‘Everyday Anthropocene’ project
Everyday Anthropocene takes its cues from existentialism and Situationism, performing ‘everyday’ objects as uncanny reminders of Anthropocene themes. It draws on Albert Camus’ formation of Sisyphean absurdity and the poignant idea that we need to learn to live with, and indeed welcome, the frustration and ambivalence that is an inescapable aspect of being human.
Such thinking resonates through multiple philosophical schools, where cognizance of life’s futility is brought into mindful practice, such as Stoicism, Buddhism, Japanese Samurai Bushido. In a similar way, I interpret the unsettling asymmetries rendered by the Anthropocene as a poignant reminder of the ineffaceable existential limits of the human – both individual and ‘planetary’ – being.
Bringing existential awareness to ‘moments’ encapsulated in everyday objects draws on memento mori: medieval Latin Christian theory and practice of reflection on mortality. Such objects are not intended as an answer to the Anthropocene any more than Samurai practices of meditating on death helps to avoid its eventuality. Rather, Everyday Anthropocene objects serve as prompts, reminding us to connect both conceptually and affectively to the difficult-to-discern planetary conditions unfolding around us; conditions that can be easy to forget when our attention is captured by more immediate distractions.
The work is published here:
Westgate, J. (2022). Speculative experiments for an everyday Anthropocene. GeoHumanities.