The installation The Current presented field studies by artists, scholars, and activists who were involved in the AC project Mississippi. An Anthropocene River.

As part of The Shape of a Practice public program, the installation The Current presented field studies by artists, scholars, and activists who were involved in the Anthropocene Curriculum past project Mississippi. An Anthropocene River, functioning as a platform for showing the evolution and development of these ongoing endeavors. The field studies seek site-specific approaches to planetary crises along the Mississippi River Basin; a river system that exemplifies current transformations of intertwining histories of earth and settlement, of the bio- and technosphere.

The current exacerbation of social, ecological and political lines of conflict in the United States reveals conflicts that have been concentrating around the Mississippi River for some time. As tensions rise around racialized violence, ecological destruction, and the COVID-19 pandemic, the historical path dependencies and social-political structures that caused them become ever more apparent.

Presented both physically at HKW, Berlin, and within a temporal online environment, in October, 2020, The Current featured interdisciplinary research, methodological experiments and works of art that explore the ecological, political, social and technospheric interconnections of the Mississippi River. In the face of deepening and emerging social divisions, the installation gathered projects that explore new perspectives and spheres of engagement based on solidarity and collaboration for a polyphonic practice of working, living, and surviving in the Anthropocene.

Complete list of The Current contributors:

Mississippi River Basin Atlas
Derek Hoeferlin

Inheritance 2.0
Amber Ginsburg, Claire Pentecost, Kayla Anderson, Sara Black, Sarah
Lewison

Hopium Economy
Beate Geissler, Oliver Sann

Take-Home Kit for Navigating the Ecosystem (Participatory Ecology Seed #8)
Michael Swierz

Listening to the Mississippi
Monica Moses Haller

Blind Spots
Beate Geissler, Oliver Sann, Jeremy Bolen

Two Rivers
Brian Holmes

On the Recuperative Mismanagement of a Cosmopolitan Fish
Sarah Lewison, Andrew Yang

Born Secret
Jeremy Bolen, Brian Holmes, Brian Kirkbride

Sounding the Mississippi
Margarida Mendes

An Aesthetics of Displacement
John Kim, Tia-Simone Gardner, Andrea Carlson, Jenny Schmid

Fourteen Slices of Time and Timeslips
localStyle (Marlena Novak & Jay Alan Yim), Joslyn Willauer

Case Studies
Isabelle Carbonell

Case Studies
Jennifer Colten

Field Station 5-Migration: Perspectives on Displacement in the Anthropocene
Abbéy Odunlami

The Un-Vessel
Anna van Voorhis, Tia-Simone Gardner

Seeds of Knowledge with Saundi McClain-Kloeckener
Lynn Peemoeller

Cancer Alley: From Istrouma to the Gulf of Mexico
Monique Verdin

From Emergency to Emergence: Shaping the future with mutual aid and solidarity
John Kim

Over the Levee, Under the Plow: an experiential curriculum
Sarah Kanouse, Ryan Griffis, Corinne Teed, Heather Parrish

River Pilgrimage
Joe Underhill