The Watershed in Your Head

August 28th, 2019

Moving from political economy to political ecology: an invitation to get involved.

Mapping Anthropocene River Basins

Translating the abstraction—and banalities—of the Anthropocene into readable cartography has resulted in many past attempts that often ended up reproducing those same qualities. But, as Brian Holmes asserts in this essay, we seem to have found ourselves in a moment where collaboration, engagement, and new forms of knowledge exchange are breaking that deadlock. Tracing his own involvement with artistic practices that both engage with and attempt to represent a “political ecology,” Holmes explains how the evolving, collaborative cartographic practice that brought the Mississippi. An Anthropocene River map into being simultaneously reveals and interrogates the power structures of Anthropocence society.