- Jamie Allen
- Jeremy Bolen
- Alyne Costa
- Lucio De Capitani
- Emiliano Guaraldo
- Brian Holmes
- Sarah Lewison
- Jacob Lindgren
- Jahnavi Phalkey
- Carlina Rossée
- Fernando Silva e Silva
Collaborative Practice on a Changing Planet
The Anthropocene Curriculum Network
Ten years ago, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science launched the Anthropocene Curriculum (AC) project. The goal was to jointly develop new methods for knowledge production that reflect the complexity of the Anthropocene, a new time period in which human activity has profoundly altered the planet. What started as a weeklong experimentation space at HKW—the Anthropocene Campus 2014—has since developed into a model for collective practice in the Anthropocene with an international network of initiatives along the Mississippi River (US) and in Chicago (US), Daejeon (Korea), Cape Town (South Africa), Lyon (France), Lisbon (Portugal), Venice (Italy), Melbourne (Australia), Bengaluru (India), Porto Alegre (Brazil) and many other places. This fall, AC initiatives from around the world came together to envision a transformed future for the long-term collaborations of the network. For this event, AC partners highlighted the most recent projects and films launching in the fall of 2022.
Part 1
Launch presentations
The Earth and Us: Toward a Brazilian and Latin American Anthropocene Research Network
With Fernando Silva e Silva and Alyne Costa
How can we maintain habitability on a rapidly changing Earth? Exploring the challenges of the Anthropocene, The Earth and Us project aims to foster a South- and Latin American research network. This is kicked off with the first Latin American Anthropocene Campus, AC Brazil, in Porto Alegre in 2022, followed by an international campus in Rio de Janeiro in 2024.
Carbon. Anthropocene Campus Bengaluru
With Jahnavi Phalkey
A critical ingredient to life and living—carbon is at the centerstage of Earth’s history. Yet today carbon is at the centre of a global crisis, for which we do not have an immediate solution. As we enter a new age of carbon consciousness, the exhibition-season at Science Gallery Bengaluru asks how to reimagine our relationship with this element.
Introducing: Venice and the Anthropocene: An Ecocritical Guide
With Lucio De Capitani and Emiliano Guaraldo
Published by wetlands in collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice and the Anthropocene. An Ecocritical Guide illustrates the city through the lens of our current environmental predicament. In this book launch participants discuss how this guidebook frames Venice as both a unique ecosystem at risk and as a key to understanding the increasingly vulnerable world.
Mississippi River Open School for Kinship and Social Exchange
With Sarah Lewison and Jacob Lindgren
The Mississippi River Open School for Kinship and Social Exchange (2022–2024) is the working title for an expansive educational and research collaboration through the formation of five river hubs spanning the river’s headwaters to the Gulf. The Open School takes up the concept of the Anthropocene as a point of departure for issues at the intersections of race, environment and resource extraction.
Followed by a joint Q&A, moderated by Carlina Rossée.
Part 2
Film screenings
Not shown above. Link coming soon.
The Impossibility of a Planet
Jamie Allen, Jeremy Bolen
Practices and presumptions about mobility, networks and communications change continuously. Shifts in what we might call “planetary knowledge practices,” which attempt to describe and evaluate Earth-scale attributes and processes, are what this short film attempts to trace. The Impossibility of a Planet delves into changes in the local, personal and situated ways in which researchers characterize the planetary, before, during and after a global pandemic and many other geo(political) disturbances. Is it even possible to compose a planet?
If This River Could Move
Jeremy Bolen, Brian Holmes
How do entire societies interpret the causes, consequences and possible future transformations of damaged ecosystems? This short film examines the attempt of Old River Control Structures to hold back geological time on the Lower Mississippi River.
Followed by a joint Q&A, moderated by Carlina Rossée.
