Planetary Ecologies: A Geological Commons? Event

in the presence of Jamie Allen (Critical Media Lab, FHNW Basel)
Peter Weibel Research Institute for Digital Cultures

We invite you to a special session of Planetary Ecologies, a hybrid discussion group on planetary networks, critical environmentalisms, and intersectional metabolics.

The next session takes place on November 14 at 10am at the Peter Weibel Research Institute for Digital Cultures at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Multimediaraum, Room 102, 1st floor, PSK/GCP, Georg Coch-Platz 2). Feel free to join in person or via Zoom. For access to texts and the online meeting, please contact Sophie Publig at planetaryecologies@ixdm.ch.

For our upcoming session, we will read texts by Kathryn Yusoff and materials by Jamie Allen on aspects of the geological commons or “a form of collective communion that imagines a world in which precarity and abundance is shared across the possibility and forms of life; and that this sharing enacts the possibilities of a common life between organisms” (Yusoff 2017). In recent years, a turn toward posthuman and inhuman ecologies seeks to reposition planetary exchanges at the heart of post-anthropocentric discourse. How do we establish responsible stances and actions that engage with and translate planetary-scale ventures in extractionism, and instantiate alternatives to these?

We look forward to discussing questions of ecological, economical and technological constraints on planetary communion, the challenges of geological complexity and practices for artists, media makers, and researchers, as steps and experiments toward or away from different kinds of planetary intimacy.

On Planetary Ecologies, the reading group and discussion series, started in 2020: “We are interested in voices in research, art, media and design that concern themselves with planetarity and its futures. That is, the ways in which people(s), life, and other beings on earth negotiate its alterity. As such, we are committed to seeking out, understanding, spending time with and reckoning with the actions called for by voices of scholarship and organisation that would seek to go beyond the ‘management of diversity’ (Andrea N. Baldwin) and ‘index[es] of white supremacist domination’ (Romy Opperman).” For more information, please visit https://criticalmedialab.ch/planetary-ecologies-2022/.

Materials brought into discussion at the November 14th session:

Yusoff, K. (2017). ‘Politics of the Anthropocene. Formation of the Commons as a Geologic Process’, Antipode, 50(1), pp. 255–276. Available at: https://doi.org/10\.1111/anti.12334\.

Allen, J. (2021) ‘Planetary Intimacy’, Anthropocene Curriculum. Available at: https://doi.org/10\.26041/fhnw-4502\.

Allen, J. (2021) ‘Archive Earth. Ambiguous Conversations and Conversions’, Roadsides, 5. Available at: https://doi.org/10\.26034/roadsides-202100502\.

Allen, J. (2021) ‘On the Modes of Technical Extraction in Chile’, in N. Rossiter and B. Neilson (eds) Logistical Worlds. Infrastructure, Software, Labor. London: Open Humanities Press, pp. 51–58. Available