“In my cinema studies major I work mostly with films that fall somewhere on the horror/fantasy/sci-fi speculative genre spectrum. The uncertain worlds and nonlinear temporalities across which these stories play out have always captivated me with their ability to do away with the notion of impossibility. Academically, I’ve read some sociological theory on the idea of hauntings (namely Avery Gordon’s Ghostly Matters) and how ghosts and specters can manifest, a literal haunting of society in the form of collective trauma and amnesia. In the context of Professor Karen Holmberg’s Interdisciplinary Seminar ‘Anthropocene Narratives,’ reading about ensuing cataclysm, fractured food chains, and specific groups’ reluctance to affect policy change, I felt it could be worthwhile to explore the potential haunting of planet Earth itself. The result is this video, which I consider an experiment in time travel and embodiment. It is set in the maybe not so distant future, when humanity and many other species have been wiped off the planet. It asks: What might those resilient organisms, the bacteria, the fungi, the trees that refused to fall and those animals that managed to mutate out of extinction, what might they say if they could send a message back in time to us?”—Ngozi Nwadiogbu

“Future/Phantoms” was originally written in Professor Karen Holmberg’s Fall 2018 Interdisciplinary Seminar “Anthropocene Narratives.“