Ecomedia and trans-corporeality: Exploring toxic embodiments and ecological reparation through the SNIA’s audio-visuals

In the late 1930s, the Società Nazionale Industria Applicazioni Viscosa (National Company for the Industrial Application of Viscose) (SNIA Viscosa) was the leading Italian company manufacturing artificial fibres. Drawing on Stacy Alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeality, this article explores the relationship between media, bodies and environments by focusing on audio-visuals shot in two SNIA sites, Torviscosa and Rome, between 1939 and 2015. The analysis of an Istituto Luce’s newsreel reveals the gendered and racialized embodiments produced in fascist industrial environments. In partial continuity with pre-war industrial aesthetics, Michelangelo Antonioni's documentary Sette canne, un vestito ( Seven Reeds, One Suit ), makes visible chemical agencies but leaves off-screen their effects on factory workers. Recent music videos shot at the ex-SNIA in Rome call attention to socio-ecologically harmful projects while also visualizing reparative trans-corporealities. Taken together, these media artefacts provide aesthetic and political insights into socio-environmental problems and ways of addressing them.