Anthropocene. Dialogs Between Science and Art
October 10 to 13, 2024
Since the turn of the century, a controversial discussion has developed among scientists and the general public around the term Anthropocene. Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen and biologist Eugene F. Stoermer introduced the term 18 years ago to discussions about environmental science to label the serious effects of human-influenced (anthropogenic) climate change on a planetary level. The choice of name was intended to signal that the Holocene epoch – the ongoing warm interval with relatively stable environmental conditions, which allowed human civilizations to develop in the first place – is over. As a new geo-chronological epoch, the Anthropocene redefines humans' relationship to the planet from an ecological perspective, whose consequences are historical, social, and ethical in nature. The idea suggests that humans have become a geological force.
However, it is contested if we can actually define a new eon in this way or not. Geological eras are defined by drastic changes in geological deposits, for example the earth of the Cretaceous period (and the beginning of the Paleogene, once described as Tertiary) 66 million years ago, which is registered by the deposit of an asteroid impact that triggered drastic environmental changes. The fact that, as a group of researchers suggests, radioactive deposits from atom bomb explosions from the mid-20th century mark the start of the Anthropocene, has since been rejected by the members of an international geo-scientific committee.
However, the discussion of the term Anthropocene has not remained the domain of scientists alone, because it opens up an important social force. The idea of the Anthropocene has thus been discussed by both scientists and artists. Our program – the result of a collaboration between the Film Museum and the Commission for Geosciences of the Austrian Academy of Sciences – produces a discourse between scientists and art films as an original "form of thinking." How do artists describe and address the effects of anthropogenic climate change?
In the center of our selection of films are geological formations altered by humans, for example rivers (Peter Hutton's Study of a River and Larry Jordan's Winterlight), lakes (James Benning's 13 Lakes), and Canadian oil and sand deposits (Peter Mettler's Petropolis and Ursula Biemann's Deep Weather). How human interactions alter natural landscapes and thereby aesthetically re-arrange them is shown in films such as Bruce Conner's monumental atomic test film Crossroads, James Benning's California Trilogy, and Peter Bo Rappmund's Land Art study of a pipeline Topophilia.
The chosen works do not only have in common that they record landscapes that would not exist were it not for human intervention. The question is far more: What visions of a world irrevocably altered by humans can be evoked with the resources of the art film? In the spirit of a dialogue between art and science, the screenings will be discursively expanded by lectures and talks by and with scientists from a variety of disciplines, as well as artists and film scholars. (Christian Köberl, Michael Loebenstein / Translation: Ted Fendt)
A joint event series by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Austrian Film Museum
Since the turn of the century, a controversial discussion has developed among scientists and the general public around the term Anthropocene. Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen and biologist Eugene F. Stoermer introduced the term 18 years ago to discussions about environmental science to label the serious effects of human-influenced (anthropogenic) climate change on a planetary level. The choice of name was intended to signal that the Holocene epoch – the ongoing warm interval with relatively stable environmental conditions, which allowed human civilizations to develop in the first place – is over. As a new geo-chronological epoch, the Anthropocene redefines humans' relationship to the planet from an ecological perspective, whose consequences are historical, social, and ethical in nature. The idea suggests that humans have become a geological force.
However, it is contested if we can actually define a new eon in this way or not. Geological eras are defined by drastic changes in geological deposits, for example the earth of the Cretaceous period (and the beginning of the Paleogene, once described as Tertiary) 66 million years ago, which is registered by the deposit of an asteroid impact that triggered drastic environmental changes. The fact that, as a group of researchers suggests, radioactive deposits from atom bomb explosions from the mid-20th century mark the start of the Anthropocene, has since been rejected by the members of an international geo-scientific committee.
However, the discussion of the term Anthropocene has not remained the domain of scientists alone, because it opens up an important social force. The idea of the Anthropocene has thus been discussed by both scientists and artists. Our program – the result of a collaboration between the Film Museum and the Commission for Geosciences of the Austrian Academy of Sciences – produces a discourse between scientists and art films as an original "form of thinking." How do artists describe and address the effects of anthropogenic climate change?
In the center of our selection of films are geological formations altered by humans, for example rivers (Peter Hutton's Study of a River and Larry Jordan's Winterlight), lakes (James Benning's 13 Lakes), and Canadian oil and sand deposits (Peter Mettler's Petropolis and Ursula Biemann's Deep Weather). How human interactions alter natural landscapes and thereby aesthetically re-arrange them is shown in films such as Bruce Conner's monumental atomic test film Crossroads, James Benning's California Trilogy, and Peter Bo Rappmund's Land Art study of a pipeline Topophilia.
The chosen works do not only have in common that they record landscapes that would not exist were it not for human intervention. The question is far more: What visions of a world irrevocably altered by humans can be evoked with the resources of the art film? In the spirit of a dialogue between art and science, the screenings will be discursively expanded by lectures and talks by and with scientists from a variety of disciplines, as well as artists and film scholars. (Christian Köberl, Michael Loebenstein / Translation: Ted Fendt)
A joint event series by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Austrian Film Museum
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