Conversations Beyond the Human
A seminar held during Unearthing the Present
How do corals experience the world? How do their bodies sense and archive environmental disruptions in the context of the climate crisis? And how do they act as agents between the outer and inner earth? From ancient cultures all over the world to Darwin and Marx, corals have been icons of the non-human world, now becoming one of the central symbols of the environmental crisis. Moving beyond viewing corals solely as a passive measuring device for planetary changes, this session—recorded at HKW, Berlin, in May 2022—opened up discussions on interlinked fates, disrupted agencies, and more-than-human perspectives on global environmental change.
Kat Austen’s artistic practice focuses on environmental issues. She melds disciplines and media, creating sculptural and new media installations, performances, and participatory work.
Nigel Clark is Chair of Human Geography at the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, UK. He is the author of Inhuman Nature (2011) and (with Bronislaw Szerszynski) Planetary Social Thought: The Anthropocene Challenge to the Social Sciences (2021).
Kristine L. DeLong is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge. Her current research focuses on climate change of the past primarily in the subtropics to tropical regions over the past 130,000 year
Jens Zinke is a Professor in Palaeobiology at the University of Leicester. He focuses on the understanding of natural and anthropogenic impacts from climate change and land use change on tropical coral reefs in the past, present and future across the Indo-Pacific Ocean.
Please cite as: Austen, K, N Clark, K L DeLong and J Zinke (2022) Conversations Beyond the Human. In: Rosol C and Rispoli G (eds) Anthropogenic Markers: Stratigraphy and Context, Anthropocene Curriculum. Berlin: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. DOI: 10.58049/n4s5-8118
Between 2013-2022 the Anthropocene Curriculum was developed by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW, Berlin) and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG, Berlin), in collaboration with many partners worldwide. The website archive is now maintained by the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology.