The transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene is turning geology into a social science. Researchers and artists grapple with stratigraphic materials and the challenges of in planetary knowledge production.

Press material on the AWG, Crawford Lake, as well as the collaboration between the AWG, HKW and MPIWG.

The historical research project SPHERE focuses on one of the most comprehensive and complex governance issues in the contemporary world: humanity’s relation to planetary conditions and constraints.

In this essay, artists and researchers Jeremy Bolen and Jamie Allen ask: Where do planetarities come from, and where are they taking us? 

Changes in global conditions create changes in the practices of global science. Do we have a means of tracing these interrelations?

How does planetarity and its composition shift under conditions of planetary change?

What happens to our visions of the planetary when everyone has to stay at home, in their little boxes, speaking to other people in little boxes?

At what point does the planetary scale outweigh its own usefulness as a tool for apprehension, discernment, and interpretation?

How do the ways in which planetary thinkers do their work affect how the “planetary” emerges as a concept, and the planet itself (re)emerges as an entity?

How can experiences of planetary ethics, politics and aesthetic be shared, explored and learned from, together?

What would it mean to let go of our planet, such that it might come back to us?

“The Impossibility of a Planet”, by artists and researchers Jeremy Bolen and Jamie Allen, is an ongoing research and media project that seeks out dialogues with people who compose planetary images, thought, narratives, and models.

Held in June in Foz Côa, June 2021, with the purpose of discussing the need for an EU-inclusive agenda to address the challenges of a rapidly changing planet

Taking place in 2024, Anthropocene Campus Latin America event will create an experiential space for collective change, learning, and creation.

An interdisciplinary program that took place in November 2022 and brought together scientists, humanities researchers, activists, and community leaders. 

From 2022 to 2024, the Earth and Us project will foster and articulate the South and Latin American communities engaged in the Anthropocene debate.

Age of the Earth covers an array of initiatives which aim to think, feel, and act through the troubles of the Anthropocene, fostering South and Latin American perspectives.

Bernd M. Scherer, Ravi Agarwal, and Ranjit Hoskote discuss the transformation of the HKW into a dynamic forum for transcultural themes and urgencies.

Curator of literature Ranjit Hoskote conceptualised a program of conversations with prominent writers, poets, and essayists for State of Nature: New Natures, 2022.

In the fall of 2022, AC initiatives from around the world came together to envision a transformed future for the long-term collaboration of the network.

Conversations on a multispecies approach to pandemics, the Anthropocene concept, and the visualization of knowledge.

The Cosmic Conversations project brings together researchers from across disciplines to discuss ecological, artistic, political, and philosophical issues related to Anthropocene research.

In this audio episode, we hear from various participants of the Unearthing the Present event and discuss the science and sociopolitical implications of the Anthropocene.

What alliances and common questions can help to work toward a science of partnerships, especially in processes that include more-than-human entities?

How do different forms of societal organization and land use over the centuries affect the environment on local and planetary levels?

In search for the normative elements of technofossil classification, Anna Echterhölter reflects on this history of mineral classification in the European tradition and the thick classification of Pacific totemism.

A contribution collaboratively authored by members of the Anthropocene Curriculum team, that attempts to think dialogically “on curricula.”

Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski reflects upon the notions of impact, rest, and refusal that have become increasingly important in her work.

Research and artistic practice depend on exchange and openness to other perspectives. But how can artists and researchers approach blind spots in practice?

Seminar moderators Adania Shibli and Simon Turner reflect on the meaning of consensus building in the Anthropocene and ask, what enables consensus to occur?

How can one negotiate between extraction, decontextualization, and the outright exploitation that could cause unequal flows of knowledge?

A dynamic virtual landscape served as a venue for The Shape of a Practice.

The week-long The Shape of a Practice event, which took place in October 2020, was a product of a diverse collection of case studies.

The Shape of a Practice constituted an experiment in negotiating the particularities of context, purpose, and method.

What can be learned from attuning to the specifics of vulnerability when artificial realities are interrogated?

On immersive, field-based education and an exploration of the (dis)comforts of an approach Anthropocene River Travelers describe as “being at home-in-the-world.”

Clémence Hallé ruminates on the extractive tendencies of knowledge production, which can only be countered through mutual reciprocity.

On the privilege of the storyteller and making visible the various contradictions inherent within efforts to bridge gaps and communicate “what happened” during the Anthropocene River Journey.

Temporary continent. on how the windows of “opportunity” that speculation focused on Minneapolis’ riverside has brought forth can also be understood as a source of hope in terms of environmental justice.

Jared Richardson and Dr. Justin Hosbey grapple with neoliberalism’s effects on Black communities within New Orleans. Listen to episode 3 now!

Through a series of conversations Temporary continent. track the different guises the Mississippi has taken, interviewing those who live and work with the river.

The Mississippi’s touristically designated “source” remains a fixture on maps of North American territory and collective cultural consciousness, as this text, video, and audio post explores.

How do narratives, relationships and practices change when we talk about anthropocene rivers?

How can the Anthropocene be analyzed in its site-specific manifestations? And how can such knowledge be produced collaboratively? A documentary on the knowledge strategies of the first Anthropocene Field Campus.

The Open Seminar will direct collaborative attention to the many scales and types of systems that interlace and synergize to produce anthropocenics on the ground in particular locales and vernanculars.

The St. Louis Field Campus aimed at creating situated, place-based perspectives of the Anthropocene, while building new modes of collective knowledge-production and action.

Temporary continent. maps the unstable tributaries of contributions and reflections arising from the research procession down the river.

What does it mean to become a responsible guest? This set of field guides and accompanying exercises offer an adaptable tool for the uninvited traveler.

At the Anthropocene Campus Melbourne (ACM18), participants engaged in a range of lectures, field trips, and workshops in Melbourne and the wider area exploring the theme of “the Elemental”.

This report reflects on the ACM18’s guiding theme of “the Elemental” and traces how the concept of the Anthropocene relates to problems of materiality.

Recapitulation of the ACM18 with Andrea Ballestero (Rice University), Nicholas Shapiro (University of Toronto/UCLA), Aadita Chaudhury (York University), and Juan Francisco Salazar (Western Sydney University), hosted by Manuel Tironi (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile).

How have ideas of equity, security and inclusion become central to scholarship of the Anthropocene?

John McNeill reflects upon the role of historians in the work of the Anthropocene Working Group and the implications for historians of the debates surrounding the Anthropocene.

Deep Time Chicago’ pamphlets delve into the problems, paradoxes and potentials of human and non-human life in a rapidly destabilizing ecosystem.

Historian John Tresch looks at the history of modern science from the angle of spiritual athleticism, ascetic practices and epistemic virtues.

Historian of science Etienne Benson describes how the increasingly complex infrastructure of sensing is altering the experience of fieldwork, the persona of the scientist, and the nature of the knowledge that is produced.

The interlacing between knowledge and the technosphere has a very subtle yet decisive dimension: the collectively ingrained practices and routines that are the preconditions for adequately responding to the non-human dynamics of a world in transition. What are the regimes of sense training, ascetic modes of inquiry, and techniques of mental cultivation that let us learn and understand something? What might be needed to reshape and modify these in light of the predicament of the Anthropocene?

The phenomenon of Arctic amplification enhances the effects of climate change in the northern latitudes, making the region a “barometer” for future environmental impacts elsewhere. A case study on the scientific community of Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, Norway.

Is the Anthropocene an issue of agency rather than representation? How do we create devices for thinking through direct engagement with materials that indicate the challenges which require our participation?

The blurring of distinctions between Earth processes and human history requires us to be “transdisciplinary” and sometimes even “undisciplinary” – in order to combine the knowledge base and research capacities of a wide variety of stakeholders.

A reflection on the epistemological experiments and contributions that emerged out of the seminar on Disciplinarities. 

An edited transcript of a debate addressing the dynamical, co-evolutionary nature of the technosphere, its quasi-autonomous status, and the political stakes involved.

In his essay on the Anthropocene, Peter Sloterdijk contemplated whether we should be surprised by the ease with which this relatively recent discourse on the geological impact of humanity—which he provocatively called a “synthetic-semantic virus”—has “escaped” beyond the doors of geophysical scholarship into the realm of cultural production.