LENS.cast Season 3: Energy, Art, Future
In Season 3 of the podcast of the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies, we speak to activists, experts, and artists working toward just futures for California’s Imperial Valley, Indigenous communities…
In Season 3 of the podcast of the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies, we speak to activists, experts, and artists working toward just futures for California’s Imperial Valley, Indigenous communities in Iqaluit, and elsewhere.
Episode One
a conversation about lithium and the energy transition
Episode description
Episode 1 looks at a story at the forefront of the energy transition. California’s Imperial Valley is home to one of the world’s largest deposits of lithium—a mineral that may be crucial to engineering a low-carbon economy. Companies and governments interested in extracting Imperial’s lithium promise that the process will bring jobs and investment to the Valley, one of the most socially and economically marginalized places in the state. In this episode, we ask experts, activists, and community members whether lithium mining in Imperial could be part of what experts call a “just transition”: a shift to green energy that undoes the logic of exploitation that’s led us into climate crisis, instead of repeating it.
Cover image: “SaltonSeaArielFromSouth.jpg”
By Samboy
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
“Micro Flute Composition 2”
Composed by Mitch Stahlmann
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
https://freesound.org/people/mithimightbe/sounds/426857/
Arctic Representation: Conversations with Inuit Artists
This is a three-part mini-series produced by Clara Wilch, Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University and LENS scholar (PhD in Theater and Performance Studies, UCLA), and Spencer Robins, Professor at Saddleback College and LENS.cast lead producer (PhD in English, UCLA). Each episode features Clara in conversation with an artist in Iqaluit, Nunavut whose work guides audiences to better understand the many-dimensional Far North and how we might confront social and environmental injustices. These conversations address the artists’ relationships to land, identity and settler colonialism, and Arctic imaginaries.
Episode 1
a conversation with comedian and writer Peter Igupttaq Autut
Read some of his writing for Up Here Magazine here.
Cover image by Clara Wilch.
Sound credits: BCO – tram ride on a sunny day – 2022-08-12 by brylie — https://freesound.org/s/646626/— License: Attribution 4.0N
Episode 2
a conversation with musician and artist Joshua Qaumariaq
Find and support The Trade Offs’ music here.
Cover image by Clara Wilch.
Sound credits: wanderermalletloop.aif by plagasul — https://freesound.org/s/253383/— License: Attribution 4.0 (only featured in ambient version); BCO – tram ride on a sunny day – 2022-08-12 by brylie — https://freesound.org/s/646626/— License: Attribution 4.0
Episode 3
a conversation with filmmaker, producer, and writer Nyla Innuksuk
Learn more about her work here.
Read “On-Screen Protocols + Pathways: A Media Production Guide to Working with First Nations, Métis and Inuit Communities, Cultures, Concepts and Stories” and related publications here.
Cover image by Clara Wilch.
Sound credits: BCO – tram ride on a sunny day – 2022-08-12 by brylie — https://freesound.org/s/646626/— License: Attribution 4.0