Contamination as Collaboration: Creating a Collaborative Archive in "Frames of the Anthropocene"

peer-reviewed article

Aleksandra Kamińska

aleksandra.kaminska@uj.edu.pl
Jagiellonian Univeristy (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8147-4133

Abstract

Frames of the Anthropocene is a collaborative digital exhibition launched by the Virtual Museum of the Anthropocene in 2021. Envisioned as a work-in-progress, the exhibition simultaneously archives and performs the memory of the ongoing anthropogenic changes in different environments. It is argued that many of the photographs, while seemingly focusing on various kinds of human-produced waste, in fact represent multifarious constellations and collaborations, as the waste is gradually integrated into divergent green spaces. The article foregrounds the vibrancy (Bennett, 2010) and processual character of these groupings, viewing them as depictions of temporal and spatial negotiations involving multiple actants that orient the viewers’ gaze towards both human and other-than-human modalities and agencies. By bringing into Focus “nonhuman beings and unfamiliar timescales” (Morton, 2017), the author interprets the exhibition as a way of engaging the viewers and potential contributors alike in a reflection on various modes of collaboration discovered through the archive-in- -progress. Finally, the article analyses the ways in which Frames of the Anthropocene explores the dynamics of “contamination as collaboration” (Tsing, 2015) both in its content and its processual, collaborative formula, thus attempting to transgress anthropocentrism in our understanding of the current epoch.


Keywords:

Anthropocene, archive-in-progress, vibrant matter, thing-power, contamination/collaboration

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Published
2025-03-14

Cited by

Kamińska, A. (2025) “Contamination as Collaboration: Creating a Collaborative Archive in ‘Frames of the Anthropocene’”, Pamiętnik Teatralny, 74(1), pp. 71–87. doi: 10.36744/pt.1630.

Authors

Aleksandra Kamińska 
aleksandra.kaminska@uj.edu.pl
Jagiellonian Univeristy Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8147-4133

Aleksandra Kamińska - PhD, assistant professor at the Institute of English Studies at Jagiellonian University, editor and translator. Her research interests include contemporary British drama, drama translation and theories of translation.



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