Natasha Woods
Livable Futures graduate student fellow 2022-2023
Video Art, The Ohio State University
Biography
I am committed to the ethical research of contemporary rhetorical theory + criticism and critical human rights. The research questions that sustain me through this work involve violence as a worldview and violent worldviews, as well as corporations’ and governments’ overlapping complicity in human rights violations. In these questions, I seek to understand how communities form around and for the purpose of violence so that we might find sustainable ways to intercede in their formations. I challenge the eurocentric conception of “rights” that have (unsurprisingly) centered white lifeways. And in doing so I push back on the rhetorics of exploitation and identification that inform our beliefs on who gets to count as human or who—the human, the natural, the technological, etc.—is deemed “worthy” of life.
Q & A
What makes more livable futures for you?
Care is central to my idea of a livable future. I dream of a world that is more relational—to each other, to ourselves, to the plants, the animals, the earth, etc. A slow-moving and thoughtful place full of permissions and possibilities. More public transit, funding for the arts, healthcare, housing, food and other basic human needs for everyone.
What are you reading, viewing, listening to right now?
Currently (2023) I am reading a collection of short stories by Clarice Lispector and slowly working through Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image, edited by Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg. I keep reading one essay and it leads me into all these other texts, films, filmmaker that are incredibly enriching and exciting. Recently, I have been watching short films by Lynne Sachs, Ute Aurand, Margaret Tait, and Barbara Hammer. I have been craving a lot of silence lately, but I do listen to the weekly forecast by astrologer, Chani Nicholas to check in. When I am after a story, I have been leaning towards artist interviews and lectures (most recently Lynne Sachs and Ursula K. Le Guin), and the podcast Normal Gossip which is juicy and fun. When I am craving music, I have been trying to turn away from the algorithm. I listen to the global radio platform, NTS, it is an incredible resource for exploration and connection.
What practices are sustaining you?
I have been finding sustenance in slowing down and holding a loose routine of things. My old dog, Miko, helps me with this. Walks, cooking, stretching, tending to worms, learning Portuguese, and phone calls with friends. Paying attention to the things I am paying attention to. Going for “flower walks.” Visually mapping my own future garden and questioning what a garden can be. Actively trying to move slowly and tenderly. Dreaming alongside friends and strangers, laying in the sun, and staring at the sky.
Soon I will be traveling to Brazil for a creative research trip. First, I will attend Videobrasil, an international film and contemporary art festival in São Paulo, and second, I will gather material for my thesis work in Recife. I am going to make a companion film to another film I made that documented my grandma and dad’s trip from Recife to rural Iowa. I am the first in my family to make this trip in reverse (and the first to get a master’s degree), so healing and intergenerational experience has been on the forefront of my mind.
Filmmaking is a place that allows me to challenge what is visible in taught histories by looking at what is often overlooked. Situating my work between art and documentary, I am interested in unsettling the power of colonial film history by challenging traditional ethnographic methods that have been historically harmful to many communities through experimentation of performance, diary, and personal modes of filmmaking. I am interested in merging my desire for slowness and tenderness with this film. By broadly looking at gendered labor and leisure in both life and in film history, I have been making work under an umbrella titled Avant Gardens. A series which focuses loosely on themes of gardens, gossip, and solidarity. As an extension of this practice, I have been considering ways to draw attention to the “invisible” parts that make up a screening/experience, combining my interest as a programming and as a filmmaker. Most literally, I have been learning to forge iron to make a screen frame with Paul Simon. Another extension of this exploration follows the lead of experimental and pioneer filmmaker Marie Menken, who would share her films with friend in her living room alongside some homemade soup. I was inspired to carry this sentiment of nourishment on in my own life and community through Riga House. Over the summer we hosted two screenings, pairing them with two community members who were tasked with making a soup to accompany. In addition to my thesis show this February, I am planning a similar event to screen my own films.