What can be learned from attuning to the specifics of vulnerability when artificial realities are interrogated?
Exhaustion/Imagination seminar reflection
The Exhaustion/Imagination seminar took place during the Anthropocene River Campus, New Orleans, in 2019, and considered how to negotiate the limits of the Anthropocene and contend with different modes of exhaustion: of land, water, and the body. In this conversation, seminar conveners Adam Crosson, Monica Haller, and Monique Verdin reflect on how the approaches taken during the seminar were—and were not—able to apprehend and respond to the various sites and situations encountered. They identify some of the more mundane program disruptions as being the very essence of the seminar, and consider what might be learned from attuning to the specifics of vulnerability associated with a particular context when artificial realities—such as the norm of “staying dry”—are interrogated. Finally, in the face—or rather in the spirit—of exhaustion, they ask: what would be the next best step?