Why We Need New Words for Life in the Anthropocene

Some of the questions on the agenda for the participants to explore include "What is extinction and what are we losing? How do we understand loss and endings? How can an individual understand themselves in relation to a collective responsibility? What is the artist’s role in responding to mass extinction? What happens after the end has come an

If our inability to tell meaningful, actionable stories about our changing planet is part of the problem, then we need to rethink the tools we use to make culture itself.

Sometimes I’m so afraid that we’ve become so good at announcing our differences, in defining ourselves, our identities, down to the last detail, that there is simply no more room, or language, to talk about what connects us. Words die out, too, and with them, ways of thinking. Of course things have to be hammered out, painful fault lines must be ca

At some think tank somewhere, guys with pocket protectors and knotted brows are asking their computer models questions like: “If global carbon emissions peak by 2030 and sea-level rise is 1.6 meters by 2050, how many people along the Eastern Seaboard are likely to drown in storm surges, and what will the effect be on national GDP to relocate the re

So, we’re at this key point. Where our challenge is not just to reduce emissions...but now we have this other challenge: of maintaining our humanity through whatever lies ahead. Maintaining our humanity through that period of ugliness and desperation that we are inevitably on track for.