08 December 2019
London
Reading group: 1pm
For the latest reading group + discussion at Almanac (and the first hosted from its new space at Acre Lane in Brixton), the central focus will be inspired by the current exhibition, 'Snowshoe Hare and Allies' by London-based artist Emily Jones, and use Timothy Morton's concept of 'Dark Ecology' as the starting point for discussion.
Morton describes dark ecology as 'ecological awareness', and gives the example of a person starting their car:
Every time I start my car or steam engine I don’t mean to harm Earth, let alone cause the Sixth Mass Extinction Event in the four-and-a-half billion-year history of life on this planet. (Disturbingly, the most severe extinction so far in Earth history, the End Permian Extinction, was very likely caused by global warming.) Furthermore, I’m not harming Earth! My key turning is statistically meaningless. In an individual sense this turn isn’t weird at all. But go up a level and something very strange happens. When I scale up these actions to include billions of key turnings and billions of coal shovelings, harm to Earth is precisely what is happening. I am responsible as a member of this species for the Anthropocene. Of course I am formally responsible to the extent that I understand global warming. That’s all you actually need to be responsible for something.
Thus 'ecological awareness', is the active knowledge that many of one's physical actions have an environmental impact, and though on a singular scale these actions are more or less harmless, when multiplied, the results are devastating. We live knowing that our demise is already upon us, and that we are the designers of our own extinction.
For this session, we will be discussing What is Dark Ecology? by Timothy Morton.
For further reading and reference, please see Morton's original book of essays Dark Ecology for a Future of Co-Existence and this Guardian Long Read, by Alex Blasdel (and audio version) which gives a good overview of Morton's main ideas.
Reading recommended (although not essential)
The reading group is lead by Joanna Harrison.
The event is supported by Arts Council England Grants for the Arts.
Emily Jones, Snowshoe Hare and Allies, 2019. (Detail)