On the Recuperative Mismanagement of a Cosmopolitan Fish
To close the opening week of The Shape of a Practice, artists created a convivial meal-at-a-distance with so-called invasive species. From a kitchen in Carbondale, Illinois, artist Sarah Lewison, alongside storyteller and soul food authority Swan Parsons, prepare a meal of Asian carp, opening up questions related to an eco-logic of planetary care and our relationships to habitat. From Berlin and Chicago, artist and biologist Andrew Yang, biologist Florian Rutland and artist Alexandra Toland prep (...)
Good River, Bad River, Little River, Big River
“Mississippi” is a francophone adulteration of Anishinaabe (Ojibwe, Algonquin) name given to the river, indicating something along the lines of how “great” or “big” a river it is. “People are enthralled by it,” Bob Chance, manager of Itasca State Park told the Star Tribune in 2018: “They are amazed that it is that small.” Way down south, the river is an accumulator, full of the life-effluent of an industrialized nation, its cares, concerns, and contaminants. But here, at Lake Itasca, we hear fro (...)
Head Waters at the Headwaters
The United States of America is just under ten million square kilometers in surface area. Its most conterminous landmass is a topology of creases and folds, mountains and ridges, chasms and embankments. These create, among other divides, hydrological continental separations, sloped divisions for watersheds that flow into either the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River or the Missouri-Mississippi complex. These great, tectonic gutters cascade erosive, mineralized waters into the Atlantic Ocean or (...)
Listening to the Mississippi
Listening to the Mississippi is an iterative project that has unfolded since 2013 and currently manifests as a sound composition and traveling listening station. Using underwater recordings gathered in 2015 by artists Monica Haller and Sebastian Müllauer that span the river from the headwaters to the Gulf, listeners are invited to orient themselves to the river through their sense of sound, rather than by sight alone. (...)
Notes for Listening
Whatever moment the river might invite us to, it is a thick moment, a moment in motion. Audio piece and notes to the listener. (...)
From a Living Exhibition to the DMZ
Space for studying Anthropocene-related changes can occur intentionally, through institutions and other projects, but it can just as easily occur by accident. (...)
Between Spaces, between Lines
Some of the most interesting work on the Anthropocene takes place in between places, in between disciplines, and even in between the lines. (...)
Place and Space
How do materials from different forms of research communicate with each other? (...)
The Shape of a Practice 2020
The Shape of a Practice constituted an experiment in negotiating the particularities of context, purpose, and method. (...)
Technosphere Magazine
Exploring the amorphous fabric of technologies, environments, and humans shaping Earth’s critical future. (...)
In Search of Lost Crops Where the Buffalo Roam
A reflection by archaeologist and ethnobotanist Natalie G. Mueller on how sharing meal of long lost plants transformed her research perspective. (...)
Speculative Life, Montreal 2017
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In Situ Anthropocene
What can the Mississippi River Valley teach us about how to read the planetary shifts of the Anthropocene through its local waterways and landscapes? (...)
Lounging Through the Flood
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Anthropocene Refusal
The end of mankind is almost over: a short film on de-colonized futures. (...)
Listening to the Mississippi, 2019
There is no one correct way to listen to the river; there are multiple listenings, and multiple rivers. (...)
Technosphere, Berlin 2015–19
The exploratory research project Technosphere 2015–2019 investigated the origins and future itineraries of technological agency in the Anthropocene. (...)
