Seminar: Consensus Building
How can standards and contentions for truth be consented upon? With myriad different perspectives, tools and methods for describing the planet in transformation, this seminar, which took place during The Shape of a Practice, asked: how is it that consensus and verification can be established? Who gets to decide? Also, how are these decisions shared and made through different technologies and how does this affect the outcome? Seminar participants explored how to reconcile between origins and processes of forming planetary knowledge and universal ideas, and the continuous unfolding of local practices and specific experiences.
- Case StudySpółdzielnia Krzak / Krzak Collective
Krzak Inventory
The collective Spółdzielnia Krzak present the “tools-objects-friends” accumulated through their collective practice of community building in a Warsaw neighborhood.
Consensus Building, Ethics, Care, Knowledge transformation, Spatial, Habits, Species, Community
- Case StudyMadhushree Kamak, Jahnavi Phalkey
Living Exhibitions
The Science Gallery in Bengaluru thinks of “living exhibitions” as exercises in creating public engagement around responsible stewardship of the planet.
Consensus Building, Engagement, Ecology, Ocean, Water, Education, Climate change, Biodiversity
- Case StudyNikiwe Solomon, Adrian Van Wyk
(Re)Storying the Kuils River
Examining the impact of river management practices on local communities, this case study looks into the history and possible future of the Kuils River near Cape Town, South Africa.
Consensus Building, Landscape, Water, Settler Colonialism, Pollution, Local knowledge, Technosphere
- Case StudyStéphane Grumbach, Olivier Hamant
La Fabrique
How can universities have more impact when addressing global environmental crises? La Fabrique tries to rethink institutions, values, and utopias from the ground up.
Consensus Building, Climate change, Adaptation, Knowledge production, Knowledge transformation, Human-environment relations, Technosphere
- Case StudyEllie Irons, Maya Kóvskaya
Re-Patterning with Kudzu
Through encounters with kudzu (Pueraria montana), the notorious “vine that ate the South,” Ellie Irons tries to re-pattern the settler-colonial environmental imaginary.
Consensus Building, Field Work, Settler Colonialism, Ecology, Fieldstation, Mobility, Embodied research
- Case StudyJohannes Bruder, Orit Halpern, Karolina Sobecka
The Mont Pelerin Rewrite
This performative project focuses on rewriting and reinterpreting Article 6 of the Paris Climate Agreement to further discussion on alternative logics of acting collectively.
Consensus Building, Policy, Environmental Justice, History, Future, Inequality
- contributionAdania Shibli, Simon Turner
Interview: Consensus Building
Seminar moderators Adania Shibli and Simon Turner reflect on the meaning of consensus building in the Anthropocene and ask, what enables consensus to occur?
Consensus Building, Agency, Consensus, Knowledge production, Engagement
- contributionMyung Ae Choi, Madhushree Kamak, Jahnavi Phalkey
From a Living Exhibition to the DMZ
Space for studying Anthropocene-related changes can occur intentionally, through institutions and other projects, but it can just as easily occur by accident.
Field Work, Case Study, Experiment, Ecology
- contributionRavi Agarwal, Michelle Lai, Paulina Lopez, Huiying Ng
Social Witnessing
Two case studies focus on two very different landscapes, and attempt to account for the changing relationships that make them over time.
Case Study, Mapping, Film, Field Study, Ecology, Capitalism, Agriculture
- contributionJohannes Bruder, Stéphane Grumbach, Orit Halpern, Olivier Hamant, Sandi Hilal, Karolina Sobecka, Ela Spalding
Between Spaces, between Lines
Some of the most interesting work on the Anthropocene takes place in between places, in between disciplines, and even in between the lines.
Experiment, Case Study, Migration, Climate change, System, Ecology, Economy
- contributionDenise Frazier, Gilly Karjevsky, Jason Ludwig, Tim Schütz, Rebecca Snedeker, Spółdzielnia Krzak / Krzak Collective, Rosario Talevi
Knowing Together
How can we build communities that share knowledge about climate issues, both locally and at the planetary-scale?
Case Study, Conversation, Agriculture, Climate change, Environmental Justice, Race
- contributionRaphaël Grisey, Gilly Karjevsky, Patricia Reed, Fernando Silva e Silva, Nikiwe Solomon, Ela Spalding, Spółdzielnia Krzak / Krzak Collective, Rosario Talevi, Bouba Touré, Simon Turner, Monique Verdin
Coordinating Practice
The Anthropocene has a coordination problem. This discussion highlights the many challenges of coordinating projects at different scales, both spatially and temporally.
Conversation, Reflection, Field Work, Local knowledge
- contributionChristina Gruber, Lynn Peemoeller, Nikiwe Solomon, Adrian Van Wyk
Approaching a Waterway
Artists discuss sturgeons pushed to the edge of extinction and the future of a chemically polluted river near Cape Town.
Conversation, Case Study, Species, Water, Extinction, System, Ecology
- Aimé Césaire, A Tempest, translated by Richard Miller, New York, 1969.
Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, Monthly Review Press, 2001.
Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe, 1978, Vintage Publishing, 2018.
Friedrich von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Friedrich von Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review, September 1945.
Achille Mbembe, “There is Only One World,” Critique of Black Reason, Duke University Press, 2017.
