Natural Capital

This poetic film aims to express my preoccupation with the role that humans play within the diverse and complex interactions occurring in the physical environment. The title ‘Natural Capital’ relates to a theory derived from conventional economics and ecology in which the world’s natural resources are regarded as assets and provide people with free goods and services, often called ‘ecosystem services’. Natural capital is essential for the world capitalist system where the aim is to make profit by investing in trade and industry. Examples of natural capital include water, trees, fossil fuels, sunlight, wind, and natural metals (gold, copper, zinc). These natural assets are being depleted and degraded through the provision of ever-expanding products and services driven by the capitalist system that uses marketing and advertising to incite us to want and buy them. I have included images created in locations close to my home city and other parts of the UK (local environment) with my mobile phone to represent in a limited way the bewildering reality of the interconnected systems operating in the wider world: energy production (renewable possibilities and fossil fuel), transport, branding and advertising, weather, litter and pollution, wildlife, industry, recreation. My visual and sound (diegetic and non-diegetic) editing is conceived to jolt the viewers perception, to draw attention to things that we tend to ignore in everyday life but are important factors within climate science. Modern mobile phones are cameras, portable computers, and entertainment centres; these are devices designed for easy social interaction. The powerful camera contained within my phone has provided me with the capability to film and photograph spontaneously and has contributed to my ability to make art relatively cheaply. But at what cost? In relation to the sustainability of mobile phones the ‘BBVA OpenMind’ states that the “most contaminating part of its life cycle: around 80% of each device’s carbon footprint is generated at the manufacturing stage… due to the mining, refining, transport and assembly of the dozens of chemical elements that make up cutting-edge tech”.