As representatives of a Berlin-based BIPoC climate justice collective Paula and I developed a workshop for the Extinction Rebellion camp. The input considered a still operating five-hundred year old mine site in Bolivia, Potosí, that is also a Wak’a Earth being and entity. As a ‘bridge of silver’ that connects Latin America and Europe, we… Continue reading ‘Colonial Patterns of Erasure’, XR Camp Berlin.
Category: Theory
Mapping Race, Climate and Intesectional Justice, The Floating Berlin
Workshop input at the Floating University Berlin. In an informal setting participants were invited to ‘bring to the table’ their thoughts, ideas and experiences to unpack and discuss concepts such as ‘environmental racism’, ‘Racial Capitalocene’, ‘Climate Debt’ and ‘Climate Apartheid’.
Worlding for Many Worlds
Illustration: Joseph Walsh 2019 Reflections on the Rites of Spring: Rights of Nature Working Groop, Massia 12–18 May, 2019. Political Ontology Before I left Massia, at the tail end of our inaugural Rights of Nature Working ‘Groop’, Daan, a scholar of comparative religion, observed that the current stakes of Climate Change have all the trappings… Continue reading Worlding for Many Worlds
Critical Habitations: Ecopolitics for teh Lulz
[Photo: ‘Anonymous’] My text, ‘Ecopolitics for teh Lulz: Transmedia Civil Disobedience in the Age of Fossil-Fuelled Information Capitalism’, has been published in Critical Habitations as a contribution to its third debate, ‘Pluralising Practices.’ According to the editors Alexander Dunst, Elahe Haschemi Yekani, Gudrun Rath and Anja Schwarz: Cultural studies today fork distinct trajectories, thus making… Continue reading Critical Habitations: Ecopolitics for teh Lulz
un Magazine: Mass Aktion Media
[‘Video still: Ende Gelände wrap-up video.’ 350.org, 2016.] ‘I got two versions.’ My text ‘Mass Action Media:Ende Gelände, Break Free 2016’ has been published in un Magazine 10.2, an issue that concerns ‘the throng.’ Also, a slightly different version is available as a print yourself A3 ’zine here. Instructions on how to cut and fold… Continue reading un Magazine: Mass Aktion Media
Anthropocene, oder…?
[‘Welsh Dragon takes on digger, End Coal Now!, Ffos-y-Fran, Wales, UK, 3 May 2016.’ Photo: Amy Scaife / Reclaim the Power] The Anthropocene is the proposed name for the current geological period in which human activities have significantly altered the functioning of planetary systems. It is a period in which human cultures no longer labour… Continue reading Anthropocene, oder…?
A future much worse than the present
[‘Klaus Emmerich in Brown Coal Blues’ (2016) Photo: Vice] Brown Coal Blues (2016) is a documentary produced by VICE INTL that concerns mining in the Rhineland region, in which reporter Filipa Von Stackelberg interviews employees of energy corporation RWE who operate the Garzweiler lignite mine, alongside locals and mining opponents. Early in the program Von… Continue reading A future much worse than the present
Counterpower
[‘Dilar Dirik, Sixth New World Summit, 29–31 January 2016, Utrecht.’ Photo: New World Summit] The late American historian and political theorist, Murray Bookchin (1921–2006), remains a prominent theorist of the peoples’ assembly. Bookchin pioneered the field of ‘social ecology,’ concerned with the inter-relations between social justice and ecological wellbeing. He considered collective face-to-face meetings as… Continue reading Counterpower
Prefiguration in the Present
[‘Freedom of Assembly, Protest at Zuccotti Park.’ Photo: Jason Lester] Paula Serafini begins her recent study of climate art-activists movements in the UK with the following statement: In the study of activism and social movements, prefiguration is seen as the creation of a future through present social relations (Serafini 2015, p. 195). She goes onto… Continue reading Prefiguration in the Present
Statecraft
[‘Abbot Point coal port, Queensland.’Photo: Tom Jefferson/Greenpeace] In a statement made in response to the announcement of The Paris Agreement, December 2015, Brian Ricketts, the head of the European coal lobbying association ‘Euracoal’, stated his industry would ‘hated and vilified in the same way that slave-traders were once hated and vilified.’ According to a report… Continue reading Statecraft