Creative Measures of the Anthropocene

Art, Mobilities, and Participatory Geographies

Kaya Barry, Jondi Keane

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9789811396472
• eBook ISBN:
  9789811396489
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

This book proposes that creative and participatory modes of measuring, knowing, and moving in the world are needed for coming to grips with the Anthropocene epoch. It interrogates how creative, affective and experiential encounters that traverse the local and the global, as well as the mundane and the everyday, can offer new perspectives on the challenges that lay ahead. This book considers the role of the arts in exploring geographical concerns and increasing human mobility. In doing so, it offers ways to counteract the unstable, shifting and disorienting impacts and debates surrounding human activity and the Anthropocene. The authors bring together perspectives from mobilities, creative arts, cultural geography, philosophy and humanities in an innovative exploration of how creative forms of measurement can assist in reconfiguring individual and collective action.

© The Author(s) 2019

K. Barry, J. KeaneCreative Measures of the Anthropocenehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9648-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. Measure and Method

Kaya Barry¹ and Jondi Keane²

(1)

Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, Australia

(2)

School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia

Kaya Barry

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

The Anthropocene requires drastic shifts in the way that human activity is measured in relation to planetary systems. Heralded as the current geological epoch , the Anthropocene now pervades public debate, governance , and scholarly discourses . What counts as fact , data, or information is increasingly being questioned, and the technologies we use to make measurements are not immune to reductions or being underwritten by particular values . They may reflect economic, political, ecological, philosophical , and more-than-human perspectives, but all of these values require modes (a system and instrument) of measure to perceive, register , and track the units of difference deemed meaningful . Measure, in all forms, is at the intersection of opinion and experience, fact, and perspective. We are concerned with how a range of measures , arising from the current geologic period, feeds into the daily lives of individuals and can be used to propel collective forms of action.

Declaration: To be clear, we ascribe to anthropogenic climate change . The Earth and all of its systems are rapidly changing due to human activity. We believe that we are in an age where accountabilities and responsibilities have been relinquished under the guise of human progress. We advocate that collective enterprises must shift away from the anthropocentric, capitalist, colonialist endeavours in order to have meaningful and lasting change. However, we also promote the notion that individuals have a crucial role to play in emissions, discussions, politics, and practices in order to collectively navigate the turbulence ahead. We advocate that affective, creative, affirmative, and collective forms of knowledge are needed to counteract the suffocation of expression in all forms of sociopolitical ventures. We feel that the findings, warnings, remedies, and critiques provided by specialist areas, whether science, art, or humanities, will best serve the human (and more-than-human) collectives when they become part of everyday life. Creative measures are based on the notion that every act requiring a standardised measure (attention , perception, selection decision, and judgement) must be recalibrated and absorbed or incorporated into daily practices.

We are bombarded through the media of the increasingly dire situations that lay ahead. Ecological stress increases as climate records continue to tumble. Headlines such as the “past four years have been the warmest on record” (World Meteorological Organisation, 2018); “The North Pole is an insane 36 degrees warmer than normal as winter descends” (Mooney & Samenow, 2017); or “Your carbon footprint destroys 30 square meters of Arctic sea ice each year” (Carrington, 2016). The plethora of facts and figures gives rise to unknown measures that are difficult to grasp. What does 36 degrees warmer than usual feel like? How large an area is 30 square metres? It is easy to feel overwhelmed and oversaturated by the shear impact of the information without any way to understand the measures being used. How might one conceive of their individual actions in relation to geologic transitions, and the collective forces that our species harbours? What tools and techniques can we use to measure these shifts, changes , and movements that help the individual relate to these planetary transitions?

We propose that current measures of the Anthropocene must be renewed and reimagined to become creative and generative, which will prioritise participatory forms of sense-making. Such approaches are key to developing situated and inclusive forms of knowledge that go beyond individual human action, and help situate oneself in relation to the broader social, cultural, political, and ecological systems of which we are part. An important aspect to the value of creative types of measures is the understanding of the research potential of art and the way it allows for a large range of modes by which to acquire knowledge, which has historically been de-permitted, eschewed, or devalued. Experiential and sensory modes of engagement and thinking (e.g. through making, doing, and moving) extend knowledge acquisition and add to the expertise of other forms of knowing. This is why creative measures are needed.

New Measures Are Required

To begin with, let us introduce an artwork that plays on the impracticalities of standardised units of measure. Imagine that you have a fairly rudimentary tool for measuring: a ruler. This is an object that most of us are familiar with, having used small 30 centimetre wooden rulers throughout our schooling that served us well for measuring short distances in a notebook. However, if the aim is to measure oneself in relation to the scales that the Anthropocene brings into focus, then a small wooden ruler isn’t quite big enough. Let us go bigger and scale it up. Try a larger ruler, one still possible to hold, but large enough that it can measure a significant distance, further than the span of outstretched arms. In a series of creative workshops, we created an oversized ruler that drew attention to the way abstractions of measure are materialised as interactions with the environment. The ruler was over twenty metres long and comprised of one-metre segments that were hinged to pivot and fold, with incremented metric units marked like a rod used in land surveying (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2).

Fig. 1.1

Oversized foldable ruler artwork

Fig. 1.2

Close-up of foldable ruler

Unlike the small wooden school rulers, this oversized ruler had an unwieldy character. Due to the large size, it was too big for one person to manoeuvre alone (Figs. 1.3 and 1.4). Picking it up required many hands to hold and press against various segments so that they would not start to shift or sway as participants walked with it. Because of the awkward shape and length, it was difficult to hold and balance, let alone use it to measure anything precisely. During creative workshops, a small group of people attempted to use the oversized foldable ruler to measure distances, area, curvatures, inclines, and features of the surrounding environment (Figs. 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5).

Fig. 1.3

Measuring the height of tree branches

Fig. 1.4

Measuring the distance between trees in an urban park

Fig. 1.5

Reaching up to measure the height and curvature of a branch

If the aim was to accurately produce the conditions to make measurements, then it is evident that the giant foldable ruler is an impractical device. The standardised metric increments were not suited the incline of a grassy field, the area of the inner-city park, or the height and curvature of the branches on a tree. But as a creative activity, involving participatory art practices , the oversized foldable ruler became a measuring tool for attuning—to the scale of our (human) bodies and the bodies that surrounded us (other humans and, importantly, the nonhumans). The fact that to use the ruler required a collaborative effort is indicative of the need to shift towards collective modes of practice, if we are to better understand our position and relation to the Earth in daily life. This artistic exercise is an example of a creative measure that allows conflicting sensations, perceptions, and intensities of our interactions to coexist in relation to each other and within the shared environments. It magnifies the ways in which measurement traverses corporeal, imaginative, and virtual movements that bring into relation an individual to the collective, the local to the global, and the standardised versus generative measure.

Class, Get Your Rulers Out: Introducing the Anthropocene

This book sets out the connections between the practices of measure and t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Measure and Method
• 2. Creative Modalities
• 3. Multi-scalar Shifts and Drifts
• 4. Affective Measures
• 5. From the Corporeal to the Imaginative
• 6. On Being Level-Headed
• 7. From the Imaginative to the Anthropocene
• 8. A Marker of Current Measures
• Back Matter