For our upcoming session, we will read texts by Kathryn Yusoff and materials by Jamie Allen on aspects of the geological
commons or “a form of collective communion that imagines a world in which precarity and abundance is shared across the possibility
and forms of life; and that this sharing enacts the possibilities of a common life between organisms” (Yusoff 2017). In recent
years, a turn toward posthuman and inhuman ecologies seeks to reposition planetary exchanges at the heart of post-anthropocentric
discourse. How do we establish responsible stances and actions that engage with and translate planetary-scale ventures in
extractionism, and instantiate alternatives to these?
We look forward to
discussing questions of ecological, economical and technological constraints on planetary communion, the challenges of geological
complexity and practices for artists, media makers, and researchers, as steps and experiments toward or away from different
kinds of planetary intimacy.
On Planetary Ecologies, the reading group and
discussion series, started in 2020: “We are interested in voices in research, art, media and design that concern themselves
with planetarity and its futures. That is, the ways in which people(s), life, and other beings on earth negotiate its alterity.
As such, we are committed to seeking out, understanding, spending time with and reckoning with the actions called for by voices
of scholarship and organisation that would seek to go beyond the ‘management of diversity’ (Andrea N. Baldwin) and ‘index[es]
of white supremacist domination’ (Romy Opperman).” For more information, please visit https://criticalmedialab.ch/planetary-ecologies-2022/.
Materials brought into discussion at the November 14th session:
Yusoff,
K. (2017). ‘Politics of the Anthropocene. Formation of the Commons as a Geologic Process’, Antipode, 50(1), pp. 255–276. Available
at: https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12334.
Allen, J. (2021) ‘On the Modes of Technical Extraction in Chile’, in N. Rossiter and B. Neilson (eds) Logistical
Worlds. Infrastructure, Software, Labor. London: Open Humanities Press, pp. 51–58. Available
