The Anthropocene: Humanity on the Rocks

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Free, The Space

Academics, artists and activists have increasingly come to describe our current conjuncture as the “age of the Anthropocene” or the “epoch of the human” in which human activities have become a newly determining geological force on Earth’s ecosystems. Debated amongst scientists and in popular accounts, the Anthropocene is figured as evidence of the negative impacts. However, these observations have also been met by a growing commitment - creative, experimental and political - to re-imagine our understanding of environmental uncertainties, and our relation to a newly conceived post-human condition.  This panel explores the relationship between aesthetics and environmental precarity, asking what form of social justice and ecological politics does the Anthropocene thesis demand?

Speakers include Dr Jan Zalasiewicz (Convener of the Anthropocene Working Group) and Dr. Kathryn Yusoff (Queen Mary, University of London). Chaired by Alex Vasudevan (University of Nottingham).