Speaker:
Pony Express
Date:
2019.10.27 (Sunday)
Time:
2:00 - 4:00
Venue:
Chronus Art Center, Building 18, No.50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai
Language:
English (with Chinese translation)
What should we be calling our present geological age? Working with communities of artists, thinkers, and ecological visionaries, Pony Express invite you to join the Epoch Wars, a proposed intervention into the heated debate currently unfolding around what to name Earth's next era.
Epoch Wars responds to the discourse around the naming of the so-called “Anthropocene” epoch. The word ‘Anthropocene’, the human-recent era, is understood to mean the age of Earth’s history defined by humankind as a geological force. In 2020, the word ‘Anthropocene’ will be submitted by a small coalition for approval at the 36th International Geological Congress on its way towards formal adoption into the fossil record. ‘Anthropocene’ has gained popularity across the arts, academia, and journalism as a way to articulate the anxieties and horrors of our present day – but at what cost?
With Epoch Wars, Pony Express are subverting the process of geological nomenclature to highlight alternative voices and visions for the naming our era. Who is and isn't invited to the table when making a decision on behalf of the next 10,000 generations? How does the name of our era impact the way we negotiate our place in the world? To enter the Epoch Wars is to ask: what is the name of a future worth dying in?
credit to the artists
< Additional reading >
- Written in Stone by James Westcott (https://aeon.co/essays/is-rushing-to-declare-the-anthropocene-also-human-error)
- Have We Entered A New Phase of Planetary History by Nicole Davidson (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/30/anthropocene-epoch-have-we-entered-a-new-phase-of-planetary-history#img-4)
- Against the Official Anthropocene by CJ Cuomo. (https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/against-the-official-2)
- Artists affirming the name "Anthropocene" through their work: Edward Burtynsky (https://theanthropocene.org/)
- Artists using their own alter-epoch name as an extension of their branding: Tomas Saraceno (https://aerocene.org/)
- Glenn Albrecht on Exiting the Anthropocene and Entering the Symbiocene (https://www.humansandnature.org/exiting-the-anthropocene-and-entering-the-symbiocene)
- Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucen(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrYA7sMQaBQ)
- The GSSP or Golden Spike: these are markers used to declare the boundary of a geological epoch by the chronostratigraphic community (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Boundary_Stratotype_Section_and_Point)
- The Anthropocene Working Group; the committee of 34 members advancing the name as a scientific truth (http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/working-groups/anthropocene/)
- Why must the Anthropocene be a Manthropocene by Kate Raworth (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/20/anthropocene-working-group-science-gender-bias)
Epoch Wars by Pony Express Preview: https://vimeo.com/212228558
More From Pony Express on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/helloponyexpress
About the Speaker
Pony Express is an experimental, Live Art duo led by Ian Sinclair and Loren Kronemyer. Through their pandrogynous collaborative process, Pony Express work across platforms of media art, performance, video and transdisciplinary research, creating immersive alternate realities that reflect themes of adaptation, global weirding and the slow apocalypse. They present their work in a diverse array of traditional and non-traditional venues, cooperating with communities, organisations and subcultures at the forefront of environmental futures. The duo focus on queer ecologies and nonhuman politics to build worlds that trouble the ethical landscape of the present day.
Pony Express are seasonal lecturers at the Iceland University of the Arts, Listaháskóli Íslands and have exhibited or toured nationally and internationally including Fórum do Futuro Porto; Santarcangelo Festival; DARK MOFO; Underbelly Festival; Fringe World; Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts; Climate Century and Adhocracy – Vital Statistix; LiveWorks Festival of Experimental Art; Next Wave Festival; NIDA Art Colony - Vilnius Academy of Arts; Westspace Gallery; OktoLab Artback NT; Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies; Constance ARI; CP Projects Space; New York School of Visual Arts and the Australian Centre for Photography.
www.helloponyexpress.com
