Whose Anthropocene?
ongoing reading group tonight! 30th April 5-7pm in the gallery
The Anthropocene unleashes slow violence on humans and non-humans, Demos argues, and calls for artists and art theoreticians to recognise the urgency of decolonising nature and responding to climatic change destruction. CWEH Activists and Academia Forum will continue engagement with T. J. Demos recent book, in which he debates the Anthropocene in art and photography, science, history, politics and philosophy.
Examining visual digital representations of the Anthropocene in global discourse and media outlets, Demos notes the sources of these digital files: Commercial and military satellites, the Global Positioning System, the internet – all products or by-products of military and transnational corporations. This is where his critical reading of the Anthropocene starts.
The Reading Group is co-organised by CWEH artist Zuky Serper Centre for World Environmental History (CWEH) University of Sussex, Fine Art Critical Practice Brighton and students, and Graduates Monthly, and kindly hosted by Communal- Brighton CCA. TJ Demos’ recent book Against the Anthropocene is available to read in the Communal library.
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cweh/research/academia_and_activism/artist-in-residence
29-Apr-2019
Dear reading group participants, old and new,
After 5 sessions in Brighton CCA at Grand Parade, we will have the concluding meeting for this series of conversations about the Anthropocene, climate justice and de-colonising, triggered by reading Demos’ books, on Tuesday 7 May 2019 at 5pm, in Grand Parade.
In the 23 April meeting we went back to Demos’ previous work Decolonising Nature, with particular attention to the urgency of stopping the violence implied in all forms of extractive capitalism. Environmentalism, discussed from a Western, Cartesian point of view, may de-link the price paid by those on the forefront of exposure to Green Imperialism (Richard Grove, founder of the CWEH) and Extractivism: Ecocide, Externalities, ill health, destruction of life and nature. Some of the art projects mentioned: Bureau of Linguistical Reality [https://bureauoflinguisticalreality.com/ ], The School of Missing Studies, the film Katanga Business ( 2009) by Belgian director Thierry Michel, The Independent AIR [http://www.theindependentair.com/about ]
On Tuesday 30 April we had a chance visit of a former Brighton art student, from 1968! We heard about their early environmental campaign, consisting of a formal complaint letter to a soft drink company that stopped collection of glass bottles, which resulted with depositing a huge pile of them in front of its head office! Another action consisted of unrolling all toilet rolls in the art school building, and writing on them texts, raising awareness to green issues, only to than roll them back!
Demos’ 3rd chapter makes compelling link between the project of environmental action and that of “Indigenizing the Anthrpocene”, de-colonising academic structure and discourses.
We have added our voice to a nascent movement, aimed at focusing and setting public agenda on the looming human made climatic threat. We will finish Against the Anthropocene and discuss opportunities for future works.
Looking forward to see you.
Yours,
Zuky