Atmospheres

By Sophia Jaworski with Fan Wu, Farshad Bokaie

2021 • 19min • Canada • English

Atmospheres (18:20) is a short sensory ethnographic essay film that uses handy-cam footage and soundscapes to follow the movements of petrochemicals in Toronto, Canada. A speculative experiment in sensing “Chemical X,” it dwells imagistically with archival sites of contaminated marshland infill where fossil fuel refineries once operated. Capturing the duration of oily sheens and residues of a settler city’s heavy industry, the locations of soil-sample toxicants in a field undergoing remediation are presented alongside incantations of consumer products containing them. Images of landfill materials, a household hazardous waste drop-off, and places of industrial disaster, gesture towards the atmospheric recombinations of low-level emissions. Failing to determine Chemical X’s fate reveals the need to reimagine becoming-with toxic petrochemical exposures. This film is directed and produced by Sophia Jaworski, with narration by Fan Wu, and sound mastering by Farshad Bokaie.

Contact

Sophia Jaworski •  sophia.jaworski@mail.utoronto.ca

Cite this film:

Jaworski, Sophia. 2021. ‘Atmospheres’ (19 minutes, HD). In Annals of Crosscuts: Films of Environmental Humanities 1 (1). CERN: Zenodo. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.4303841