To Escape the Anthropocene (in the Company of Spiders, Monarchs, and Digital Technologies)
Małgorzata Sugiera
malgorzata.sugiera@uj.edu.plJagiellonian University in Kraków (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4953-2422
Abstract
In this article, the author looks closely at two arthropod species which Donna Haraway sees as playing an important role in accelerating the longed-for end of the Anthropocene. One of them is the Californian spider Pimoa cthulu, whose generic name she has slightly changed to better emphasize the chthonic dimension of the coming Chthulucene. The other one is Danaus plexippus, the monarch butterfly or simply monarch, the protagonist of her speculative fabulation “Camille Stories”, published in Staying with Trouble (2016). Two artworks stand at the center of the author’s interest: the video Ride the Wind and Draw a Line (1973) by the Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya, which became a key-element in her retrospective Nebel Leben in Munich’s Haus der Kunst (2022) and the digital project and immersive installation Methuselah by the Cuban artist Reynier Leyva Novo, exhibited in New York’s Museo del Barrio (2023). Their comparative analysis opens a new perspective to showcase an emerging zone of contact which Eduardo Kohn calls more-than-human anthropology and Bernard Stiegler – neganthropology. Based on this comparison, the article also demonstrates the performative affordances of digital technologies, which in the two projects become therapeutic tools of care within more-than-human relationalities.
Supporting Agencies
Keywords:
Anthropocene, animal Other, performative arts, Neganthropocene, Bernard Stiegler, Fujiko Nakaya, Reynier Leyva Novo, care-full thinkingReferences
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Authors
Małgorzata Sugieramalgorzata.sugiera@uj.edu.pl
Jagiellonian University in Kraków Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4953-2422
Małgorzata Sugiera - Prof. Dr., Honorary Professor at the Jagiellonian University and Head of the Department of Performatics at the Faculty of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian University. Scholarship holder of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, DAAD, Andrew Mellon Foundation at the American Academy in Rome and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh (IASH), Rhône-Alpes Region and IRC ‘Interweaving Performance Cultures’ at the Freie Universität in Berlin. She has taught at German, Swiss, French, Chinese and Brazilian universities. Her research interests include performative theories and practices, decolonial studies and ecological speculative fabulations
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