original announcement
The Earth has become an artwork, ecology has produced a mirror image of Nature made up of sensor data. With climate change, loss of biodiversity, and the threat of a seventh mass-extinction event shimmering on our screens, we need to re-evaluate our prospects inseparable from the technologies we use to inform ourselves about them. Nature conservation is geoengineering. Donna Haraway's concept ‘Chthulucene’, which, in one possible reading, places the Earth (Chthonic ‘of the Earth’) as the head of a horrifying gargantuan monster (Lovelock's ‘Cthulu’) presents us with the dreadful scale of the terrestrial challenge which confront us. But far from wanting to shock us into submission, Haraway enlivens us to endure the overpowering complexities and scales at stake, by modestly attending and engaging together with our own lived experiences. Rather than ‘game over, too late’ Haraway's Chthulucene strives towards a ‘flourishing for rich multispecies assemblages that include people’.
readings
Temporal promiscuities in the Chthulucene: A reflection on DonnaHaraway’s Staying with the Trouble - Thom van Dooren
Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene - DH