There is a last enterprise that might be undertaken. It would be to seek experience at its source, or rather, above that decisive turn where, taking a bias in the direction of our utility, it becomes properly human experience. (Bergson, 1991: 184).
ReadNo one recognises these powers as their own
(Why Theory?) We have to dispense with the idea that theorising occurs
after the creative event; that a poem or a track or a text is made and
then, as part of its process of dissemination, there follows the
theorising of the piece. Such a theorising is normally attributed to
those known variously as critics, reviewers and essayists.
What we've learnt from the Net and how we can extrapolate it to all spaces of struggle.
(Some thoughts geared towards action, compiled for the Radical Community Manager courses that we organise at X.net)
Translating the abstraction—and banalities—of the Anthropocene into readable cartography has resulted in many past attempts that often ended up reproducing those same qualities. But, as Brian Holmes asserts in this essay, we seem to have found ourselves in a moment where collaboration, engagement, and new forms of knowledge exchange are breaking that deadlock. Tracing his own involvement with artistic practices that both engage with and attempt to represent a “political ecology,” Holmes explains how the evolving, collaborative cartographic practice that brought the "Mississippi. An Anthropocene River map" into being simultaneously reveals and interrogates the power structures of Anthropocence society.
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