What’s So Micro About Plastics?
A seminar held during Unearthing the Present
The rapid dissemination of plastics through the air and aquatic bodies has created microplastic-rich sediment layers over the last several decades. Which refined analytical techniques are necessary to measure this process? What does the Baltic Sea drill core reveal about microplastics and the difficulty of defining their sources? Taking into account their abundance, minuscule scale, and sociopolitical entanglements, the session will explore the imprints of microplastics, touching on ways of living with their ubiquity. The following is a recording of the seminar “What’s So Micro About Plastics?,” which was held during Unearthing the Present in May 2022.
This session saw researchers from art and science discussing how microplastic persists and entangles with other materials and entities. The presentations recorded here explain the intricacies of how research into the presence of microplastic in the wider environment is carried out, and how microplastic can be understood as anthropogenic material interacting with microscopic organisms and trees.
Kat Austen’s artistic practice focuses on environmental issues. She melds disciplines and media, creating sculptural and new media installations, performances, and participatory work.
Juliana A. Ivar do Sul is a researcher working at complementary aspects of (micro)plastic pollution in the environment. For many years she has explored environmental fates of plastics in the sea, and now focuses on their potential as markers of the Anthropocene.
Jérôme Kaiser is a sedimentologist and paleoclimatologist who specializes in the development of molecular organic proxies and their application in sediment cores from lake, fjord, and marine systems for paleoenvironmental reconstructions.
Joana MacLean is a microbiologist interested in future ecologies and areas of research that allow the involvement of other speculative methodologies. As a PhD student at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, she is currently working on microbial communities in anthropogenic landscapes and plastic-polluted grounds.
Please cite as: Austen, K, J A Ivar do Sul, J Kaiser and J MacLean (2022) What’s So Micro About Plastics? 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/fkxw-j774
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.