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Special Series
The Anthropocene Issue
The Anthropocene Issue is a special series of short videos shot during the "Anthropocene Curriculum," campus held at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, from November 14 to 22, 2014. The program brought together more than a 100 people from various disciplines around a series of workshops, presentations, and talks. It included, among many others, specialists in climatology, geography, law, history of science and technology, architecture, and art to discuss the concept of the Anthropocene.

This special series presents the week-long gathering with a set of close-ups, interviews, group discussions, and informal conversations with some of its participants, launched over two months in our website (October through December 2015). Filmed both during the Curriculum itself and on the margins of its sessions, at times using related imagery, this subjective account extrapolates visually and conceptually on many of the topics discussed, with some themes cascading from video to video. Extras addressing this complex theme are made available below.

On the term Anthropocene:

The Anthropocene is a term coined by ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer and atmospheric chemist,Paul Crutzen to define our current geological epoch, in which human activity has so profoundly impacted geology and atmospheric cycles that a new geological unit must be sought within the Geological Time Scale. Human impact may be measured by colonisation, agriculture, urbanisation, pollution, and global warming, among other anthropogenic forces.

Regardless of its scientific approval in 2016 by the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy of the Geological Society of London, the Anthropocene has already managed to gather the hard sciences, the social sciences, and the arts around the table, in order to collaborate and exchange disciplinary knowledge and working methodologies in the face of a rapidly changing planet. As importantly, different political and economic expectations and interests are gathering under its conceptual umbrella, from climate change advocates to planetary management technophiles, and just like with environmentalism in the past, the Anthropocene's future is still unwinding.

Sound Recordists: Jerome Huber, Pedro Serrano

Thank you to all Anthropocene Campus 2014 participants, who generously made this series possible.

With the support of Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin

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and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

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1972 / 1986
1972 is the year the environmentalist Limits to Growth report was published, using data generated by the first system dynamics computer model. In 1986 a satellite image was used as proof of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. A conversation on the history of the 1972 Limits to Growth computer model, management systems, Chernobyl, and the geopolitical power of images in the era of mass surveillance, held after the two day seminar "Modeling Wicked Problems."

With:

Sara Nelson (PhD candidate at the Department of Geography, Environment and Society, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Geography and Fine Arts)

and Johan Gärdebo (PhD candidate at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology; affiliated to the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory - EHL).



1964
1964 is the year the first geostationary satellite was launched into Earth's orbit. A conversation about the life, history, and politics of geostationary satellites and the sharing of surveillance data.

With:

Anna Åberg (post-Doc from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Dept. of History of Science, Technology and Environment).

and Johan Gärdebo (PhD candidate at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology; affiliated to the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory - EHL).



1972
1972 is the year the environmentalist Limits to Growth report was published, using data generated by the first system dynamics computer model. Participants in the two day seminar "Modeling Wicked Problems" debate computer model simulations in an exhausted and overpopulated world. Using the "Global Systems Simulator, a sophisticated integrated assessment model," factors such as population, agriculture, and pollution were tracked in an attempt to reach system sustainability. What will the world look like in a hundred years?

The seminar was led by:

Miriam Diamond (professor at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto, and founder of the Diamond Environmental Research Group)

Paul N. Edwards (historian of information technology and climate science and professor at the School of Information and the Department of History at the University of Michigan)

Pablo Jensen (physicist and head of Institut Rhône-Alpin des Systèmes Complexes (IXXI) at ENS-Lyon)

and Chris Strashok (computer modeling expert; Nanaimo, Vancouver Island).



2014
2014, in a seminar room at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, a group debates the politics of computer model simulations during the two-day seminar "Modeling Wicked Problems."

The seminar was led by:

Miriam Diamond (professor at the Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto, and founder of the Diamond Environmental Research Group)

Paul N. Edwards (historian of information technology and climate science and professor at the School of Information and the Department of History at the University of Michigan)

Pablo Jensen (physicist and head of Institut Rhône-Alpin des Systèmes Complexes (IXXI) at ENS-Lyon)

and Chris Strashok (computer modeling expert; Nanaimo, Vancouver Island).



To be continued November 2015.






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