Saprotrophs is a hybrid screening and lecture event to be presented at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, focused on historicizing ideas of growth and decay, as they’ve evolved from the earth’s ancient ecologies to landscapes of industrialized capitalism. The event will open with a screening of artist Miles Rufelds’ 2019 essay film, Two or Three Saprophytes. Tonally pitched between Marxist ecological criticism and European Gothic horror, the film tells a hallucinatory narrative of mushrooms, chemicals, machines, and ghosts, contrasting a speculative history of the Industrial Revolution with a broader analysis of the earth’s patterns of growth, decomposition, and fossilization.

Following the screening, Rufelds will present a new piece of writing, expanding on themes brought up in the film, focusing specifically on contemporary questions surrounding the limits of capitalist growth, contested notions of “degrowth,” ecological activism, and labour agitation. The screening will be followed by a Q&A and open discussion with the audience.