A Metabolic Commons
Many Hands Make Light Work
An audiovisual meditation on shared metabolisms, planetary commons, and environmental imaginaries.- Type
- Talk
- Location
- Lisbon, Portugal / Basel, Switzerland
A Metabolic Commons: Many Hands Make Light Work is a collaborative media work by WorkOverTime (Louise Carver & Jamie Allen), presented at the 7th Lisbon Architecture Triennale (2 October – 8 December 2025) within the Lighter exhibition curated by Territorial Agency at MAC/CCB.
The single-channel video combines layered soundscapes, poetic narration, and situated field recordings to explore how bodies, infrastructures, labour, and love shape our shared metabolisms. Filmed and researched across copper mines in Chile, sugar ports in the UK, fishing villages in Malta, and speculative blockchain forests of the future, the project creates an ethnographic fiction reflecting on reciprocity, ecological limits, and planetary commons.
As part of metaLAB Basel’s ongoing research into Metabolic Media, and reflecting the interdisciplinary ethos of ICDP, the project merges critical geography, feminist theory, and experimental media practices. A Metabolic Commons functions both as a documentary meditation and as a performative contribution to metabolic aesthetics and environmental imaginaries. It continues our exploration of how artistic research can give form to climate justice, planetary governance, and regenerative ecologies.
