The book offers critical reflections on some of the most challenging environmental problems of our time, including land take, groundwater pollution, desertification, and biodiversity loss
It’s difficult not to contemplate the possibility of an arid future when you realize how much climate change is affecting the Alps. Snow season is shortening; tourism relies on artificial snow (which further depletes water reserves); glaciers have shrunk to half their earlier size, and by the end of the century all the Alpine glaciers may have melted away
A series of artworks in a disused biology faculty in Riga make the Anthropocene disturbingly palpable
The history of energy is neither linear nor Darwinian. It is full of forgotten fantastic innovations…
What do outer space capsules, submarines, and office buildings have in common? Each is conceived as a closed system: a self-sustaining physical environment demarcated from its surroundings by a boundary that does not allow for the transfer of matter or energy
I talked with artist and designer Xandra van der Eijk about space mining without the need to leave the Earth and about controlling or being controlled by microorganisms
Gracie’s experimental breeding programme aims to gradually recreate, in an enclosed habitat, the atmospheric conditions found on Titan and make sure that the common fly would slowly acclimate to it
National parks, reserves and other forms of sanctuarization of nature are often adopted as a measure to protect territories from the detrimental impact of human activity. This exhibition brought together artists whose work invites us to re-examine our relationship with the natural world
French artistic duo Art Orienté Objet attempted to save one of the earliest forms of life on earth from environmental disaster
“Arriba!” is a cocoa plant shipped from the Ecuador Amazonian rainforest, enclosed inside a temperature-controlled container and displayed on top of an Antarctic glacier
An exhibition at the Parco Arte Vivente, Turin’s experimental centre for Living Arts, aims to offer new perspectives and lines of inquiry about the Anthropocene
Contemporary positions in art and architecture seeking answers to current environmental problems that transcend mainstream notions of sustainability
Erik Sjödin‘s art and research practice has led him to investigate human relationships to fire, aquatic plants that might one day feed the first inhabitants of planet Mars, bees and humans connections and community-based ways of producing food
Using defective photographic material and a bit of photoshop, Barker shot the plastic bits of trash to make them look like plankton in water
The exhibition gathers contemporary artworks as well as zoological and botanical objects to explore the changes in the tropical regions that Wallace once traveled and to shed light on the ecological issues faced by the fauna and flora of Amazon, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore today
Disappearing Legacies: The World as a Forest, an exhibition currently open at the Zoological Museum in Hamburg, “confronts the destruction of tropical habitats in the context of the Anthropocene and mass extinction”
Man-made virgin forest, plants that remove toxic substances from polluted waters, community urban orchards, mobile library, etc. Today’s short selection will focus on artistic attempts (many of them successful) to restore environmental damage
Alone or with the help of local communities, these artists have cleaned up polluted areas, planted wheat field, provided pollinators with colourful and appetizing flowery landscapes, built hanging and floating gardens, initiated edible and medicinal urban farms, developed schemes for sharing excess food and bred more resilient chicken breeds
Over the past few years, Robertina Šebjanič has been collaborating with scientists hackers, thinkers and other artists to explore themes such as interspecies communication, underwater sound pollution, the possible coexistence of animals and machines, chemical processes, the origin of life, etc.
The essays are organized around two key figures: the Ghosts of long-gone creatures and wiped-out plants and the Monsters that both result from and bring about ecological disruption
The filtering capacity of flowers is a neglected area of research. However, the 3D structures of flowers make them valuable allies when it comes to regulating air quality by removing pollutants from the atmosphere. Dust Blooms juxtaposes the beauty and function of urban flora using a synthesis of artistic and scientific methods to create awareness about the every-day importance of ecosystem services in cities
Beat to the Balance introduces participants to a ritualistic sauna practice which consists of whisking bodies with branch bundle of different tree species. The goal is to open energy flow and make more perceptible the interdependence between tree communities and humans
Informed by several years of research in the Australian outback desert, It Was Like Experiencing a Fold in Time, She Said bridges the gap between, on the one hand, the landscapes, mythologies and life of outback and aboriginal communities and on the other hand, the brutal origins of our technological ‘progress’
The aim of the gamma-radiation project, is to develop an emergency-infrastructure that can be deployed within minutes, by activating your (covered) webcam from a webpage
Momentum 9, The Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art, opened a few days ago in Moss, Norway. Its focus is Alienation, a pertinent theme for a time characterized by deep social and economic inequalities, new forms of rabid colonialism, atmospheric turmoil, transhumanism, closing borders and relentless questioning of democracy
Drawing on fieldwork, philosophy, literature, history, and a range of other perspectives, each of the chapters in this book tells a unique extinction story that explores what extinction is, what it means, why it matters—and to whom
Socle Du Monde, the biennale that opened a few weeks ago in Herning (Denmark), celebrates artists who have “accepted the challenge of turning the world upside down”
Last year, the Flatbread Society embarked on a year-long sailing expedition that will take them from Oslo to Istanbul. On board is a rotating crew of artists, sailors, anthropologists, activists, writers, ecologists, etc. As for the cargo, it consists mostly of grain seeds that had been lost or forgotten
This book explores recent and historic artworks in the context of present-day environmental concerns, considering the future consequences of the age of the anthropocene, and humanity’s harsh imprint on our planet
A speculative near-future scenario, where mining companies are using genetically modified micro organisms to harvest rare earth elements from e-waste dumps around the world
Kirsten Stolle examines the global influence of chemical companies on our food supply and explores the connection between corporate interests and public health. Using post-WWII America as her stage, Stolle’s collages, drawings and site-responsive installations investigate corporate propaganda, environmental politics and biotechnology
Justin Bennett’s sound walk takes us inside the now abandoned and very decrepit Soviet research station in the company of the last worker still living there
Prepare for a future in which the only way of making a living is to ‘lend your lung’ to filter heavily polluted air. Clean Air International Inc. is looking for suppliers for its first Organic Clean Air (TM) retail store
The book brings together contemporary art and ideas investigating the nuclear Anthropocene, nuclear sites and materiality, along with important questions of radiological inheritance, nuclear modernity and the philosophical concept of radiation as a hyperobject
Socially engaged artists need not be aligned (and may often be opposed) to the public sector and to institutionalized systems. In many countries, structures of democratic governance and public responsibility are shifting, eroding, and being remade in profound ways—driven by radical economic, political, and global forces. According to what terms and through what means can art engage with these changes?
Greiner’s works involve buying 40 litres of maggots and bringing them to the exhibition space until they turn into flies, composing music based on the luminous skin of a squid, convincing the Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin to consider a fly as a living artwork, photographing portraits of algae, carefully orchestrating explosions around Berlin
Albedo suits are designed to increase the solar energy reflectivity (albedo value) in the forests; this way cooling the climate and mitigating the climate change. The work plays with the notion of geoengineering and forest management as a geoengineering project
“The Condition” might look like standard (media) art installation but don’t let its playful appearance fool you. The deeper you dig, the more you realize how many thought-provoking ideas and issues the work raises: new forms of ‘natural selection’ where it’s the prettiest -not the fittest- that survives, novel ecology in which salmons and tulips are grown à la carte, and intersection between the design of biological organisms and capitalistic values
Björn Wallsten explores subsurface infrastructure systems and in particular the no longer functioning cables and pipes that are continuously disconnected and left behind. These hibernating quantities form a metal deposit below the cityscape and are evidence of society’s persistently wasteful handling of mineral resources. He calls them urks…
A series of panels at the Science Gallery in Dublin explores impending global catastrophes: cosmic bullets, climate change and machines that might one day decide to make us redundant