Waking Up in the Anthropocene

Waking Up in the Anthropocene

I return once again to Glen Albrecht’s Earth Emotions where he defines ecoagnosy as the “lack of knowledge about, hence ignorance of, past ecological states.” We have been trained to see the world as set. This world we have been

born into feels like it was always this

way. But in fact, this world and this city have changed dramatically within just the last century.

It may seem that in the twin cities, everything is rather set in place, rigid even. But, under all the steel and

concrete are still dynamic systems at play. The Mississippi River is the core

of that dynamism. The river has been dramatically altered in order to harness its power. Now that this River no longer needs to be viewed as a commodity, we can free it from its rigid human bonds. But that doesn’t mean we need to abandon it all together. Instead, we can now embrace what the river really has to give us, and we can reciprocaly give back to it. Human beings

can live in Reciprocity with this place,

creating a relationship in which we, the river, and all its living beneficiaries live together in mutuality.

We have been born into a world that is highly exploited and commodified. And if we don’t begin to work in reciprocity with nature then soon nature will no longer work with us. Anne Whinston Spirn says that “if we are ever going to address issues like climate change, people are going to have to be able to make up their own minds.” Through this project, I want to help people see what

their place in the living world is. To make what might be invisible to them now, visible.