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Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

Athabasca Oil Sand (Matthew Gurney)

Reading the close reading in ‘Marginal Worlds’ made me think about anthropogenic environments that do not fit in the binary of nature and culture, places “caught in a sort of a halfway point between the two”. Worlds like this also exist beyond the marginal: they exist out of the limelight, where human existence, and our imaginations, do not dwell. It is as if they exist in a dark, other world, beyond anthropocentric focuses of the natureculture. The image is a flock of Canada Geese flying over a surface mine in the Athabasca, Canada oil sands. This environment is clearly unnatural and yet uninhabitable for humans too, subverting natureculture – there is no culture in this land, it is turned up and destroyed to preserve a culture that is spatially far away. The mining companies have not thought of what this means for the geese. It is hard to imagine what these birds perceive of their world, it can only to them be an uneasy, hostile expanse. These sorts of images make me think what will exist in these empty spaces, and what the significance of empty expanses like this are in the future.

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2. Athabasca Oil Sand (Matthew Gurney) Reading the close reading in ‘Marginal Worlds’ made me think about anthropogenic environments that do not fit in the binary of nature and culture, places “caught in a sort of a halfway point between the two”. Worlds like this also exist beyond the marginal: they exist out of the limelight, where human existence, and our imaginations, do not dwell. It is as if they exist in a dark, other world, beyond anthropocentric focuses of the natureculture. The image is a flock of Canada Geese flying over a surface mine in the Athabasca, Canada oil sands. This environment is clearly unnatural and yet uninhabitable for humans too, subverting natureculture – there is no culture in this land, it is turned up and destroyed to preserve a culture that is spatially far away. The mining companies have not thought of what this means for the geese. It is hard to imagine what these birds perceive of their world, it can only to them be an uneasy, hostile expanse. These sorts of images make me think what will exist in these empty spaces, and what the significance of empty expanses like this are in the future.