Day 2 of Approaching the Anthropocene in Santa Barbara was as rich as Day 1, taking a slightly more "eco-depressive" turn, a turn to the darker and the less resolved, to the less activist. In one of the discussion sessions, Susan Derwin recalled Melanie Klein's idea of "the depressive position," which opens out onto potentially productive possibilities ("If the confluence of loved and hated figures can be borne, anxiety begins to centre on the welfare and survival of the other as a whole object, eventually giving rise to remorseful guilt and poignant sadness, linked to the deepening of love" - from Melanie Klein Trust website). Lili Yan (English, Soochow University and Shanghai Normal University Tianhua College) spoke about Margaret Atwood's Year of the Flood (2010). Yi Chuang E. Lin (Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan) revisited The Waste Land via the Anthropocene. Next up: art. Kayla Anderson (New Center for Research & Practice) responded to the idea that Anthropocenic art should propose "solutions," asking instead that it be understood as a response to Zylinska's idea that the Anthropocene presents a "crisis in critical thought." Anderson's presentation discussed various key art projects that fall on one side or the other of this solution-driven/critical-thought divide: Yes Naturally – How art saves the world at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag; the agitprop posters and podcasts of Dear Climate; the various projects of Dunne and Raby; etc. Brad Monsma (English CSU-Channel Islands) spoke of the blurring of the art/culture/nature divide at the truly amazing Echigo-Tsumari Triennale around the concept of satoyama ("a Japanese term applied to the border zone or area between mountain foothills and arable flat land" - Wikipedia; and see this book). On the same panel, Leila Nadir and Cary Peppermint (U of Rochester/ EcoArtTech) spoke of several of their recent/current art projects that bring us into the "Late Anthropocene"--truly fabulous. In the afternoon, artist, programmer, professor Lisa Jevbratt (UCSB Art) discussed teaching a class on interacting with non-human animals, as well as her app Zoomorph that allows anyone to see the colors of the world "translated" into what different animals would see. Zoomorph "still lifes" (HUMAN, CAT, hamster, deer)One of the day's other highlights was Erin E. Wiegand's discussion (San Francisco State, Cinema Studies) of the different ways (heights, technologies, methods) for filming factory farming in her "Visualizing the Factory Farm," with discussion of close-up undercover reporting, drone footage, and satellite imagery. The paper nicely tied up with issues raised through Day 1 about viewing, perspective, citizen-driven environmental cartography, etc.
As these two posts hopefully demonstrate, the Approaching the Anthropocene conference brought together a wild array of smart and fascinating people, working with humility to understand where we are and where we're going. |
Project THE HUMANIST anthropoceneis a thought archive and workspace of Phillip John Usher (NYU) at the crossroads of early modern humanism and the problems and insights of the Anthropocene. Main Research Page. Categories
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