FROM URGENCY TO AGENCY
The climate crisis is not waiting for history to record it. People living through its extremes are recording it themselves.
The Here Now Project tells the story of a year of climate extremes through firsthand footage captured by people experiencing them. Without narration or traditional interviews, the film refuses the comfort of distance. It places lived experience at the center and asks us to see the climate emergency through the eyes—and cameras—of those already inside it.
After the screening, we move from witness to responsibility. How should personal images of disaster, displacement, injury, and loss be used? Who owns these stories? How do we tell them without turning suffering into spectacle? And how do we confront the systems behind the damage—including mass extraction, mass consumption, corporate power, and political corruption—while turning urgency into meaningful action in The Hague?
ABOUT THE FILM
The Here Now Project (United States, 2024, approximately 76 minutes), directed by Jon Siskel and Greg Jacobs, assembles thousands of hours of footage recorded by people living through the climate extremes of 2021. Moving across communities and continents, the film shows a crisis unfolding at once on a global scale and in the most intimate parts of daily life.
There is no narrator, and there are no conventional expert interviews. The people inside the fires, floods, and storms hold the cameras. Their recordings become acts of witness—revealing not only the force of a changing climate, but the resilience, courage, and resourcefulness of those confronting it.
SCREENING AND CONVERSATION
The evening pairs a screening of The Here Now Project with a moderated conversation and audience Q&A. The discussion will consider the ethics of firsthand climate footage, the responsibilities of storytellers and institutions, and the local action that becomes possible when witness moves toward agency.
PROGRAM AT A GLANCE
18:00–18:30 · Doors open and registration
18:30–18:40 · Welcome and introduction
18:40–20:00 · Screening: The Here Now Project
20:00–20:30 · Moderated conversation
20:30–20:45 · Audience Q&A and closing
20:45–21:30 · Drinks and informal conversation
Program times are provisional and will be updated when confirmed.
FROM WITNESS TO ACCOUNTABILITY
A camera can show us what happened. It cannot, by itself, explain why the same harm keeps happening—or who benefits when it does. This conversation looks beyond images of disaster to the systems surrounding them: mass extraction, mass consumption, corporate power, and political corruption. Those systems shape which communities are exposed, whose warnings are ignored, and whose losses are treated as acceptable.
Not every act of environmental destruction is ecocide or an international crime. But the language of ecocrime—and the international effort to recognize ecocide—asks us to consider what accountability should look like when serious harm is repeatedly enabled or allowed to continue. The evening then turns toward agency: what storytellers, residents, institutions, and communities can do next—and how the urgency witnessed on screen can become meaningful action in The Hague.
ORGANIZERS
Organized by Art Works Projects and The Hague Humanity Hub.
VENUE AND ACCESSIBILITY
EnergieKas is located on the roof of De Helena at Helena van Doeverenplantsoen 3, 2512 ZB Den Haag. The venue is not fully wheelchair accessible. A lift reaches the third floor, followed by one flight of stairs. Visitors who need to use the lift should notify EnergieKas in advance.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
In person · Free · Registration required
Registration details will be added when confirmed.