Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

Hyperobjects

The hyperobject was proposed by Timothy Morton in his 2013 book Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World. The concept is intrinsically linked to what Morton refers to as the "ecological crisis", and has emerged in an endeavour to classify enormous non-human entities that are beyond human comprehension and thus demand reconceptualisation. Hyperobjects cannot be localised to any one place as they rebel against normal interactions with time and space. Their enormity is not mere physical size but rather a reflection of their great impact, and thus events such as climate change accrue the status of hyperobject. 

See this article by Alex Blasdel about Timothy Morton's proposals (2017) 'A Reckoning for our Species': the Philosopher Prophet of the Anthropocene

And Heide Estes' chapter in Anglo Saxon Literary Landscapes (2017) Objects and Hyperobjects

Pismis 24
This is truly a hyperobject: something embodying a size and power that numbs the human mind. Though these foreign stars are unfathomably distant from our little planet and the lives we have built upon it, they are not irrelevant. The same forces that are at work in other galaxies are at work here. The sheer complexity and unknowability of the universe demands a reassessment of our thinking as it exposes the blinkered nature of personal, international and even global points of view. A universal perspective is required to begin to contemplate sights like these. 

Wolf Volcano
As I think of objects that are too large for us to grasp, I think of volcanoes. They are big, certainly, but it is the scope of their impact that truly makes me feel small. They have shaped the air we breath, flavoured the soil which feeds us, and moulded the very foundations of our earth. In this image, however, I am not drawn to the hyberobject but the bird that floats above it. I want to see as it sees, feel as it feels. I don't know why but I know that if I borrow its eyes I will be able to see through the smoke and the clouds to discover a truth that would otherwise be hidden. 

The Butterflies 
This artwork is from Shaun Tan's Tales From the Inner City and it depicts a fictional hyperobject: the movement of a swarm of innumerable butterflies promising transformation for the humans below. I have heard that the collective for butterflies is a 'flutter'. Here the flutter has become a flurry, a whirl of energy, colour and dancing, hypnotic light. It transcends the gathered crowd, hovering just above their reach. If a universal perspective is required to appreciate the majesty of the skies, this demands a smaller scale. Just as the volcano was best seen by the bird, I suspect this phenomenon is also best viewed by non-human eyes. I imagine the viewpoint of a single butterfly within the flutter, one insect amongst millions. What does it see in the raised human faces? What can it glimpse of their souls? This perspective is multiplied a hundredfold; it is voiced by thousands of beating wings. The insectostance's scope is humbling, but its true power lies in the insight of the individual, in the details plucked out by tiny eyes. 
 

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  1. An attempt to grapple with 'geotrauma' through art... 

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    In his lecture on 'Geotrauma,' Timothy Morton compares the grief he experienced in lockdown to Barbara Hepworth, and her large-scaled sculptural artworks. He observes that 'grief is life-sized' and 'life-scaled' and therefore philosophy should come from the heart and not the mind, as this grief is larger than ideas. Although, Morton explains that his grief surmounted due to a series of personal tragedies, I found myself experiencing a similar 'geotrauma' last year. However, it was not induced by life-sized events but rather  by encounters with 'hyperobjects' that existed in a larger-than-life dimension. In another essay, Morton explains:  

    I do not access hyperobjects across a distance, through some transparent medium. Hyperobjects are here, right here in my social and experiential space. Like faces pressed against a window, they leer at me menacingly: their very nearness is what menaces. From the center of the galaxy, a supermassive black hole impinges on my awareness, as if it were sitting in the car next to me at the traffic lights. Every day, global warming burns the skin on the back of my neck, making me itch with physical discomfort and inner anxiety. Evolution unfolds in my genome as my cells divide and mutate, as my body clones itself, as one of my sperm cells mixes it up with an egg. As I reach for the iPhone charger plugged into the dashboard, I reach into evolution, into the extended phenotype that doesn’t stop at the edge of my skin but continues into all the spaces my humanness has colonized. (29) 

    As we found ourselves spatially confined in 2020, I found myself inundated with images at an unprecedented level. Having the always-avaliable  company of the technological device, I became a victim to the inevitable compulsion to infinitely 'scroll'. I ended up spending hours simply scrolling through news headlines, statistics, and hyperstimulated materials and imagery in an attempt to understand information about the 'globe' and the exact nature of the pandemic. As a result to the copious amount of free time I found myself having, I ended up searching far more in depth than I had ever before on these sites, going beyond what the 'top headlines' presented. I began to come across the often hidden or fleeting moments of ecological destruction that is accounted for a mere news cycle or two and then was immediately forgotten. 

    The absolutley mammoth and unconceiveble nature of the following three events which I encountered in my searches left me experiencing a grief that could not be captured in words.

    The first event was of the Russian Oil spill in the Arctic, which was then declared as the world's 'biggest oil spill' of over 20,000 tonnes of diesel. As Russian diesel is pigmented 'red' -- suddenly the remote rivers and streams of the Artic looked as though they were literally bleeding. 


    The second article was on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Although this is not a phenonmon specific to the year 2020, but it was only last year that I had actually properly researched into it. The word 'patch' is utterly misleading. This was not a patch, this was an area of over 1.6 million square kilometers. 


    The third article documented how in Feburary, 2020, "Antarctica has logged its hottest temperature on record, with an Argentinian research station thermometer reading 18.3C, beating the previous record by 0.8C." The images of fragmented iceburgs, the white interpersed between a deep blue, were distractingly beautiful and yet devastatingly haunting.  



    Last year I also took a photography course (which now seems a bit counterintuitive to undertake during lockdown and travel restrictions). As the Art and Design campus was closed for students, and its studios therefore inaccessible, everything we had to do was in our own homes. Thus the brief of the task for the course required us to 'model-make' and then photograph that model we had created. In essence we were making the very subject that we would then photograph and present, not a sculpture but as an image. 

    Photographic Series Titled: "NOW" 

    Looking back a year later, it seems futile to have titled the work 'NOW' as the 'NOW' is already a moment of the past. But perhaps that is the very condition of the Anthropocene, contant movement alongside a confrontation with a  present which is already no longer the present.

    My series of three photographs were modelled from the images above but were re-imagined on a micro-scale. In the work, I employ a birds-eye-view or otherwise known as ‘gods-eye’ angle of these beautiful scenes of destruction, positioning the anthropocentric gaze in a position of authority. This, of course, in reality is impossible as these bodies of water are so vast that even in suspended in the air within an aircraft does not allow for a comprehensive understanding of the extent of the damage made to these environments. My models were roughly 30x40cm and attempt to-capture a glimpse of an area measures in millions of square kilometres. This extreme simplification and reduction of scale places emphasis on the vividness of colour within the works. The hardness of the lighting and the sharpness of the focus, almost in an ironic way, illuminate the usually invisible ecosystems completely. By manifesting the appearance of a painting as opposed to a three-dimensional sculpture, I wished to use the initial beauty of these sites to draw the viewers gaze in. However, it is upon closer inspection, the actual reality of the sheer tragedy of what is being depicted should settle in, destabilising the viewer’s presuppositions. The constructed models, like the actual natural landscapes, are transient. The photographs had to be shot very quickly before each of the constructions collapsed. As a consequence, these sites exist only in photography, they no longer are part of the physical world. This condition of materiality ultimately hopes to reflect the way in which these magnificent natural wonders will no longer be a part of our immediate present if we continue to be reckless with our impact on the environment.


    This was my small attempt to grapple with the 'geotrauma' experienced upon encountering these images last year. At that time, I didn't know that was what I was doing, Morton's lecture really provided me clarity and new insights on the process. 



    Cited Text:

    Timothy Morton. Hyperobjects. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.
     

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