Lecture

18 April 2015, 11.00

How to Sort out the Many Ambiguities of the Concept of Anthropocene

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht and the Centre for the Humanities, Utrecht University, Utrecht organize a lecture by philosopher Bruno Latour, followed by a response by anthropologist Anna Tsing. The lecture takes place on Saturday, 18 April 2015 from 11.00–13.00 hrs at the Stadsschouwburg in Utrecht.

Part of the Anthropocene Observatory project at BAK, this gathering centers around the so-called Anthropocene thesis that identifies our present time as a geological epoch defined by human disturbance of Earth’s ecosystems. Bruno Latour discusses the use—and many ambiguities—of the hybrid, novel, and yet unstable concept of the Anthropocene as one informed by the disciplines of geology, philosophy, theology, and social science. Latour has articulated the Anthropocene as a “wake-up call,” radically reframing both the time and space we find ourselves living in. The final refusal of the separation between Nature and Human, which “has paralyzed science and politics since the dawn of modernism,” the Anthropocene is the most probable alternative we have to usher ourselves out of the notion of modernization at a point when “the dreams that could be nurtured at the time of the Holocene cannot last.” Anna Tsing responds to Latour’s lecture from the perspective of her own research on the notion of “living in the Anthropocene,” weaving together insights from the fields of anthropology, biology, and philosophy to inquire into the possible ways of understanding the “kinds of lives that are made and the futures that are possible in the ruined, re-wilded, and unintended landscapes” of this geological era.

Bruno Latour is a philosopher, anthropologist, and sociologist of science who currently teaches at Sciences Po in Paris. His many books include An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (2013), Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (2005); Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (2004); and We Have Never Been Modern (1991).

Anna Tsing is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Santa Cruz and Niels Bohr Professor in the Department of Culture and Society at Aarhus University, Aarhus. She is author of, among other books, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (2005) as well as the co-edited volumes Words in Motion: Toward a Global Lexicon (2009) (with Carol Gluck), Communities and Conservation: Histories and Politics of Community-Based Natural Resource Management (2005) (with J. Peter Brosius and Charles Zerner), and Nature in the Global South: Environmental Projects in South and Southeast Asia (2003) (with Paul Greenough).

The lecture is part of BAK’s long-term research series titled Future Vocabularies (2014–2016) and its chapter on “ Human-Inhuman-Posthuman,” developed in collaboration with prof. Rosi Braidotti in her capacity as BAK Research Fellow and co-organized with the Centre for the Humanities. Also part of this chapter, the exhibition and discursive environment Anthropocene Observatory by Territorial Agency (John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog), artist Armin Linke, and curator Anselm Franke is on view at BAK till 26 April 2015.

The activities of BAK have been made possible by the City Council of Utrecht and the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science of the Netherlands. The project Future Vocabularies is realized with generous support from the DOEN Foundation, Amsterdam.

Made possible by

Suggestions from the archive

Sint Maarten Parade

22 October–10 November 2023

BAK at the Sint Maarten Parade 2023

For Sint Maarten Parade 2023, Tools for Action—a non-profit organization that develops artistic interventions for political actions—collaborates with Utrecht-based members of Filipino, Caribbean, and other communities to collectively dream a parade compartment.

Panel Discussion

30 September 2023, 16.30-18.30

To the Other Side of the Concrete Wall

A book launch and panel discussion reflecting on the Jina Uprising, one year after its beginning.

Saturday, 30 September, 2023, 16:30–18:30 hrs at BAK, basis actuele kunst, Utrecht Organized by Jina Collective, a Netherlands-based feminist, leftist, anti-capitalist, anti-sexist, and pro-LQBTQIA+ action group that emerged from the Jina Uprising. This event launches a book of translated essays, co-published with BAK, which include some of the first English translations of texts by journalists […]

Public Program

09 September–29 October 2023

To Watch the War: The Moving Image Amidst the Invasion of Ukraine (2014–2023)/Public Program

To Watch the War: The Moving Image Amidst the Invasion of Ukraine (2014–2023) involves a hybrid off- and online sequence of conversations and screenings around discursive and artistic interventions that reimagine the social implications of watching the war through ways that disrupt, subvert, resist the media’s incessant spectacularization of war.