Artists’ Film: Gerard Ortín Castellví, Agrilogistics
This is an edited recording of a conversation with the artist, filmmaker and researcher Gerard Ortín Castellví and scholar Dimitris Papadopoulos following the UK premiere of Agrilogistics (2021), a film that looks at recent technological transformations in contemporary industrial agriculture.
Tulip bulbs, chrysanthemum stems and vine tomatoes are processed through cameras, feeding datasets that regulate their own growth. During the day, the greenhouse is a cinematic device, an automated film set optimized for the mass production of fruits and flowers. At night, the factory stops: without an inside or an outside, the greenhouse becomes an oneiric chamber where plants, animals and machines form new entanglements, unexpected life moves in and takes control.
Gerard Ortín Castellví (b. 1988, Barcelona) is an artist, filmmaker and researcher. After completing an MFA at Sandberg Instituut (Amsterdam), he finished an MA in Artists' Film and Moving Image at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he is currently doing a PhD and teaching at the MA Art & Ecology. He is a member of the Ecological Reparation project and collaborates with Border Ecologies research network. He has exhibited at Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona), Tabakalera (Donostia-San Sebastián), Stedelijk Museum Buro of Amsterdam (Amsterdam), and Office for Contemporary Art (Oslo). His works have been screened in places like the Anthology Film Archives (NY), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), LUX (London) and festivals like Visions du Réel (Nyon), Open City Film Festival (London), Cinéma du Réel (Paris), and Berlinale (Berlin).
Dimitris Papadopoulos is Professor of Science, Technology and Society and Director of the Institute for Science and Society at the University of Nottingham. He is also the founding director of EcoSocieties, one of the University of Nottingham's Interdisciplinary Research Clusters and a member of the Ecological Reparation Collective. Papadopoulos is currently a Leverhulme Fellow and has been an Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow in the Office for History of Science and Technology, University of California Berkeley and the Center for Cultural Studies, University of California Santa Cruz. He is currently completing a photography book on Divergent Ecologies and a research monograph on Chemicals, EcoPolitics and Reparative Justice. His most recent books are: Ecological Reparation. Repair, Remediation and Resurgence in Social and Environmental Conflict (Bristol University Press, 2022); Reactivating Elements: Chemistry, Ecology, Practice (Duke University Press, 2021); Experimental Practice. Technoscience, Alterontologies and More-Than-Social Movements (Duke University Press, 2018).