The current exacerbation of social, ecological and political lines of conflict in the United States reveal conflicts that have been concentrating around the Mississippi for some time. As tensions rise around racialized violence, ecological destruction and the Covid-19 pandemic, the historical path dependencies and social-political structures that made them become ever more apparent

The installation The Current presents field studies by artists, scholars and activists who were involved in the HKW project Mississippi. An Anthropocene River and which sought site-specific approaches to planetary crises along the Mississippi River Basin; a river system that exemplifies current transformations of intertwining histories of earth and settlement, of the bio- and technosphere. The installation presents critical positions and interdisciplinary research that explores the ecological, political, social and technospheric interconnections of the Mississippi River. In the face of the deepening of old and new social cleavages, the installation brings practices based on solidarity and collaboration into conversation with methodological experiments and ideas for a polyphonic practice of work and life in the Anthropocene.

The contents of the installation at HKW will also be available online at shape.anthropocene-curriculum.org.

With contributions by Kayla Anderson, Sara Black, Jeremy Bolen, Isabelle Carbonell , Andrea Carlson, Jennifer Colten, Tia-Simone Gardner, Beate Geissler, Amber Ginsberg, Ryan Griffis, Monica Haller, Derek Hoeferlin, Brian Holmes, Sarah Kanouse, John Kim, Brian Kirkbride, Sarah Lewison, LocalStyle (Marlena Novak and Jay Alan Yim), Saundie McClain-Kloeckener, Margarida Mendes, Abbéy Odunlami, Lynn Peemoeller, Claire Pentecost, Oliver Sann, Jenny Schmid, Michael Swierz, Joe Underhill, Monique Verdin, Anna Van Voorhis, Maureen Walrath, Joslyn Willauer, Andrew Yang