Becoming 'we' in the wake of the Anthropocene
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Ten minute talk at Invisible Dust's Under Her Eye Climate Symposium focused on creative activism by artists and academics considering care as part of intellectual work.
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Becoming 'we' in the wake of the Anthropocene
- 1. Becoming ‘we’ in the wake of The Anthropocene Erinma Ochu Caroline Ward @squirrel_nation
- 2. JMW Turner, The Slave Ship
- 3. – Patricia Hill Collins “The myriad ways that people place the power of their ideas in service to social justice.” Intellectual Activism
- 4. – bell hooks “The ability to manipulate one’s gaze in the face of structures of domination that would contain it, opens up the possibility of agency.”
- 6. – Audre Lorde “Was I really fighting the spread of radiation, racism, woman-slaughter, chemical invasion of our food, pollution of our environment, the abuse and psychic destruction of our young, merely to avoid dealing with my first and greatest responsibility ‘to be happy?’ Let us seek joy rather than real food and clean air and a saner future on a liveable earth! As if happiness alone can protect us from the results of profit-madness.”
- 7. Maggie Stiefvater: Vitruvian cat
- 10. ”To find a world maybe you have to have lost one maybe you have to be lost.” - Ursula Le Guin
Editor's Notes
- Caroline: When we were first invited to talk on this panel, we wondered what could we bring. The hostile environment of austerity means it’s difficult for disabled people and black people in Britain and around the world to go beyond our daily struggles. Erinma: ‘Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare’ Sara Ahmed So, with a seat at the table, we’d like to refocus or queer, how we are differently situated in climate change and the crucial role of art in enabling us to perceive and respond to that.
- Caroline This painting by Turner, The Slave Ship, captures a moment in the history of the a-bo-li-shon of the slave trade. When the ship’s captain learns that his insurance company will only reimburse him for dead slaves, he orders 133 dying and sick slaves to be thrown overboard. This painting was recently and reworked digitally by black american artist, Sondra Perry who reclaims the harsh reality of what different bodies are forced to experience in hostile environments by removing the bodies, engulfing the audience instead in a deep purple sea.
- Erinma So as disabled artist and black neuroscientist, who make work and think together, we have one foot inside and one foot outside of academia, we offer a kind of double consciousness and must begin with Intellectual Activism. Intellectual activism, coined by black US academic, Patricia Hill Collins is The myriad ways that people place the power of their ideas in service to social justice
- [Erinma continued…] and we know ‘the ability to manipulate one’s gaze in the face of structures of domination that would contain it, opens up the possibility of agency.
- Caroline: So how do we conceptualise this resistance? How do we make tangible the invisible dust, the dark matter of climate change whilst recognising that we are differently situated? This is the first statue of a black woman in Denmark, “I am Queen Mary”. She is sculpted from the bodies of Danish artist, Jeanette Ehler and Virgin Islands artist La Vaughn Belle to remember Denmark’s colonial impact in the Caribbean and those women, including Mary Thomas, who fought against it. Referendum on the sale of Danish Westi Indies to the United States of America was held in Denmark on 14 December 1916.[1] The non-binding referendum saw 283,670 vote in favor of the sale and 158,157 against. The residents of the islands were not allowed to vote on the matter They remind us that Caribbean societies are among the least responsible for causing climate change but are among the most exposed to its negative effect.
- Erinma Audre Lorde, activist, lesbian, poet speaks the truth in The Cancer Journals, a collection of essays where she recorded her experience with cancer Was I really fighting the spread of radiation, racism, woman-slaughter, chemical invasion of our food, pollution of our environment, the abuse and psychic destruction of our young, merely to avoid dealing with my first and greatest responsibility ‘to be happy?’ Lorde writes ‘Let us seek joy’ rather than real food and clean air and a saner future on a liveable earth! As if happiness alone can protect us from the results of profit-madness.
- Caroline If the world is a commons, then we’re causing a tragedy. How do we begin to consider Death & The Anthropocene? Not just our own deaths, but the massive loss of biodiversity we are causing, when we are so centred on humanity? How do we begin to consider more-than-human perspectives. Our work focuses attention on nurturing the lines between nature and culture which have broken down.
- Caroline We created Purring Chamber, in which people listened to the disembodied cat purrs from a Swedish cat purr experiment.
- [caroline] Performers then chatted with people about their relationships with cats they had loved, lived with and lost. People spent several hours chatting in great detail about these relationships.
- [Caroline] We wondered perhaps if, to find a world maybe you have to have lost one, maybe you have to be lost. Erinma As Christina Sharpe says, there is lot of ‘wake’ work, that needs to be done, sites of artistic production, resistance, consciousness, to create the possibility for living in the wake of black lives being swept up in the climate of white supremacy. Creativity, care and allegiance are our best defences.
- Caroline Our latest biopolitical experiment is a thinking tool to extend more-than-human perspectives through breathing patterns. We made a new species, a data critter - she responds to city data and adapts her breathing in relation to that data. We are not sure where it will take us… but we are breathing together. Erinma The data critter is an ally, a product of collective creativity, she has become we. PLAY CRITTER
- Erinma: These are some books we have been inspired by. Here are some key readings from a residency at INIVA / STUART HALL LIBRARY
- Erinma: These are some books we have been inspired by. Here are some key readings from a residency at INIVA / STUART HALL LIBRARY