Diffractive Way of Thinking and the Possibilities of Capturing Ecological Trauma in Tomonari Nishikawa's sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars (2014)

Abstract

sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars (2014) is a camera-less two-minute-long film directed by the Japanese experimental filmmaker Tomonari Nishikawa. He buried a 100-foot-long 35mm negative film under fallen leaves alongside a country road close to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station where it was exposed to the possible remains of radioactive materials. The film is a document of an intrusive past. It becomes an (eco) traumatic landscape and a local manifestation of a hyperobject called radiation. This article will employ the concept of diffraction as a new materialist concept whose qualities are quite underexplored in the field of film studies but may have important implications for questions that are frequently asked about the nature of ecological trauma and its representation. Through rethinking 1) how we think about culture/nature and our being in the world; 2) identity and difference; 3) and representationalism, this article will argue that when discussed in a new materialist context, possible to approach eco-trauma in new and fertile ways. With a case study of Nishikawa’s film, the study will also explore how ecologically engaged experimental films can capture the sense of eco-trauma experience by going against the idea of common-sense representationalism as a mode of knowledge-producing.