This eleven-minute video documentary focuses on the red-crowned parrots of Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles. Endangered in their Mexican habitat because of the pet trade and habitat loss, these parrots are thriving in Los Angeles: an introduced bird species living off introduced trees. What happened by sheer luck for these parrots might become a model for urban conservation in the future. The video was originally published by KCET as part of an environmental storytelling partnership with the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS) at UCLA, with extensive contributions from faculty and Ph.D. students in UCLA’s documentary film program in the School of Theater, Film and Television.
Broken Nature
The XXII Triennale di Milano, Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival, highlights the concept of restorative design and studies the state of the threads that connect humans to their natural environments––some frayed, others altogether severed. In exploring architecture and design objects and concepts at all scales and in all materials, Broken Nature celebrates design’s ability to offer powerful insight into the key issues of our age, moving beyond pious deference and inconclusive anxiety. By turning its attention to human existence and persistence, the XXII Triennale will promote the importance of creative practices in surveying our species’ bonds with the complex systems in the world, and designing reparations when necessary, through objects, concepts, and new systems. Even to those who believe that the human species is inevitably going to become extinct at some point in the (near? far?) future, design presents the means to plan a more elegant ending. It can ensure that the next dominant species will remember us with a modicum of respect: as dignified and caring, if not intelligent, beings.
Broken Nature is composed of a thematic exhibition and a number of international participations solicited through official channels. It will run from March 1 to September 1, 2019.
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