Institute of Contemporary Art Miami ICA Miami

The Anthropocene poses an unprecedented challenge: the collapse of both our metaphysical grounds and the grounds of the earth itself. How do we think this present, in all its nihilism, catastrophe, mania, and potential? The apocalypse? A back loop? An already ‘unsafe operating space’? The end? The beginning?

This seminar will be an intensive exploration of the Anthropocene as a paradoxical threshold time of potential and catastrophe in which the grounds, parameters, and imaginaries are being upended. From the sciences to art, critical theory to popular culture, we will explore diverse understandings and responses that have emerged in recent years, highlighting those oriented toward the new and unprecedented nature of our epoch. We will consider how we as urban dwellers might respond to or live within the Anthropocene. What are the possibilities for being and acting today? What new spaces of experimentation might it open? What kind of futures can we imagine?

Throughout the seminar, we will explore urban ‘experimentation’ as a potent mode of living within and against the flotsam and jetsam of the Anthropocene. For this we will touch on a critical evaluation of the concept of ‘use’ as found in the works of Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Giorgio Agamben as a means of understanding how urban experiments appropriate and transform their worlds. From the diverse practices and technologies of resilient urbanism being developed in response to the new risks posed by climate change and its effects, to experiments in redefining what human bodies can do, we will discuss these different responses theoretically and philosophically and what they offer for thinking and living in this new epoch.

Homo sapiens have never lived at 400 parts per million (ppm) atmospheric concentration of CO2. We’re already in a new world. What now?