A conversation on ruderal ecologies, unintended landscape design and the pitfalls of Anthropocene discourse.
In Conversation with Elaine Gan and Betina Stoetzer
Elaine Gan, Bettina Stoetzer, and Anna Tsing led “Feral Technologies: Making and Unmaking Multispecies DUMP!,” a two-day seminar that took place during Anthropocene Campus 2016: The Technosphere Issue. Tsing and Gan work together in Aarhus University’s Research on the Anthropocene (AURA) department in Denmark, exploring the potential of ferality and unintended landscape design. Parallel to her interest, and in preparation for her forthcoming book Ruderal City: Ecologies of migration and urban life in Berlin, Bettina Stoetzer has been researching ruderal ecologies, examining urban life forms that emerge in inhospitable spaces. In the following conversation, Gan and Stoetzer discuss the underlying principles of their seminar, including ferality, ruderality, and how those terms expand our concept of technology.