The Other Side of Now

Abstract

SYNOPSIS A short, collaborative 16mm film poem by artist film-makers Kayla Parker and Stuart Moore and the poet and writer David Sergeant, for the Sustainable Earth Institute's Creative Associates programme. The Other Side of Now evokes the everyday-ness of life in a city, which seems to be wakening to new possibilities after the long period of pandemic and impacts of impending ecological emergency. Nature colonises the abandoned public spaces of the present-day. Erased by the ebb and flow of urban regeneration, these repurposed sites are resonant with the city’s layered histories, rewilded by visions from past and possible futures.

DESCRIPTION "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than –" The poem’s opening line touches on words from Fredric Jameson (1994), that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. The images portray the present-day dying city, whose centre has been eviscerated by the pandemic. Its abandoned public spaces remodelled through successive regenerations are rewilded by visions of past and possible futures. As the performance of the spoken word within the audio-visual flow co-creates multiple registers of metaphoric and denotative associations, the film poem evokes the everyday-ness of life in a city that seems to be wakening to new possibilities after a long year of pandemic. ​ At this fork in the path for our collective planetary future, how can we imagine ourselves in a better world, a world that is materially achievable now but often seems beyond reach? How can we join that imagining to the present so as to open up a path to a better future? These questions underpin the creative collaboration here.

Funded by Sustainable Earth Institute's Creative Associates programme, University of Plymouth