Spirale · Naturalist Gazes

Founded in 1979, Spirale is a cultural magazine that explores current issues in the arts, literature, and the humanities through an analytical and critical lens.

Publishing three issues per year, the magazine brings together texts that address the aesthetic, social, ethical, political, and theoretical stakes of contemporary intellectual and artistic production, and favors forms of writing at the crossroads of criticism and the essay. Spirale invites thinkers and creators to share their reflections on the state of the world, its differences, and its contradictions, casting a critical eye on various manifestations of today’s culture. Firmly interdisciplinary and driven by the need to multiply perspectives, debates, and analyses, the magazine seeks to be a space of thought open to complexity.

As a complement to Regards naturalistes : voir en haute définition (Issue 289, Spring 2025), edited by André-Philippe Drapeau Picard and Luba Markovskaia, Spirale presents a curated program of three films that, through very different approaches, renew our vision of nature and our relationship with the living world. In a context marked by biodiversity loss and rapid technological advancement, the naturalist gaze is being redefined and reasserted as a valuable tool—both within and beyond scientific circles—to better understand, protect, and inhabit the environment in new ways. But how, precisely, can the observation of living beings help us decenter our worldview and prompt us to take action? What relevance does this embodied gaze on nature retain today, especially when paired with diverse field practices, in addressing current ecological and social challenges? In their films, Robert Morin, Jacquelyn Mills, and Marianna Milhorat offer sensitive responses to these questions—responses that are thoughtfully explored in Spirale’s thematic section. We invite viewers to extend their film experience by reading the texts dedicated to Wild Feast by Morin and Geographies of Solitude by Mills, as well as other works and contemporary phenomena that, by bringing nature back to the forefront, allow us to see it in “high definition.”