Anthropocene River Campus

Over the course of a week in early November, the Anthropocene River Campus convened researchers, artists, writers, artists, and activists to study the Mississippi River and its adjoining communities, as part of the broader, multi-year Anthropocene Curriculum project. 

Aron Chang, Tanya James, and WLI co-creator Greta Gladney led a seminar on Un/bounded Engineering and Evolutionary Stability, alongside Dorothy Cheruiyot (evolutionary biologist), Richard Hindle (landscape architect), Derek Hoeferlin (architect and urban designer), Cyndhia Ramatchandirane (coastal scientist), Jorg Sieweke (landscape architect), and Nikiwe Solomon (anthropologist). 

Together, they introduced a multi-disciplinary group of participants from around the world to drawing and biological sampling methodologies, New Orleans’ drinking water intake and drainage systems, and the Bonnet Carré Spillway. The group engaged in wide-ranging dialogue on the flow of water through the region, risk and resilience, and the methodologies that we use in each of our respective fields to engage places, people, and policies.

Tanya James challenged the group to reimagine the practices common to each of our disciplines -- how we draw, how we write, how we collect data -- in this age of the Anthropocene. Are we recognizing at the same time the legacy of racial violence and present day inequities and injustices that manifest in the land use patterns and infrastructure systems of today?

The seminar culminated in the co-creation of large drawings linking together phenomena and insights from the microbial scale to global networks, offering new possibilities for multi-disciplinary exchange and making.