This is Tomorrow Calling
HELEN MURPHY and NICK PELLING investigate an unusual new podcast.
It’s not often that we hear the voices of the people of St Leonards when contemplating the state of the world today. But film maker and video-journalist Ross Domoney has now launched a podcast, which seeks to weave in the voices and opinions of locals as it explores what he calls the “sci-fi-like quality of contemporary politics”. The podcast is called Shadowgraph and although it is undoubtedly political it is very different from the mainstream matter of fact, and supposedly ‘balanced’, news that so often just sends us around in circles of despair. The idea is to reach out for the foggy, almost fictional, worlds that sit in between creative video-journalism and hard documentary. It is an unusual and slightly weird sounding project so we met up with Ross to ask what it was all about.
IMAGINING THE FUTURE
Ross starts from the idea that most of us currently feel “overwhelmed by the current political chaos.” He adds that he is trying to find a “new language” to help us engage our imaginations as well as our analytical brains. He hopes the podcast will help people navigate the bleakness by developing a more “nuanced” style of political storytelling which looks for almost unconscious connections.
The central paradox of Ross’s approach, it seemed to us, is that he is hoping that elements of fantasy might help us not to ‘escape’ world news but to get under the skin of the modern ‘spectacle’ of madness. In some ways he is asking us to imagine a future, whilst hinting that the future is already here.
Part of the idea is to allow ourselves to dream forward and anticipate where current flows of history are taking us. A recent podcast of Shadowgraph looks at the possibility of a General Strike in 2035, as a desperate response to a system that is barely functioning on a planet that is apparently determined to pass its own judgement on late capitalism. In this future the usual sources of resistance, such as the labour unions, are powerless because traditional work itself is becoming impossible. This may sound like your everyday apocalypse, but the twist is that Ross brings in contemporary voices. A random local opined that this hostile ‘nature’ was annoyed with us for “chatting all the time”.
The people of the town become almost actors in this imagined future. Recently he invited people into his intentionally blacked out home to explore what it might be like to be in a climate lockdown, in a dark but creative role play. The podcast comes with a disturbing soundscape that helps the listener engage in an all too possible reality.
AN UNCERTAIN WORLD
Ross is certainly an unusual character. How many people do you know who, upon hearing the news of war breaking out in Ukraine, decide that the best course of action would be to journey to Kyiv with a camera to ask commuters on trains what they dream about in their sleep? Just as the Russians were closing in on the capital. But, this is the essence of the Shadowgraph storytelling style: taking you into an other-worldly experience of the news through inventive storytelling. As if delving into the unconscious reality of people might shed light on actual reality.
You might think that someone so committed to looking into the hearts of darkness would be a serious and stern, bearded Hemingway-type. But that would be way off beam. Ross is a very approachable and open creative who has taught practical workshops in filmmaking in Hastings and St Leonards.
If all this sounds a little strange, that is probably because it is. Shadowgraph offers a challenge to think about the world in different ways. I’m not sure we have fully comprehended it. We can only suggest that you check it out for yourself!
Shadowgraph is offering online and in-person workshops to teach this very unique style of storytelling. www.shadowgraph.co.
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