The Fences: A webcomic on collective debt and ruination in Paraguay

Abstract

The Fences: A webcomic on collective debt and ruination in Paraguay is a production of the Australian-Paraguayan comics studio CómicsClub comprised of anthropologist and writer Caroline E. Schuster and artists Enrique Bernardou and David Bueno. This webcomic began as an anthropological fieldwork study of climate financing - that is, novel financial arrangements that address the emerging weather-related risks to human communities of global warming, deforestation, and mass extinction. As we enter an era of ‘global weirding’ characterised by strange and extreme weather, insurance companies have welcomed the opportunity to cast themselves as financial ‘first responders,’ offering coverage for drought, floods, bushfires, and other so-called secondary perils that cost billions of dollars annually in property damage and reconstruction costs. The webcomic tells this story through interactive sequential art. Through branching timelines and ‘what if?’ scenarios, the project recuperates a critical speculative imagination and offers alternatives to financial modes of ‘buying the future.’