Keyword: Commodities
- contributionKat Austen, Juliana A. Ivar do Sul, Jérôme Kaiser, Joana MacLean, Georg N. Schäfer
What’s So Micro About Plastics?
What does the Baltic Sea drill core reveal about microplastics and the difficulty of defining their sources? Part of Unearthing the Present in May 2022.
Teaching, Biosphere, Commodities, Critical materials, Degradation, Education, Future, Human-environment relations, Ocean, Pollution, Sedimentation
- contributionJulian Charrière
Weight of Shadows
The artist Julian Charrière artificially remodels a biogeochemical cycle and casts it into a performance of reverse extraction: carbon molecules are captured from the air and turned into diamonds which are then “wastefully” cast into a glacier.
Intervention, Aesthetics, Carbon, Commodities, Deep time, Extraction, Technoscience
- contributionAndrea Westermann
Against the Aestheticization of Technofossils
Plastic represents a particularly alluring material legacy in the rock record—but as Andrea Westermann shows, for its health and environmental hazards, consumerism and the exploitation of migrant labor, plastic is a deeply troubling material.
Storytelling, Aesthetics, Commodities, Critical materials, Deep time, Pollution, Migration, Environmental Justice
- contributionBenjamin Steininger
Molecular Mobilization
How can an archaeology of the present address molecules as driving elements of the “Great Acceleration”? Benjamin Steininger contends that the apparatus of catalytic chemistry has triggered a cascade of accelerations which lead to the Anthropocene.
Storytelling, Carbon, Commodities, Energy, Infrastructure, Engineering, Metabolism, Technosphere, Transportation
- contributionJan Zalasiewicz, Peter K. Haff, Matt Edgeworth, Juliana A. Ivar do Sul, Daniel Richter
The Technofossil Record: Where Archaeology and Paleontology Meet
Field Work, Commodities, Deep time, Engineering, Scale, Stratigraphy, Technosphere
- contributionSadie Luetmer
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.
Conversation, Engagement, Field Work, Storytelling, Reflection, Anthropos, Capitalism, Carbon, Commodities, Climate change, Ecology, Environmental Justice, Race, Water
- contributionFritz Habekuß
A River Indicts
If a corporation can have rights, then why not the Mississippi River?
Field Study, Reflection, Field Work, Engagement, Agency, Agriculture, Anthropos, Commodities, Environmental Justice, Human-animal relations, Human-environment relations, Toxicity
- contributionBenjamin Steininger
Going Against the Flow
How consideration of the local effects of global dependencies, can help us to reckon with—and change—our role in sustaining often damaging entanglements of commodity flows.
Engagement, Intervention, Field Work, Teaching, Extraction, Commodities, Complexity, Slavery, Capitalism, Habits, History, Infrastructure
- contributionSarah Lewison
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.
Conversation, Engagement, Reflection, Field Study, Sensing, Storytelling, Teaching, Agency, Architecture, Commodities, Capitalism, Environmental Justice, Extraction, History, Indigenous Rights, Inequality, Race, Slavery
- contributionBenjamin Steininger
Louisiana: A Planetary Reactor
A River Journey reflection on power, the simultaneously planetary and molecular petrochemical industry, and the petrostate.
Field Work, Case Study, Engagement, Carbon, Degradation, Economy, Climate change, Commodities, Extraction, Energy, Infrastructure, Toxicity, Waste, Pollution
- contributionNikos Katsikis
The Mississippi Basin: An Operational Landscape
Architect and urbanist Nikos Katsikis describes the assemblage of “operational landscapes” that are tied to the Mississippi basin.
Mapping, Case Study, Modeling, Agriculture, Commodities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Urbanism
- contributionTemporary continent., Andrew Yang
“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
Field Work, Storytelling, Mapping, Commodities, Extraction, History, Capitalism, Scale
- Field Noteipgray
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Louisiana, USA
Carbon, Climate change, Commodities, Energy, Pollution
- Field Noteipgray
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Arabi, Louisiana, USA
Agriculture, Commodities, Plantation, Extraction
- Field Notebsteininger
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New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Storytelling, Teaching, Intervention, Commodities, Economy, Perception, Industrialization, Ritual, Archives
- Field Noteayse
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New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Storytelling, Reflection, Teaching, Intervention, Conversation, Anthropology, Anthropos, Capitalism, Commodities, Complexity, Deep time, Energy, Mining, Scale, Extraction, Oil, 2019, Geo-ecologies, Time
- Field Noteunderhil
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Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
Engagement, Commodities, Ocean, Scale, Embodied research
- Field Notebsteininger
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Donaldsonville, Louisiana, USA
Storytelling, Field Study, Agriculture, Biosphere, Capitalism, Commodities, Erosion, Landscape, Sedimentation, Industrialization, Geochemistry, River journey, Catalysis, Time
- Field Noteunderhil
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Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
Field Study, Intervention, Engagement, Carbon, Commodities, Complexity, Energy, River journey, Embodied research, refinery, Catalysis
- Field Notebsteininger
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Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
Sensing, Storytelling, Case Study, Architecture, Carbon, Commodities, Complexity, Substances, refinery, Catalysis
- event
Anthropocene River: Public Opening Anthropocene River Campus
A public program from November 10–16th, 2019, with presentations and discussions by the Mississippi. An Anthropocene River project partners and the Anthropocene Working Group.
Conversation, Reflection, Teaching, Storytelling, Field Study, Experiment, Commodities, Agency, Disaster, Disciplinarity, Economy, Education, Engagement, Epistemology, Engineering, Energy, Ethics, Flood, History, Ocean, Urbanism, Water, Socio-ecological design
- Field Notetemporarycontinent
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Natchez, Mississippi, USA
Storytelling, Field Study, Case Study, Field Work, Aesthetics, Commodities, History, Life, Slavery, Plantation
- Field Notetemporarycontinent
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St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Commodities, Ecology, Energy, Infrastructure, Sedimentation, Transport, Barge
- Field Notetemporarycontinent
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St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Field Study, Field Work, Capitalism, Commodities, Engineering, Cement
- Field Notetemporarycontinent
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St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Commodities, Economy, Engineering, Infrastructure, Transport, Barge
- projectSarah Kanouse, Ryan Griffis, Dylan AT Miner, Jon Lund
Moraine/Terminal
Moraine/Terminal is a portable gathering, exhibition, and conversational space traveling alongside the mobile seminar Over the Levee, Under the Plow.
Field Work, Conversation, Storytelling, Engagement, Extraction, Settler Colonialism, Mining, Commodities
- Field Notetemporarycontinent
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Moline, Illinois, USA
Engagement, Agriculture, Capitalism, Commodities
- Field Notetemporarycontinent
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West Baraboo, Wisconsin, USA
Field Work, Commodities, Energy
- Field Noteunderhil
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Bad Axe River, Wisconsin, USA
Field Study, Sound, Commodities, Infrastructure, Modernity
- Field NoteChristoph Rosol
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Crater Island, Wisconsin, USA
Reflection, Commodities, Critical materials, Mobility
- projectMax Ritts
Katharine Ordway, Fall 2018
Katharine Ordway, Fall 2018 represents a stationary gesture amid the distanced movements comprising the Listening to the Mississippi project.
Sound, Field Work, Commodities, Transportation, Migration, Ecology, Infrastructure
- Field Notetemporarycontinent
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Mississippi Headwaters, Minnesota, USA
Storytelling, Field Work, Anthropos, Commodities, Critical materials, Human-animal relations, Human-environment relations, Colonialism, Beaver
- contributionJesse Vogler
Transect Walk: Cahokia Mounds to Fairmont City
The entire history of American settlement experienced in one afternoon stroll.
Reflection, Water, Flood, Urbanism, Infrastructure, Transportation, Commodities, Anthropology, History
- projectBenjamin Steininger
Baton Rouge: A Process Landscape at the Confluence of German-American Chemistry
The impact of fossil fuel emissions on climate change is well established. This research project sheds light on the lesser known origins and history of the petro-industry.
Field Study, History, Pollution, Energy, Toxicity, Commodities
- projectJason Ludwig
From Plantations to Petrochemicals
What can the history of slavery tell us about the future of the Anthropocene?
Field Study, History, Commodities, Economy, Capitalism, Degradation, Agriculture, Energy, Pollution
- event
Field Station 2 | Extractive Infrastructures and Imaginaries
The fourth day of the seminar travels from Wisconsin to Illinois to examine the interplay of displacement, immigration, and engineering in producing the landscapes of extractive agriculture celebrated in the racialized mythology of the American “heartland.”
Case Study, Storytelling, Energy, Commodities, Infrastructure, Mining, Imaginary, Carbon, Pollution, Indigenous Rights, Environmental Justice
- projectMorgan Adamson, Ravi Agarwal, Bruce Braun, Shana M. griffin, Sarah Lewison, Pointe-Au-Chien Indian Tribe, Grace Treffinger, Geneva Lebouf
Seminar: Claims/Property
This seminar engages the complicated entanglements of property claims that cut across the social, racial, and ecological landscapes of the Mississippi Delta, as they pertain to the Anthropocene.
Case Study, Teaching, Agency, History, Local knowledge, Agriculture, Commodities, Capitalism, Violence, Race, Settler Colonialism, Environmental Justice
- projectBeate Geissler, Oliver Sann, Benjamin Steininger, Thomas Turnbull, Ibrahima Seck, Nikos Katsikis, Scott Eustis
Seminar: Commodity Flows
The relations between extraction, synthesis, and exploitation, and the effects of commodity dependencies across scales are explored in this seminar, by mapping commodity flows and energy cycles in the Mississippi basin.
Case Study, Teaching, Commodities, Capitalism, Energy, Agriculture, Transportation, History, Economy, Race, Slavery, Plantation, Metabolism, Infrastructure, Cotton, Tobacco, Sugar Cane, Oil
- project
Anthropocene River Campus: The Human Delta
The Anthropocene River Campus: The Human Delta synthesized the downstream Mississippi within a week-long field research and educational event at Tulane University, as well as sites in and around New Orleans.
Teaching, Storytelling, Field Study, Experiment, Commodities, Agency, Disaster, Disciplinarity, Economy, Education, Engagement, Epistemology, Engineering, Energy, Ethics, Flood, History, Ocean, Urbanism, Water, Socio-ecological design
- projectJared Richardson, Abbéy Odunlami, Maya Kóvskaya, Tamara Becerra Valdez, Montana Torrey, Hannah Schaedler, Ellie Irons
Field Station 5: Place, Space & Relations of Belongings
The Upper Delta region is shaped by environmental forces of evolving multiracial identities and inherently global economic forces. Field Station 5 explores the spatial dynamics which formed the contemporary identity of this region.
Field Study, Field Work, Intervention, Storytelling, Commodities, Capitalism, Spatial, History, Economy, Embodiment, Knowledge infrastructure, Race, Violence, Plantation, Environmental Justice
- project
Reshaping the Shape
Public enemy or mascot of a global commons? Tracing the postnatural expansion of the Asian Carp.
Storytelling, Intervention, Human-animal relations, Economy, History, Commodities
- projectNicholas Brown, Ryan Griffis, Sarah Kanouse
Field Station 2: Anthropocene Drift
What is the relation between large-scale agriculture and biome change? An examination of the infrastructure of the monocrop industry in the Midwestern United States.
Field Study, Field Work, Agriculture, Landscape, Water, Capitalism, Commodities, Anthropology, Local knowledge, Ecology, History, Violence, Sustainability, Topography, Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Rights, Environmental Justice
- projectMaria Paula Diogo, Liliana Coutinho, José Augusto Pádua
Seminar: Anthropogenic Landscapes of Inequality
Considering critiques of the Anthropocene’s ahistoricity, this seminar brings to the forefront of the debate the divide between those who explore and those who are explored.
Infrastructure, Commodities, Colonialism
- project
Mississippi. An Anthropocene River 2018–19
Mississippi. An Anthropocene River aims to make the Mississippi River Basin legible as a zone of ecological, historical, and social interaction between humans and the environment using novel forms of exchange, research, collaboration, and pedagogy.
Experiment, Field Study, Field Work, Mapping, Sensing, Storytelling, Teaching, Agriculture, Capitalism, Climate change, Commodities, Complexity, Disaster, Energy, Disciplinarity, Embodiment, Engineering, Flood, History, Human-environment relations, Infrastructure, Local knowledge, System, Transportation, Urbanism, Waste
- contributionNikos Katsikis
Operational Landscapes and the Planetary Thünen Town
Urbanization organizes the planetary terrain—not just through cities and agglomeration zones, but also through the totality of diffused production areas and global commodity chains.
Mapping, Urbanism, Capitalism, Commodities
- contributionBenjamin Bratton
Tokens: A Rorschach Test
Blockchain technologies have become the prism through which ideas about trust and social relationships are technologically negotiated. Sociologist and design theorist Benjamin Bratton explores both the potentials and pitfalls of this technical architecture.
Teaching, Capitalism, Commodities
- contributionAnnapurna Mamidipudi
A Recipe for Crafting Color: The Revival of Natural Dyeing in South India
How did nineteenth century recipes describing practices of natural dyeing in India come to constitute technologies for green production for the future?
Field Work, Experiment, Local knowledge, Aesthetics, Future, Commodities
- projectAnna Echterhölter, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Benjamin Bratton, Vera Tollmann, Gerald Nestler, Patricia Reed, Boaz Levin, Victoria Ivanova
Tokens
With the establishment of universal standards around 1948, the world is transformed into a technocratic space of transactions. Theoretical and artistic contributions contour the technical standards of an infinitely circulating present.
Conversation, Engagement, Storytelling, Intervention, Calculation, Commodities, Data, Economy, Infrastructure, Model, Network, Policy, Technosphere
- projectJens Soentgen, Alexander Ilichevsky, Alexander Klose, Benjamin Steininger, Dieter Hiller, Oxana Timofeeva, Stephanie LeMenager
Hydrocarbons
Hydrocarbons plunges into the complexities and contradictions of the oil era and thereby into the molecular basis of the technosphere. Interweaving film scenes with a variety of visual and research materials, as well as the “sounds of oil,” the session explores the speculative cultural genre termed “petro noir,” examining the geopolitical-industrial complex that drives petrochemistry and, by consequence, mobility, consumption, waste and adventure.
Conversation, Engagement, Film, Intervention, Storytelling, Teaching, Sound, Carbon, Commodities, Critical materials, Energy, Extraction, Metabolism, Technosphere, Thermodynamics, Transportation, Waste, Scenario
- contributionLino Camprubí, Timothy Johnson
Deserts. The Geopolitics of Geology
Since the beginning of the 20th century, the growing dependency of national food supplies on fertilizer has turned phosphorus into a critical resource within geopolitical conflicts.
Storytelling, Agriculture, Settler Colonialism, History, Commodities
- contributionS. Løchlann Jain
Traumasphere, Thinking through Commodity Violence
Ethnographer S. Løchlann Jain poetically examines how commodities and violence sustain one another in the technosphere.
Reflection, Engagement, Commodities, Technoscience, Violence
- contributionKaterina Teaiwa
Islands. Colonialism and Geopolitics
Understanding Australia’s phosphate mining history on Banaba puts into context its current controversial relationship with Nauru and Christmas Island.
Reflection, Engagement, Settler Colonialism, Migration, Commodities, History
- contributionArno Rosemarin, Oliver Gantner
The Criticality of Phosphorus. Data, Peaks & Politics
The criticality of an element is defined by the relevance of its most important economic applications and the risks, both current and future, to its supply and the sustainability of its extraction and use.
Reflection, Engagement, Economy, Sustainability, Commodities
- projectLino Camprubí, Zachary Caple, Gregory T. Cushman, Heather Davis, Scott Gabriel Knowles, Arno Rosemarin, Frank Uekötter, Katrina Schwartz
Phosphorus: An Apparatus of the Technosphere
Within the technosphere, earth becomes energy, people become populations and space becomes sphere. But how to make visible this network of flows coursing through our bodies?
Communicating, Intervention, Conversation, Reflection, Storytelling, Teaching, Anthropos, Agriculture, Biosphere, Capitalism, Critical materials, Degradation, Complexity, Commodities, Embodiment, Energy, Landscape, Mining, Waste, Violence, Technosphere
