Davis,Heather and Turpin,Etienne (2015. Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies. Open Humanities Press: London
I was largely unaware of the Anthropocene era in which we have lived since humankind industrialized the world (late 1700’s) and polluted it accordingly (then and now). From acid rain to plastics and smog, the carbon footprint has been felt. Scientist’s may measure these pollutants which may not be readily seen except for aftermath (like war) of environmental damage(s).The most nefarious is that which can be seen, i.e., plastics. These remain for eons of time as a testament of humankind’s progress –regress. It seems that we are all guilty in one way or another of contributing to this blight. This collection of essays has bolstered my awareness of this proposed contemporary era of time, not all believe.
A Summary of final quotes and points
By David E. Harmon
* The Anthropocene indifferently encircles both human affairs and the materiality of the planet, thus constituting a tool of ‘figuration” which makes visible inherited epistemological separations by radically destabilizing them.(p.63)
* The exhibition has been shaped throughout modernity by both the scientific positivity of the musicological institution and by the negativity of modernist aesthetic experience )p.64)
* It has been noted that Paul Crutzen, the Dutch chemist who coined the term Anthropocene, also proposed to link its origins to the invention ,in 1778, of the steam engine-that instrument with which humans began to dig into the earth in search of underground suns and ancestral forests ,seeking to transform their energy via calorific machines(p.64)
* The modern museums birth can be traced to the Reign of terror in Paris in 1793, with the parallel opening of the museum central des arts de la Republic in the louver and the museum nation ale d’histoire naturalle in the jar din des Pantes…As such, the museum performs a withdrawal that regulates and purifies the relation of the Cartesian subject with the contents of a world consequently
