November 8-10, 2014, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Call for Submissions – Deadline: April 11, 2014
We are in the midst of a great reawakening to questions of time—across the spans of geological, ecological, evolutionary, and human history. It is a reawakening precipitated not by a nostalgia for the past but by a sense of urgency about the future. The “Anthropocene,” coined in 2000 by ecologist Eugene Stoermer and popularized by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, is one of the most resonant examples of how the urgency of the future has prompted scientists, artists, humanities scholars, and social scientists to engage creatively with the emerging legacy of our geomorphic and biomorphic powers. The advent of this new scientific object—the Anthropocene—is altering how we conceptualize, imagine, and inhabit time. The Anthropocene encourages us to reenvisage (in Nigel Clark’s phrase) future and past relations between “earthly volatility and bodily vulnerability.” What images and stories can we create that speak with conceptual richness and emotional energy to our rapidly changing visions of future possibilities? For in a world deluged with data, arresting stories and images matter immeasurably, and play a critical role in the making of environmental publics and in shaping environmental policy.
To apply, please submit a 200-word abstract of your proposed object and its importance in opening up questions of time, agency, and/or intergenerational equity in the Anthropocene, along with a visual rendering of the object. Please also include a CV or artist profile. Materials should be submitted to Garrett Dash Nelson (Project Assistant, Center for Culture, History, and Environment), at ggnelson@wisc.edu, by Friday, April 11th. A limited amount of funding is available to cover the travel costs of participants.
Image: Modern cabinet of curiosities by vforvelociraptor.
