Interdisciplinary Environmental History: How Narratives of the Past can meet the Challenges of the Anthropocene
A new paper in the journal Annales discusses vital methodological issues for humanities-based historical inquiry and argues that the challenges of the Anthropocene demand interdisciplinary research informed by a variety of historical narratives (...)
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 (...)
Born Secret
The video follows this “Anthropocene mode of production” to its top-secret origin at Oak Ridge Laboratory, where the Manhattan Project drew on hydroelectric power furnished by the river-basin development program of the Tennessee Valley Authority. (...)
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 (...)
Navigating the Anthropocene River
A traveler’s guide to the (dis)comforts of being at home-in-the-world. (...)
(un)mutable channels
Voices and atmospheres recorded along the length of the Mississippi River Valley, seeking out the political and spatialized through sound, music, and field recordings. (...)
Re-patterning with Kudzu: Reckoning in Search of Regeneration
Artist Ellie Irons documents her travels to Natchez, Mississippi, to meet the American kudzu plant on the contested terrain it has colonized. (...)
The Current: Mississippi. An Anthropocene River
The installation The Current presented field studies by artists, scholars, and activists who were involved in the AC project Mississippi. An Anthropocene River. (...)
A Seed, a Sound
Attuning oneself to the transformations of the Anthropocene is both an intellectual and embodied experience. But how can the embodied experiences be shared, or even communicated, to one another online? (...)
A Trace, a Breath
Using sensory work, artists explore how the effects of opium relate to colonialist and capitalist extraction, and convey a tale of industry and the Latvian geological landscape. (...)
Anthropocene River Campus: The Human Delta short film
Critical insights from and impressions of the Anthropocene River Campus: The Human Delta, which took place in New Orleans in November 2019. (...)
Measuring Loss
In response to the complicated entanglements of property claims in the Mississippi Delta, Sarah Lewison advocates for witnessing injustice as a way of preparing for repair. (...)
Technosphere Magazine
Exploring the amorphous fabric of technologies, environments, and humans shaping Earth’s critical future. (...)
Data Flow
On data provenance: what does it mean to think about data through maize and to think about maize through data? (...)
Acknowledging Indigenous Land and a Performance of "Idle No More"
A bonus episode on centering Indigenous presence on the Mississippi Landscape. (...)
Riverine
What does it mean to be “riverine”? A collage by artist, writer, and activist Shanai Matteson (...)
“What on Earth”: Confluences in the planetary metabolism
Field Station 4 contributor Andrew Yang elucidates on the reasons for taking its title, “Confluence Ecologies,” as a lens through which to apprehend the Anthropocene (...)
