Author and Director: Ali Minanto
Concept: Nico Carpentier and Vaia Doudaki
“New Modes of Environmental Communication: Four Street Art Experiments” is a 23:34-minute documentary film by Ali Minanto, that reflects on how knowledge about the environment is produced and shared in creative ways, moving beyond the, sometimes, narrow spaces of academia, without disregarding academic knowledge.
One of these spaces of knowledge production and creative communication is street art, where artistic aesthetics and practices of civic expression are combined. This video features the experiment, where academic researchers, based at Charles University in Prague and affiliated to the Mistra Environmental Communication Research Program and the 4EU+ European University Alliance, commissioned four Indonesian street artists to produce four street artworks in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta: “Welcome New Pollution” by Anagard, “Plant Trees Plant Hope” by Guerrillas, “Plastic Reduce” by Kinky Twenty, and “Planting Determination” by Young Surakarta.
Embedded in deeply localized knowledge about the environment and with great communicative eloquence, these street artworks provide visual (and highly visible) alternative discourses that critique indifference towards, and exploitation of, the environment. In the documentary, we see Anagard reflect about the phenomenon of medical waste (in particular the disposal of masks used during the pandemic). Guerrillas critiques the rampant forest fires in Indonesia, used as a deforestation tool by plantation corporations. Kinky Twenty’s work is about the environmental threat posed by plastic waste. And finally, Young Surakarta emphasizes the need of planting trees as a way to protect the environment and to help to ensure humankind’s survival.