The Anthropocene remains peculiarly flat and colorless when it comes to concrete images, which are lacking cultural nuance and historical depth. New imaginaries and imaginations are needed to engage with alternative futures of infrastructure and anthropogenically altered landscapes.

The intriguing concept of the Anthropocene as developed by science remains peculiarly flat and colorless when it comes to concrete images, which are lacking cultural nuance and historical depth. New imaginaries and imaginations are needed to engage with alternative futures of infrastructure and anthropogenically altered landscapes.

The concept of the Anthropocene has resonated in Western cultures since at least the nineteenth century. Today it presents itself in scientific images as planetary boundaries and limits to growth, as an age when human interventions on the planet call for a great transformation. But in a much wider sense, transformation, utopia, collapse and ambition, reflection and bewilderment have long been topics of human relationships with the landscape, large and small. This can be seen in works of art as well as in science: images of landscapes, or indeed the entire Earth, express topics of metamorphosis, of power, economy, security, and appropriation. They also express fantasies about the wild, the other—and about possible alternatives to present-day ways of life.

The idea of the seminar was to explore existing images of the Earth and the Anthropocene, and to extend the scope further to include imaginaries of alternative futures. Participants engaged with ways in which a transformed, warmer, less stable, highly utilized world might see changes in social patterns, ways of life, and culture that go much deeper than what is commonly discussed. Exploratory, imaginary engagement with anthropogenically altered landscapes in a possible future presented sharp new perspectives on the Anthropocene and its implications in areas such as architecture and art.