelming.
           
            Arthus-Bertrand has made the jump to high-definition
            cinematography and directed a “documentary” (there is really no
            accurate way to describe this film) called Home, which was
            released free of charge on the Internet a few weeks ago. You can
            watch it on YouTube or download it from your favorite BitTorrent
            source. The film is awe-inspiring. Here are some still images I
            extracted.




     
           
           
            The film is a tour of Earth’s ecologies, starting from elementary
            life to cities. The most striking images are those of natural
            cities, particularly one which seems to grow out of the rock as if
            it were only a feature of it. And who can argue that it isn’t?
            But that detail seems to escape the narrative.
           

            Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s talent is undeniable, at some point in the
            film he even makes Manhattan seem small. But the film quickly
            turns into a vessel of green propaganda (sponsored by the Gucci
            fashion house) while it could have been a celebration of
            mankind’s ties to nature. At the climax of its alarmism, the
            foundation of the green mindset is spelled out with as much
            emphasis as the narrator can apply. Denouncing the thaw of
            Siberian permafrost, the narrator recites “if the permafrost
            melts, the methane released would cause the greenhouse effect to
            race out of control with consequences no one can predict.” At no
            point in the film does the alarm in her voice sound so grave. It
            is not so much climate change that is feared, but the unknown, any
            change at all.

           
            The obsession with control and prediction is tragically what has
            caused the most destruction and chaos in our human ecologies.

            It is control that dictates that homes may not be owned in the
            world’s sprawling slums, in the name of upholding a failed
            prediction, city planning. Because slum homes can be summarily
            demolished the slums remain in squalid poverty, vulnerable to any
            environmental change, man-made or not. The only true
            sustainability in a chaotic world is the ability to renew our
            environments for any change we meet, and control and prediction
            are an obstacle to this.
           

            Green politics fails not because it relies on facts that are
            incorrect, but because it relies on facts that are inherently
            unknowable. We can sound the alarm about the total global
            population, the fact is we have absolutely no idea what the total
            global population is. We can at best obtain an estimate, but that
            estimate is useless for any kind of action. Action in a complex
            system is local and does not rely on global knowledge, but only on
            reacting to local conditions. The environment always tells you
            what to be doing in the moment.
           

            In its obsession with control, the film ends up making
            recommendations for creating the same kind of technocratic utopia
            that was promised to us by the modernists. It praises one of the
            world’s poorest countries for having one of the most intensive
            state schooling program, evading a causal link between poverty and
            control of children’s minds. The ultimate solution to climate
            change proposed is to cover the world’s open land with solar
            panels, and the seas with wind farms, an act that would be as
            destructive to the environment as all the other monocultures
            denounced in the film. (And no one dares ask where those solar
            panels came from.)
           
            Never is a serious look taken at the process of the natural
            cities, which to someone trapped in the paradigm of control and
            prediction would make absolutely no sense, but which Christopher
            Alexander masterfully demystifies in The Nature of Order. Only
            through such a revolution can we avoid repeating the chaos of
            modernism with a green twist.
           
            People trapped in the mindset of prediction cannot think beyond
            simple physical processes (type I and II of Wolfram’s
            classification). These processes are always highly unstable and
            prone to die with any disruption. But life is not a simple
            process. It is a process that is always expanding, growing
            exponentially to fill any space it can fit into. Biologists
            quarantined a volcanic island that appeared into existence in the
            1960’s near Iceland. They wanted to see how life colonized it.
            This process has taken place at astonishing speed, and today the
            island teems with life and has a rich cover of top soil,
            bewildering the biologists. The real threat to the island is not
            ecological disequilibrium, but the inevitable erosion back into
            the ocean.
     
       
            Life is the most powerful force in the universe. It will take
            anything the Earth does to it. But unless we adopt life as our own
            social paradigm, we will not fare well. If we base our society on
            control instead of growth, the first unpredictable shock we
            witness will cause our collapse. So watch Home, be inspired by it,
            but do yourself a favor and turn the sound off.

http://emergenturbanism.com/2009/06/09/review-of-home-by-yann-arthus-bertrand/

--
※ 來源: Disp BBS 看板: English 文章位址: http://disp.cc/b/58-Agu
※ 編輯: ott  來自: 118.166.16.107  時間: 2010-09-21 04:43:29