Encountering the AnthropoceneThe role of the Environmental Humanities and Social Sciences

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Contents

EXPLORING THE ANTHROPO – SCENERY…………………………. 2

ENCOUNTERING THE ANTHROPOCENE: The role of environmental humanities and social sciences ……………………. 3

CONFERENCE AGENDA ……………………………………………….. 4

SPEAKER ABSTRACTS AND BIOS

Perspectives of the Anthropocene …………………………………… 8 Caring for Country …………………………………………………..…. 12 Animals, Plants and Food …………………………………………..… 17

VENUE INFORMATION ………………………….…………………..… 22

For more information or to register visit: www.sydney.edu.au/sei Or click HERE

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SYDNEY IDEAS

EXPLORING THE ANTHROPO - SCENERY Hope, Justice, Sight

Tuesday 25 February 2014 6 – 7.30pm Law School Foyer - Level 2 Eastern Avenue, The University of Sydney

Australian climate policy shifts, the future of the Great Barrier Reef is called into

question, America experiences a polar vortex whilst Australia swelters and burns. These

are snapshots of the new geological era in which we live, an era where humans now

control many of the forces that shape the planet. This is the age of the anthropocene. A

controversial term that is resisted by some and embraced by others, this Sydney Ideas

event will explore the social and political potential of the term. Three separate talks will

consider concepts of hope, justice and sight in this unprecedented epoch. Surrender to

human domination of the natural world.

Hope Romand Coles will discuss ‗Political Ecologies of Hope in a post-Holocene World‘, focusing on the challenges of radical disruption and dislodgment to our political imaginations and practices. How might we craft visions of democracy, justice, and resilience in a world where increasingly frequent experiences of unforeseeable events are among the most foreseeable aspects of our future? Professor Romand Coles, Professor & F.M. McAllister Endowed Chair, Community, Culture & Environment, Northern Arizona University, US. Justice Giovanna Di Chiro will reveal her recent work in environmental justice, focused on both the movements‘ response to the idea of the anthropocene as well as their growing attention to the local and bodily impacts of climate change, what she calls ‗embodied ecologies‘. Professor Giovanno Di Chiro, Lang Professor for Issues of Social Change at Swarthmore College, US Sight David Schlosberg will delve into how the anthropocene enables a ‗politics of sight‘. The very point of embracing the anthropocene is to acknowledge and respond to human control and domination, and we start by simply seeing the impact of our actions. Professor David Schlosberg, Professor of Environmental Politics and co-director Sydney Environment Institute. Join us for an evening in which we explore the realities and opportunities presented

Cost: Free event, with registration required. Registration: Click here to register online now

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CONFERENCE

Image: The Banker, Jason de Caires Taylor

ENCOUNTERING THE ANTHROPOCENE: The role of environmental humanities and social sciences

Wednesday 26 – Friday 28 February 2014 VENUE: Dockside, Balcony Level, Cockle Bay

For the first time, human beings are influencing the physical processes of the Earth; we have now moved from being serial depleters of local environments to become a planetary geophysical force. While geologists make their case to formalize and adopt this epoch, the role of environmental humanities and social sciences has become crucially linked with our allies in the natural and technological sciences in seeking to understand and meet the challenges and changes thrown up by the new epoch. Our role is to help interpret the impacts, understand the implications, and engage the public in developing alternative ways forward. How to do all this will be explored and debated in the conference and it‘s related events and workshops. We will interrogate such issues as:

1. The relationship between the natural and technological sciences and the humanities as we engage from different perspectives in the new geological era of the Anthropocene.

2. The social and cultural meaning and significance of the planet's entry into an Anthropocene epoch. 3. The roles that artists and writers play in the interpretation and popularization of scientific ideas and themes

in the broader cultural landscape.

Registrations are now open, but places are limited. Click here to register.

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CONFERENCE DAY 1

Perspectives of the Anthropocene

Wednesday 26 February

8.30 – 9.10 Registrations, tea, coffee and something from the bakery

9.00 – 9.15 Welcome to Country 9.15 – 9.30 Opening Address: Jill Trewhella

9.30 – 11.00 Encountering the Anthropocene: Chair: Iain McCalman

Libby Robin, The End of The Environment: Apocalypse, the Anthropocene and the Future Jan Zalasiewicz, The Anthropocene as a potential new unit of the Geological Time Scale

11.00 – 11.20 MORNING TEA

11.20 – 12.50 Transforming the Humanities: Chair: Tom Griffiths

Sverker Sörlin, Transforming the Humanities: The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Environmental Turn in the Human Sciences

David Christian, A Planet Changing Species 12.50 – 1.50 LUNCH

1.50 – 3.20 Ethics and the Anthropocene: Chair: Elspeth Probyn

Nikolas Kompridis, Receptivity as Answerability: A Normative Response to the Challenges of the Anthropocene

Kate Rigby, Narrative, Ethics, and Bushfire in the Anthropocene 3.20 – 3.40 AFTERNOON TEA

3.40 – 5.00 Roundtable: Transdisciplinarity for Sustainability Chair: David Schlosberg

Roderick J. Lawrence Giovanna Di Chiro Manfred Lenzen

5.00 – 5.15 WRAP UP

5.15 – 7.00 Book Launch: w/ Iain McCalman

Global Population, Alison Bashford The Future of Nature, Libby Robin,Sverker Sörlin & Paul Warde

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CONFERENCE DAY 2

Caring for Country

Thursday 27th February

8.30 – 9.00 tea and coffee and something from the bakery 9.00 – 10.00 Keynote: Country and the Gift

Chair: Stephen Muecke

Deborah Bird-Rose 10.00 – 10.15 MORNING TEA

10.15 – 11.45 ‘Impacts of the Anthropocene in Remote Australia: A Kimberley Perspective’ Chair: Leah Lui-Chivhize

Stephen Kinnane, Sustainability, country and social reconstriction in the Fitzroy Valley Bruce Gorring, ‘...When it’s gone, it’s gone’: The Contribution of Modernity and Colonisation to the Anthropocene – A Kimberley Perspective

Anna Dwyer, ‘People worrying for their Country’: Karajarri Country and Climate Change

11.45 – 1.15 Creative Intersections: Objects, people and place. Chair: Paul Holm

Jennifer Newell, Caring for Country, Caring for Community: new roles for museums Jacklyn Lacey, The Feeling is Mutual: Relocating ‘belonging’ in climate, culture and eras of change Lumepa Apelu, The gentle touch of a museum: Museums can hold close the human heart and heal it too Leah Lui- Chivizhe, I didn’t like the way I met the masks… Alick Tipoti 2014

1.15 – 2.00 LUNCH

2.00 – 3.30 Panel Discussion: ‘Country and the Anthropocene’

Chair: Ross Gibson Jessica Weir, Stephen Muecke, Danie Mellor

3.30 – 3.45 AFTERNOON TEA

3.45 – 5.15 Artists Encountering the Anthropocene Chair: Kirsten Wehner

Josh Wodak The Shape of Things to Come: Art and Geoengineering Dr onacloV Transmedia Installation Art: Communicating Climate Change Mandy Martin Vivitur Ex Rapto, (Man lives off greed) Janet Laurence Vanishings in the Umwelt

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CONFERENCE DAY 3

Animals, Plants and Fungi

Friday 28 February

8.30 – 9.00 tea and coffee and something from the bakery 9.00 – 10.30 Nature and Loss: Chair: Libby Robin

Richard Nelson, The Forgotten Voices: Natural Sounds and the Lost Art of Listening Thom Van Dooren Banking the Forest: Loss, hope and conservation in Hawai‘i

10.30 – 10.45 MORNING TEA

10.45 – 12.15 Panel Discussion: Beyond words: Re-signifying the non-human world

Chair: Jennifer Newell

Alison Pouliot, Encountering the (Fungally-Entangled) Anthropocene George Main, Mobilising Materiality: Food Histories, Museum Objects, and the Resilience of Place

12.15 – 1.15 Keynote: Or, the whale Chair: Iain McCalman

Phillip Hoare 1.15 – 2.00 LUNCH

2.00 – 3.30 Panel Discussion: The Persistence of Limits

Chair: Fiona Probyn-Rapsey

Fiona Allon, Welcome to the Anthropocene: a cultural politics of scale, temporality and the future Ben Dibley The enigma of the geomorphic fold

3.30 – 3.45 AFTERNOON TEA

3.45 – 4.45 Keynote: Curing plant blindness and illiteracy Chair: Jodi Frawley

Tim Entwisle

4.45 – 5.00 WRAP UP

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Speaker abstracts and biographies

In order of presentation

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CONFERENCE DAY 1

Encountering the Anthropocene The End of The Environment: Apocalypse, the Anthropocene and the Future LIBBY ROBIN

If we can say ―the environment‖ began in 1948, the advent of the Anthropocene in 2000 marks its end. This talk will explore the metaphorical potential of the Anthropocene to transform possibilities for the future as humanity enters the new millennium where the last vestiges of a sense of controlling ―the environment‖ are disappearing. The environment was born with apocalypse, and crisis is still a key mode for environmental discussions. This talk will argue that the Anthropocene might be adapted as a mantra for more-than-human life on Earth to adapt to escalating change. Science has been prominent in defining and managing the environment, as well as being the chief voice of Earth‘s future. But as we move beyond management, and into surviving change, we must draw on a broader spectrum of thinking, including the humanities and social sciences. No longer can we afford to limit our thinking to ‗probable‘ futures: they are too grim. Finding possibilities for living with the Great Acceleration is the greatest human problem of our time. The Anthropocene offers a metaphor to stimulate the imagination.

Libby Robin FAHA is Professor of environmental history, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, and Senior Research Fellow, National Museum of Australia. Since 2011, she is Guest Professor, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Stockholm, Sweden. In 2013 she was elected to the Australian Academy of Humanities. She is author of How a Continent Created a Nation (UNSW Press), winner NSW Premier's Prize in Australian History 2007 and Flight of the Emu (MUP) winner Vic Premier's literature prize for science writing 2003, and co-editor of Boom and Bust: Bird Stories for a Dry Country (CSIRO) winner Whitley Medal for Australian zoology 2009, and Future of Nature (Yale 2013). Libby‘s current projects include Collecting the future: museums, communities and climate change (National Museum of Australia and American Museum of Natural History), The Culture of Weeds (Australian Research Council LP1202000472, ANU, NMA and Royal Melbourne Botanic Gardens), and Expertise for the Future (ANU, KTH Stockholm, University of East Anglia, Cambridge Centre for History and Economics)

The Anthropocene as a potential new unit of the Geological Time Scale

JAN ZALASIEWICZ

Rapid and large-scale anthropogenic changes have led to the concept that we are now living through the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch - an interval of geological time dominated by human influence. The term was proposed little more than a decade ago by Paul Crutzen, the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist, and has since been widely used – and sharply debated. Its status as a potential new unit of the Geological Time Scale needs evaluation by considering the various kinds of historical and environmental change in terms of geological - or more precisely stratigraphic - change. Lithostratigraphic change, for instance, is strikingly represented by the spread of the ‗urban stratum‘, the refashioning of sand, clay and limestone into our buildings, foundations and transport systems. Biostratigraphic changes include the ongoing mass extinction event and the effect of invasive species (while deep human-made bioturbation in the form of extensive mine and borehole systems comprise a novel aspect the fossil record). Chemostratigraphic changes include the reshaping of the Earth‘s natural carbon, phosphorus and nitrogen cycles. Many of these transformations occur, though, at different times in different places. So, can an Anthropocene Series, with a synchronous time boundary (essential for a geological time unit), be characterized and mapped across the Earth's surface? Ongoing efforts to answer this question (Williams et al. 2011; Waters et al., in press) should help in the understanding of the Anthropocene as a new development within Earth history.

Jan Zalasiewicz is Senior Lecturer in Geology at the University of Leicester, UK, a member of the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society, London, and also Chair of the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. After a B.Sc. at Sheffield University and a PhD at the

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University of Cambridge, he became in his early career a field geologist, palaeontologist and stratigrapher at the British Geological Survey. Now, he teaches various aspects of geology and Earth history to undergraduate and postgraduate students. He has an range of research interests into fossil ecosystems and environments across over half a billion years of geological time. Among these interests are fossil colonial plankton of the early Palaeozoic era, the behaviour of muds and mudrocks from sea floor to mountain roots, the links between rock and time in Earth history, ancient climate – and the Anthropocene. He has written many scientific papers and three popular science books, all published by Oxford University Press, that touch on these themes: The Earth After Us (2008), The Planet in a Pebble (2010), and The Goldilocks Planet (2012).

Transforming the Humanities: The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Environmental Turn in the Human Sciences

SVERKER SÖRLIN

In 1973 Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess published his famous article "The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement" in the journal Inquiry. He thus coined the concept ―deep ecology‖ and argued for major changes of the values regarding nature and humans place in it, rejecting all hierarchies and equalizing the rights of survival for all species and living beings. He wished to see a profound transformation of ecology in order for it to serve as a guiding light for humanity in its search for a new path towards a responsible living on a planet with limited resources. Naess‘s article appeared at a time when a social reading of ecological ideas was in the ascendance. In a similar way we now find environmental topics and issues being addressed by the humanities. Although we can, as always, find predecessors way back in the early twentieth century, if not earlier, the environmental humanities are essentially in an initial phase as an organized academic enterprise. It is open question which routes this enterprise make take. One possibility is that the humanities manage to take on board a new sets of issues and problems related to the environmental in most of its cultural senses. While welcome and broadening their domain, this would leave the humanities largely untouched. However, there is also a possibility that the force of the change will be strong enough to affect the humanities more profoundly. This is not wholly unlikely. In recent years there has been a surge of reports and books in many countries addressing the wider societal mission of the humanities and they seem united by a call for a new relevance. It is also often argued that in order to do this there are certain working modes of the humanities that should be reconsidered. They are about the organization of research, the links between research and education, and humanities links to society. In this keynote talk I will argue that there is good reason to use the momentum that a deep, long-range environmental turn to reconsider what humanities scholarship, knowledge, and ethics can bring from it to societies and the world.

Sverker Sörlin is professor in the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, where he is also affiliated with the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory. He has held visiting positions at Berkeley, Cambridge, Oslo, Cape Town, and Princeton and had 2007 to 2012 an adjunct position in the Stockholm Resilience Center. Among his publications in English are co-edited books, including Nature’s End: History and the Environment (Palgrave, 2009); Northscapes: History, Technology, and the Making of Northern Environments (University of British Columbia Press, 2013); The Future of Nature: Documents of Global Change (Yale University Press, 2013). His articles have appeared in journals such as Minerva, Osiris, Journal of Historical Geography, European Historical Review, Environmental Science & Politics, and his recent interdisciplinary work on history and global change science in e.g. Ecology & Society, Global Environmental Change, and Nature. He is an acclaimed non-fiction author and critic in Sweden. He has served in many official policy advising roles and is currently a member of the Swedish government‘s Environmental Research Advisory Board.

A Planet Changing Species DAVID CHRISTIAN

"The idea of the Anthropocene offers a powerful way of thinking about modernity. I will argue that it also suggests interesting ways of placing human history in the larger history of the biosphere, for there are good reasons to think that we are the first single species in 4 billion years to have dominated the biosphere. That idea suggests that the moment we live in is significant on planetary scales: never before has the fate of much of the biosphere depended on the decisions of a single species. If this is correct, why have historians not noticed? I will argue that this is because historians live in a quantum realm, in which such questions do not even arise. The idea that we are a planet-changing species raises two critical questions: what is it about us that makes us so powerful, and is it possible that other species may have followed a single historical trajectory on other life-supporting planets? This

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last question would have been regarded as pure science fiction just twenty years ago; today, as astro-biology is establishing itself as a serious science, the question invites serious speculation and provides a powerful way of thinking about the historical trajectory of our own species, Homo sapiens."

David Christian (D.Phil. Oxford, 1974) is by training a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, but since the 1980s he has become interested in World History on very large scales. He taught at Macquarie University in Sydney from 1975 to 2000 before taking up a position at San Diego State University in 2001. In January 2009 he returned to Macquarie University. He has written on the social and material history of the 19th century Russian peasantry, in particular on aspects of diet and the role of alcohol. He has also written a text book history of modern Russia, and a synoptic history of Inner Eurasia (Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia). In 1989, he began teaching courses on 'Big History', surveying the past on the largest possible scales, including those of biology and astronomy; and in 2004, he published the first text on 'Big History'. At San Diego State University, he taught courses on World History, 'Big History', World Environmental History, Russian History, and the History of Inner Eurasia.

He is a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen [Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities], Affiliates Chair for the World History Association, and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Global History and the Cambridge History of the World. In 2008, he was appointed as a James Marsh Professor-at-Large at the University of Vermont, and also accepted appointments as a Research Fellow at Ewha Women's University in Seoul and as a Professor of History at Macquarie University in Sydney.

In 2009 David Christian received an ARC grant to support research on the second volume of his history of Inner Eurasia, which will cover the history of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia from the Mongol Empire to the present day. Over the next few years he will also be working with the support of Bill Gates to create an online course in Big History for High School students.

Receptivity as Answerability: A Normative Response to the Challenges of the Anthropocene

NIKOLAS KOMPRIDIS

In this paper, I adduce the reasons why a diversity- and climate challenged world is in need of a change in the normative stance from which it responds to these challenges, challenges which are intrinsically linked to one another. The normative stance I propose, receptivity as answerability, is a multi-faceted normative position that comes to terms with the virulent critiques of anthropocentrism and humanism without succumbing to scepticism about human agency and the possibility of disclosing alternative possibilities of caring for and altering the conditions of the human and non-human world.

Nikolas Kompridis is Research Professor in Philosophy and Political Thought and Foundation Director of the newly established Institute for Social Justice at the Australian Catholic University. He is the author of The Aesthetic Turn in Political Thought (Bloomsbury, 2014) Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future (MIT, 2006) and Philosophical Romanticism (Routledge, 2006), and over 50 articles on a broad spectrum of topics in philosophy and political theory. He is currently completing two new books, one on a normative theory of receptivity, the other on romantic critical theory. Among his current projects is an ambitious rethinking of what it means to be human in the age of the Anthropocene.

Narrative, Ethics, and Bushfire in the Anthropocene

KATE RIGBY

This paper brings a material ecocritical perspective to the phenomenon of wildfire, with specific reference to the potentially catastrophic firestorms of southeastern Australia, which are set to become more frequent and intense as the planet warms and droughts lengthen and deepen in this part of the world. The discussion will focus on Colin Thiele‘s February Dragon, first published in 1965 with the support of the Bushfire Research Council of South Australia. As a work of children‘s literature (8+), this story by one of Australia‘s best-known authors of children‘s literature, affords consideration of the educational potential of narratives of eco-catastrophe for young readers. In particular, the paper will address the ways in which this text discloses the complex inter- and intra-action of human

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and nonhuman actors and factors in the aetiology, unfolding and aftermath of bushfire disasters, as well as raising ethical questions about human relations with (other) animals in contexts of shared vulnerability.

Kate Rigby is Professor of Environmental Humanities in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University and a Fellow of the Australian Humanities Academy and of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Her research ranges across German Studies, European philosophy, literature and religion, and culture and ecology. She is a Senior Editor of the journal Philosophy Activism Nature, and her books include Gender, Ecology and the Sacred (co-edited, 1999), Topographies of the Sacred: The Poetics of Place in European Romanticism (2004), and Ecocritical Theory: New European Approaches (co-edited, 2011). Kate was a founding member of the Australian Ecological Humanities (http://www.ecologicalhumanities.org/about.html), the inaugural President of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (Australia-New Zealand) (http://www.aslec-anz.asn.au/), the founding Director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology@Monash (http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/fore/) and she is currently a member of the Mellon Australia-Pacific Observatory in Environmental Humanities.

PANEL DISCUSSION: Applying Transdisciplinarity for Sustainability The Anthropocene does not belong to a single academic discipline. At issue is the human relationship with the rest of the natural world, and that relationship is understood, and taught, from a range of perspectives in the university. In this session, we explore some a number of different efforts at teaching a more sustainable relationship with the environment, all focused on engaging across disciplines. Participants from the EU, US, and here in Sydney will discuss specific examples of interdisciplinary pedagogy, and open the discussion to the audience. RODERICK J LAWRENCE GIOVANNA DI CHIRO MANFRED LENZEN RODERICK J LAWRENCE

Many initiatives dealing with climate change and extreme weather events, loss of biodiversity and increasing deforestation, or poverty reduction and increasing socio-economic inequalities are not leading to effective outcomes. Since the 1960s, international organizations, national governments, non-government organizations (NGOs), private enterprises and the mass media have considered these kinds of anthropogenic challenges without major progress. Today, data, statistics and other kinds of information show alarming trends. It is important to take stock of the obstacles, the shortcomings and the challenges facing the United Nations post-2015 agenda. This presentation will provide a broad overview of these challenges and how they have been interpreted. The author will argue that current responses are not capable of dealing with the complexity or the interrelated nature of these challenges because they are too frequently defined by the narrow concerns of national sovereignty, financial profits, scientific short-sightedness and self-interest. The current deadlock that has blocked effective implementation of widely shared and highly commendable objectives should be understood. The author suggests that, in general, the notion of sustainable development has not been a catalyst for more effective implementation at the international and regional levels because there is too little consensus about what it means and how it can be achieved. A broader multi-layered interpretation that applies an inter-sector framework supported by stronger political commitment and improved societal awareness is urgently needed. These are the foundations of a transdisciplinary approach that can help deal with the complexity of these challenges.

Roderick J. Lawrence graduated from University of Adelaide (Australia) with First Class Honours. He has a Master‘s Degree from the University of Cambridge (England) and a Doctorate of Science from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale, Lausanne (Switzerland). In January 1997 he was nominated to the New York Academy of Science. In 1999 he was nominated Professor in the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences at the University of Geneva. He currently is Head of the Human Ecology Group at the Institute of Environmental Sciences. He is the founding Director of the Certificate of Advanced Studies in Sustainable Development and Agenda 21 since 2003. He is also Director of the Global Environmental Policy Programme at the University of Geneva in partnership with UNEP since 2010. His biography has been included in Marquis Who's Who in the World and Who's Who in Science and Engineering.

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For further information: http://www.unige.ch/ecohum/Collaborateurs/Lawrence.html

Giovanna Di Chiro is the Lang Professor for Issues of Social Change at Swarthmore College, and Policy Adviser for Environmental Justice at Nuestras Raíces, Inc. in Holyoke, Massachusetts. She has published widely on the intersections of environmental science and policy with a focus on social and economic disparities and human rights. She is co-editor of the volume Appropriating Technology: Vernacular Science and Social Power and is completing a book titled Embodied Ecologies: Science, Politics, and Environmental Justice. Di Chiro‘s current work examines environmental justice activists‘ reframing of the climate change debate to focus on the local, bodily impacts of wide-scale environmental problems like global warming. She teaches environmental studies and gender studies and collaborates with environmental justice organizations to conduct community-based research on environmental health concerns and on developing culturally relevant sustainability initiatives in under-resourced and low-income communities. In 2012, Di Chiro was appointed to the National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology, a Federal Advisory Committee that reports to the Administrator of the US EPA on issues of sustainability and social justice.

Manfred Lenzen is Professor of Sustainability Research with the ISA group in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. He has a PhD in Nuclear Physics and 15 years of experience in renewable energy technologies, life-cycle assessment, and carbon footprinting. His current research interests revolve around high-resolution impact mapping (http://www.acfonline.org.au/sites/default/files/resource/index67.swf), novel computational approaches to industrial ecology (https://nectar.org.au/industrial-ecology-virtual-laboratory), and their application to global environmental problems (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11145.html). He is Associate Editor for the Journal of Industrial Ecology, and is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Economic Systems Research.

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CONFERENCE DAY 2

Caring for Country

Country and the Gift DEBORAH BIRD-ROSE

Aboriginal Australians‘ reconfiguring of the English word country has transformed it into a multidimensional, relational, connective, life-giving, flowing, recursive, consubstantive matrix that, barring total destruction, is always coming forth. This always-coming is both fragile and resilient, an on-going event in which care matters because life matters. To rephrase, and thus to open differently, a gem of wisdom from western thought: the meaning of country is country. This paper explores potentials, pitfalls and problematics of cross-cultural ‗working for country‘. It develops an understanding of country and the gift that speaks to our current headlong rush into the Anthropocene.

Professor Deborah Bird Rose, Environmental Humanities Program, University of New South Wales, is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and a founding co-editor of Environmental Humanities. She has worked with Australian Aboriginal people in their claims to land and other decolonising contexts; her current research focuses on multispecies communities in this time of extinctions. Her major books include Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction (2011, University of Virginia Press), the re-released second edition of Country of the Heart: An Indigenous Australian Homeland (2011), the third edition of the prize-winning ethnography Dingo Makes Us Human (2009), Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation (2004) and Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal views of Landscape and Wilderness (1996). She serves on the Editorial Boards of two book series: Routledge‘s Environmental Humanities Series and Sydney University Press‘s Animal Publics Series. She also serves on the Editorial Board of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. She is a regular guest on radio programs, and is the author of the popular blog ‗Life at the Edge of Extinction‘ For further information: http://deborahbirdrose.com

‘...When it’s gone, it’s gone’: The Contribution of Modernity and Colonisation to the Anthropocene – A Kimberley Perspective

BRUCE GORRING

It is universally accepted that longstanding traditions of Indigenous cultural and ecological management have shaped the Australian environment for thousands of generations (Langton, 1998; Woinarski et al., 2007). Indigenous people are connected to, and responsible for, their lands, waters and resources. In turn, they obtain and maintain their spiritual and cultural identity, life and livelihoods from the Country (Langton, 2006). Cultural rights and responsibilities invoke a holistic relationship between people and Country as they combine land, water, culture, society and economy. Ultimately, the maintenance of this relationship is critical for the social and emotional wellbeing of the community (Ganesharajah, 2009). The arrival of Modernity in the Kimberley region of Western Australia disrupted the relationship between Indigenous people and their Country. Modernity involved an intellectual pursuit on the part of Enlightenment thinkers to develop objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic (Habermas, 1983). The purposeful accumulation and intent of knowledge, generated by individuals working freely and creatively, was to realise human emancipation and the enrichment of daily life. According to Modernist thinkers, the scientific domination of nature promised freedom from scarcity, want, and the arbitrariness of natural disasters or hardship. Only through this project could the universal, eternal and immutable qualities of humanity be revealed (Harvey, 1990). This paper will examine the relationship between Modernity, colonisation and its contribution to the Anthropocene from a Kimberley perspective. From the 15th century, the journals of Dutch, English and

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French explorers contained entries that subsequently influenced European attitudes towards Indigenous Australians and informed the basis for British colonisation of the Australian continent. The landscape was reinterpreted and inscribed with values, names, and uses that were only coherent to European society. As a consequence, the Kimberley coastline and adjacent inland areas began to be perceived as an unrealised economic opportunity. While this meta-narrative provided Europeans with a means to understanding an unknown and unrecognisable landscape, it also positioned the Kimberley region within the global industrial economy. Nothing would ever be the same again...

Bruce Gorring is a kartiya (non-Aboriginal person) of Asian and European heritage. He was born in Awabakal Country (Maitland, NSW) and raised in Wiradjuri/Waveroo Country (Albury/Wodonga, NSW/Victoria). Apart from a short residence in Whadjuk Noongar Country (Fremantle, WA), Bruce has lived in Yawuru buru (Broome, WA) since 1998. He received a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in geography and sociology from the University of Newcastle and a Master of Social Sciences (Environment and Planning) from RMIT University in Melbourne. He is profoundly interested in the reflexive relationship between ‗Country‘, people, and the sustainability of complex cultural and natural landscapes. Bruce worked for the Kimberley Land Council from 1998 to 2005, as a Project Development Officer and then Manager of the Native Title Services Unit. From 2006 to 2009, he was the Assistant Director of the Land Branch in the WA Department of Indigenous Affairs in Perth. In October 2009, he was appointed Research Coordinator in the Nulungu Research Institute at the Broome campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia. Currently, he is the Acting Director of the Nulungu Research Institute.

‘People worrying for their Country’: Karajarri Country and Climate Change

ANNA DWYER

Karajarri Traditional Owners have noticed significant changes to their Country in recent years that could not be explained through local events and activities. People have observed very high tides, a reduction in the bush turkey and kangaroo populations, trees and bush foods fruiting outside of their seasonal limits, salmon running in the wrong season, a reduction in the seafood catch, increased high temperatures, Jila (permanent water holes) drying up, and the exposure of human remains that have been protected for centuries. When the Karajarri community became aware that climate change could potentially be the source of these changes, they engaged in a project that contemplate possible responses to these significant changes. In collaboration with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) and the University Melbourne, Anna Dwyer from the Nulungu Research Institute (Broome campus of The University of Notre Dame Australia) participated in a Climate Change Adaptation project that focused on changes to Karajarri Country with the aim of identifying adaptive changes that the community could undertake to strengthen their cultural and social responses to these changes. The project was funded by the Department of Climate Change through the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF). Through consultation workshops, the project examined climate change in Karajarri Country by looking at some of the impacts on cultural heritage, Karajarri cultural practices and sustainable livelihoods, and identified management priorities and options to provide pathways for the Karajarri people to design how they adapted to these changes within Karajarri culture. This presentation will discuss the findings of this research in the form of a road map for the creation of a climate change adaptation strategy for Karajarri Country that incorporates the roles and responsibilities of the Karajarri Traditional Lands Association (KTLA) and all relevant stakeholders. This project highlights the essential role of Indigenous Knowledge to drive unique and appropriate response strategies, framed within Karajarri cultural governance protocols, to deal with impacts of the Anthropocene on their Country in the form of climate change.

Anna Dwyer is a Karajarri woman. Her traditional country is extends from the ocean to the desert and is located 190 kilometers south of Broome in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Her first language is ‗Karajarri‘. Anna studied at St Mary‘s Primary School in Broome, Broome District High School, and Pundulmurra College in Port Hedland. Anna‘s professional background is an Interpreter and linguist. She holds an Advanced Diploma of Australian Languages and Linguistics Studies from the Bachelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education. In 2013, Anna completed further studies in oral history at Nirrumbuk Aboriginal Corporation and gained AHCILM404 - A Record and Document Community History; a nationally accredited unit of competency.

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While Anna has lived in Bidyadanga, Broome, Kalumburu, and Halls Creek, most of her time has been spent living in Derby, Western Australia. Previously, Anna has worked for the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Cultural Centre and Kimberley Land Council. She was also a Project Officer for the Kimberley Older Indigenous People‘s Health Project in Derby. Since June 2009, Anna has been a Researcher in the Nulungu Research Institute at the Broome Campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia. As Researcher, Anna‘s primary interest is working closely with her people and undertaking further research in Karajarri country.

Sustainability, country and social reconstruction in the Fitzroy Valley

STEPHEN KINNANE

In acknowledging the impact of the Anthropocene it is essential to consider the concurrently growing and potential counter narrative in the development of a Sustainocene, in which new practices based in the principles of sustainability lead to a new epoch in a carbon aware world. The idea of Sustainability was created as a response to un-sustainable human development, obvious environmental destruction and unequal distribution of wealth leading to entrenched cycles of poverty and social dysfunction. For many Indigenous peoples the idea of integrating all aspects of ecology, culture, governance and economy in daily life is an ancient and continuing concept and practice. The impacts of colonisation, globalisation and exploitation of country has equally impacted on Indigenous people‘s ability to uphold these values, however, these pressures have has also resulted in unique trans-disciplinary approaches and practices that are gaining momentum at the local and regional level. In the forty plus years since the introduction of the concept of sustainability, political expediency and conflicting priorities between regions, cultures and developers has caused the concept to become confused and over-complicated. However, the concept itself is one that has been repeatedly upheld in both Indigenous and non-Indigenous forums at international, regional and community levels. Transformation of the Anthropocene to the Sustainocine will require cumulative local and regional actions to affect the global impact of unsustainable activities. Through an examination of community aspirations for the future in the Fitzroy Valley in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia, and assessing those aspirations against sustainability principles, it is possible to identify a Fitzroy Valley Sustainability Framework; a genuine trans-disciplinary approach that is emerging at the regional level that is driven by Indigenous leadership and works to prioritise what needs to be invested in for the short-term and within the ‗scale of country‘ to enable a long-term benefit. This form of an Indigenous Sustainability Framework provides a means by which to understand how to work within foundations of Indigenous approaches to country (including cultural governance) and sustainability at the local and regional scale, with an eye to reconstructing the Anthropocene and its impacts.

Steve Kinnane has been an active researcher and writer for more than 20 years as well as lecturing and working on community cultural heritage and development projects. His interests are diverse encompassing Aboriginal history, creative documentary (both visual and literary), and tensions surrounding the ideals of sustainability and the relationships between individuality, community, country, economy and human development. Steve is a Marda Marda from Mirrowoong country in the East Kimberley. He Lectured at Murdoch University in Australian Indigenous Studies and Sustainability; completed a Visiting Research Fellowship at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), Canberra, and is currently Senior Researcher for the Nulungu Research Institute of the University of Notre Dame Australia, Broome. Recent publications include the chapter ‗Indigenous Australia‘ (in collaboration with Anna Haebich) for the, Cambridge History of Australia, the chapter ‗Blood History‘ for the First Australians book accompanying the First Australians Television Series, and reports and chapters examining sustainable livelihoods and how communities are changing the future by confronting systemic impediments, addressing priorities and developing regionally relevant solutions.

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PANEL Discussion: Creative Intersections: Objects, people and place. Chair: POUL HOLM

Caring for Country, Caring for Community: new roles for museums JENNIFER NEWELL

Western museums have long been known for their glacial pace, uncompromising custodianship of objects, and master-narrative presentations of knowledge. In the face of rapidly changing environments and communities around the world dealing with complex losses of security, place and possessions, we could assume that museums would be the last place people might look for solace or solutions. But many museums are adopting this role, successfully. Institutions have been opening up access, permitting multiple voices into displays, and providing platforms for debate. Despite what we might expect, some of the traditional qualities of museums – such as their slow pace – can work positively, encouraging careful, reflective engagements with difficult issues such as climate change. Using models drawn from Pacific cultural centers and two case studies from the American Museum of Natural History, I will be showing how communities and cultural institutions can create relationships that support each other and support caring for country. While not often straightforward, these relationships can be powerfully sustained through meetings around particularly magnetic, ‗lodestone‘ objects, enabling cross-cultural and inter-generational learning. Members of communities displaced by climate change can use museum collections and programs for creative place-making in their new environments. With this kind of openness to the potentials of the other, museums and communities are well-placed to assist each other with the growing challenges of the Anthropocene.

Jenny Newell is the curator of Pacific Ethnology in the Anthropology Division at the American Museum of Natural History, New York. She researches the impacts of climate change on the ways Pacific Islanders connect to their traditions and places of significance. Jenny has a PhD from the Australian National University (2006) on the history of ecological exchange in Tahiti, and is author of Trading Nature: Tahitians, Europeans and Ecological Exchange. She was an assistant curator in the Oceanic division of the British Museum, London (2001-2008), and afterwards a research fellow at the National Museum of Australia (2008-2012) in Canberra. In 2011 she published Pacific Art in Detail (British Museum Press/ Harvard Uni Press/ Te Papa Press), an introduction to the material culture of the region for general readers. Her collaborations with Pacific Islanders are at the heart of her work, which centers on the intersection between communities, collections and environment.

The gentle touch of a museum: Museums can hold close the human heart and heal it too LUMEPA APELU

When the pieces of this life stop making sense, we take a long lonely walk into our saddened hearts. Our cultures change, our homes are displaced and the children we give birth to are buried before us. We ask ourselves for the meaning of this life. But life like water flows and what we hold we lose. Many Samoans have recently lost their homes and loved ones due to climate change and natural disasters. The museum, through its understanding of the pain of Samoans, becomes a light and a source of comfort to its audience. In return, the museum slowly comes to life. Whether it is through article writing, online dialogue or face to face engagement, the Museum of Samoa has found home in responding to the question that all Samoans, and people around the world are asking today. ―What is the meaning of life? When will these problems end?‖ The museum draws from its own backyard, a wealth of Samoa‘s past, to remind Samoans of their innate kindnesses – of who they really are. The exciting challenge for the staff and volunteers of the museum is to be what they preach. Rediscovering our culture, our history, and our way of life is not simply to enhance the museum collection but to help warm the hearts of those we can reach and of course to enrich ourselves. I will detail in my presentation the meaningful journey we have embarked on in the past two years with such a ―sacred‖ cause instilled in our hearts.

Lumepa Apelu is the curator for the Museum of Samoa. Lumepa is an active member of other non government cultural and tourism organizations which contribute to the enhancement of the museum work and vice versa. Ms Apelu has a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Mathematics, and is currently finishing her Masters degree in Development studies with the National University of Samoa. She has published her poetry

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in Samoa and continues to do so now. She is a devoted writer for the museum and her own family business situated on the south coast of Upolu where the tsunami of 2009 took the life of her eldest daughter and 12 family members. Ms Apelu is currently writing a book dedicated to her daughter. (a personal project she started this year and inspired by the Museum)

I didn’t like the way I met the masks…Alick Tipoti 2014

LEAH LUI-CHIVIZHE

My presentation is an exploratory piece, considering the sensitivities and questions that Torres Strait Islander artists bring to their ongoing engagements with museum collections whether in person or digitally, and how these collections influence their own artistic work. The title comes from a conversation with Alick about his most recent visit to the British Museum where he was able to view and handle turtle-shell masks collected from the Torres Strait throughout the 19th century. Alick was unsettled; the masks, he said, were all in one room and he hadn‘t been forewarned. In 2011, he had said, ―I make masks… they are not as powerful as the ones in the museums‖. I want to explore how Alick‘s work differs from but also follows and respects the old turtle-shell masks and how the work of Islander artists in general breathe new life and new understandings into the objects and of turtle-shell as a significant cultural material to Torres Strait Islanders today.

Leah Lui-Chivizhe (University of Sydney/UNSW) Leah is a doctoral student in history at the University of Sydney where her research focuses on Torres Strait Islander relationships and engagements with the marine environment and the Islander-turtle relationship. Leah also holds graduate qualifications in material anthropology and human geography. She has undertaken research on material culture and eastern Torres Strait tombstone ceremonies, Islander identity in Sydney and the history of Islanders in the northern Australia railways. From 2001-2012 she taught Indigenous Australian Studies at the University of Sydney and now works part-time for the Nura Gili Centre for Indigenous Programs at the University of New South Wales.

The Feeling is Mutual: Relocating ‘belonging’ in climate, culture and eras of change JACKLYN LACEY

We each increasingly belong to multiple places, histories, and communities. An embrace of flux and temporality may in fact facilitate relationships between museums and communities that are better able to be maintained over multiple generations—a model that might be particularly useful as we think about the new types of collecting and curating in this long era of climate change. I illustrate this humanistic rethinking of relocation with from examples of interactions—particularly with diaspora communities— in the Pacific Peoples‘ hall and collections at AMNH, and from Rethinking Home workshop conversations in Samoa and New York. My position at AMNH has afforded me the opportunity to engage with an diverse array of cultural practitioners, visiting scholars, students, activists, families, official delegations, members of diaspora communities, and travelers. Of course, none of these are categories of exclusion—in fact, I am often struck by multiplicity of identities, histories, and lifeways of the people who come to the AMNH Pacific Ethnology collection. In particular, my work with Pacific diaspora communities in New York has radically redefined my concept of ‗belonging‘ to one that is not solely hewn to geographic or chronological proximity. The dynamics of power by which natural history museums have redefined ―natural‖—a normative rendering of relations of humans to their environment and ―history‖—the imposition of an ordering of these relations, have been unfair. There is a pressing need to reexamine this imbalance of power between museum and communities if museums wish to prepare themselves to be effective partners in cultural resilience for the emerging diaspora of people impacted by climate change. I suggest that in the hard but crucial work that is being done to bring museums and communities into greater connection and compatibility, as Jenny discusses in her presentation, we create new modalities of belonging. Our sources of care and concern for material and intangible heritage and culture are informed by diverse perspectives, but these interactions foster new affinities, and new abilities for the people working in museums and the communities whose heritage they hold to begin to find a sense of belonging—of empathetic connection— in one another. I think this paves a path that may facilitate the work of co-creating futures for communities, their material culture and museums that secure greater agency and justice for community partners.

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Jacklyn Lacey has been curatorial associate of African and Pacific Ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History since autumn 2011. In 2012 she presented at the American Ethnological Society and organized a multidisciplinary session at the American Anthropological Association. She worked with Jenny, Kirsten and Libby as a co-convener of the Collecting the Future workshop at AMNH this past autumn. She has partnered with fellow presenters Jenny Newell and Lumepa Apelu on the 2013-2014 Museum Connect project ―Rethinking Home: Climate Change in New York and Samoa.‖ She has a background in virology and medical anthropology, previously working in public health education in Tanzania, HIV/AIDS testing and research at African Services Committee in Harlem, and in Drew Cressman‘s NSF funded immunology lab at her alma mater, Sarah Lawrence College. After Hurricane Katrina, she worked in New Orleans with a multi-faith coalition to clear debris from destroyed homes in the Lower Ninth Ward and witnessed both the fragility and determination of coastal communities facing of a changing climate.

PANEL Discussion ‗Country and the Anthropocene‘ Chair PROFESSOR ROSS GIBSON Presenters DANIE MELLOR STEPHEN MUECKE Dr Danie Mellor JESSICA WEIR

The Indigenous concept of ‗country‘ is an enormously rich and expansive set of ideas. Key among them is an insistence human lives are connected to land and other living beings, and each must care for and respond to the other. The Anthropocene is the name for a geologic age of our own making, based on the proposition that human activity has driven change at a planetary level. The idea of country, then, with its insistence that people are not the main force at work on a passive world, provides critical insight and fresh perspectives into the concept of the Anthropocene.

Ross Gibson is a university professor concentrating on multi-modal approaches to writing. He was the inaugural Creative Director at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and a Senior Consultant Producer for the establishment of the Museum of Sydney. Works include the books Seven Versions of an Australian Badland (2002) The Summer Exercises (2009) and 26 Views of the Starburst World (2012). Danie Mellor. Born in Mackay, Queensland, Danie Mellor has lived, worked, travelled and studied in Australia, England, Scotland and South Africa. His award winning work and research addresses the complex histories of Australia's Indigenous, Colonial and Settler communities, and has been regularly shown in significant exhibitions, including Story Place, Queensland Art Gallery and Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Culture Warriors and unDisclosed at the National Gallery of Australia, and has been showcased at Sakahàn, the inaugural international survey of Indigenous art at the National Gallery of Canada. Future projects include a major 10-year survey at University of Queensland Art Museum in 2014. His work is represented in permanent collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Australian Museum and the Kerry Stokes Collection. In 2009, Mellor won the 26th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award for his work From Rite to Ritual. Danie is a Senior Lecturer in Theoretical Enquiry at Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney. Stephen Muecke is Professor of Ethnography at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, where he is part of the Environmental Humanities programme. He has written extensively on Indigenous Australia, especially in the Kimberley, and on the Indian Ocean. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a Faculty member, Global Center for Advanced Studies, Switzerland. Recent books are Butcher Joe, for Documenta 13, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern (2011) and Contingency in Madagascar, with photographer Max Pam (2012). Jessica Weir is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society. Her research is part of the critical intellectual work of the Environmental Humanities, and her book Murray River Country (2009, Aboriginal Studies Press) is internationally recognised as outstanding scholarship in

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this field. Jessica‘s research collaborations with Indigenous people examine how western binaries and Indigenous knowledges interact to circumscribe and transform our understandings of environmental issues and their governance.

The Shape of Things to Come: Art and Geoengineering

JOSHUA WODAK

Models of climate change trajectories show the shape of things to come for the biosphere and its inhabitants this century. Scientific organisations worldwide overwhelmingly maintain that the window to avoid runaway catastrophic climate change is closing fast: being one decade…at most. In turn, highly reputed climate scientists and scientific organisations are now proposing radical ways to engineer the world‘s climate through bioengineering and geoengineering. This presentation explores this reversal of agency: from being shaped by things to come, to how humans may shape things to come through climate engineering interventions designed to separate existing lifeforms from six degrees of catastrophe.

Dr Josh Wodak is an interdisciplinary artist & researcher whose participatory projects and interactive installations explore ecological sustainability and climate change. Formally trained in Visual Anthropology (University of Sydney) and Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Research (Australian National University), his work has been presented as performances, screenings, installations and exhibitions in art galleries, museums, theatres, performative spaces, cinemas, and festivals across Australia. His ongoing body of work, Good [Barrier] Grief (2011-present), uses participatory practice in photomedia, video art, sound art and interactive installations to explore the development of post-fossil fuel futures in relation to energy production and climate change. He is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the Faculty of Architecture, Design & Planning, University of Sydney.

Transmedia Installation Art: Communicating Climate Change

DR ONACLOV

Currently there is a growing international movement of artwork being created in response to climate change in multidisciplinary contexts such as art, design, science and architecture. Changes in climatic patterns have been occurring over long periods of times, and are caused by many factors among them we find oceanic movement, tectonic movement, solar radiation, and most importantly by human beings. The latter ones have significantly modified our environment. Tangible user interface objects can be important educational tools in promoting environmental action. I discuss two interactive installations Reefs on the Edge and InterANTARCTICA. The use of Tangible interface in an installation art setting can help engage and inform the public about crucial environmental issues. Reefs on the Edge fuses marine biology, environmental science and multiple art forms to explore coral reef habitats and ecosystems threatened by the effects of climate change. The installation InterANTARCTICA provides a technological platform for the public to interact, experience and gain vital knowledge about climate change. Museum based transmedia art installations have the potential to attract large numbers of the public. Thus, transmedia art installations can be significant tools for communicating environmental actions.

Dr onacloV is an artist and researcher in the Design Lab at the University of Sydney. She has studied, lived and worked in in Paris and Marseille in France as well as worked as an international documentary filmmaker while based in the US. Her experimental artworks address crucial social, cultural and environmental issues. She has initiated and led major cross-disciplinary environmental practice-led research projects including: InterANTARCTICA and Reefs on the Edge. These artworks were in collaboration with the Climate Change Institute, Australian Antarctic Division and the Sydney Network for a Climate Change Society and were exhibited widely nationally and internationally. The artworks engaged numerous art media and were collaborations with environmental scientists in leading institutions. She has exhibited her work internationally in France at the ENSBA in Paris and Marseille; in the USA at the Commencement Gallery; in Canada at McGill; in Australia at the National Gallery; Canberra Contemporary Art Space; M16; in Brazil at the Climate Change Impacts and Responses; in Leeds at CRTL Bodies; and in Berlin at the Wekstad.

Vivitur Ex Rapto, (Man lives off greed)

MANDY MARTIN

Vivitur Ex Rapto, (Man lives off greed) is an ongoing series of paintings about the rapacious wave of mining sweeping across Australia and the changing climate chasing it. It is time to draw a line in the dirt, we are all

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accountable and as we face the sublime state of extinction must look for ways to stop rising carbon emissions and wholesale destruction of environments now. I have the hope that we do just have a small window of possibility if we take action now. Mandy Martin is an artist who has held numerous exhibitions in Australia and internationally. Her works are in many public and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and other state collections and regional galleries. In the USA she is represented in the Guggenheim Museum New York; the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno and many private collections. Mandy Martin will exhibit new paintings including those seen in her powerpoint at Australian Galleries, Roylston Street, Sydney opening 11 November 2014. She lives in the Central West of New South Wales, Australia. She currently is an Adjunct Professor Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University. Publications: Martin, M. Robin, L., Smith, M., Strata: Deserts Past Present and Future. An environmental project about a significant cultural place. Mandy Martin, Canberra, 2005. Robin, L. Dickman, C. Martin, M. Desert Channels: the impulse to conserve. CSIRO Publishing Melbourne, 2010 Morton, S., Martin M., Mahood, K. and Carty, J., Desert Lake. Art , Science and Stories from Paruku. CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 2013 www.mandy-martin.com Vanishings in the Umwelt

JANET LAURENCE

Exploring through artworks including film the worlds of a selection of animals and their intimate relationships to their immediate environment This vital interconnection to their island of the senses as described by Uxkell called The Umwelt Our way to enter these worlds of the animals ,their lived experience and phenomenology, is through our own perceptual organs , through the lens of our own Umwelt Art can communicate create this experiential sensory way of being and coexistence. through a poetical visual language that shifts us from being separate and observers . We enter into the space of their being and becoming . At the same moment we see their vanishing . We linger with them

Exploring notions of art, science, imagination, memory, and loss, Janet Laurence‘s practice examines our physical ,cultural and conflicting relationship to the natural world through both site specific and gallery and museum works. Experimenting with and working in varying mediums, Laurence continues to create immersive environments that navigate the interconnections between all living forms. Her practice has sustained organic qualities and a sense of transience, occupying the liminal zones, or places where art, science, imagination and memory converge. Janet Laurence lives and works in Sydney. A recipient of both a Rockefeller and Churchill Fellowship and the Alumni Award for the Arts, UNSW. Laurence was a Trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW, on the VAB Board of the Australia Council and is currently Visiting Fellow at COFA NSW University. Laurence exhibits nationally and ,internationally and has been represented in major curated and survey exhibitions Her work is included in many museum university and corporate collections as well as within architectural and landscape public places

www.janetlaurence.com

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CONFERENCE DAY 3

Animals, Plants and Food

The Forgotten Voices: Natural Sounds and the Lost Art of Listening

RICHARD NELSON

For thousands of generations, humans carried out their lives in a quiet world, interwoven with songs and whispers. Hunters and gatherers, fishermen, gardeners, and pastoralists paid careful and astute attention to the language of bird voices, the rustle of animals in thickets, the murmurings of wind and water. But now, our industrial civilization has splintered the ancient silence, with a cacophony that drowns out most natural sounds. At the same time, we have turned our attention increasingly inward, becoming largely oblivious to voices other than our own. These changes have taken place at the far edge of our consciousness, and yet they have profoundly altered our relationship to the earth and to our home country. This presentation will draw from my experiences as an ethnographer living with Inuit, Koyukon, and Gwich‘in people in northern Alaska, and from my work as a natural sounds recordist and radio producer in Alaska and Australia.

Richard Nelson is a writer, cultural anthropologist, and radio producer who has spent most of his

life in Alaska. His books include Hunters of the Northern Ice, Shadow of the Hunter, and Make

Prayers to the Raven (which became an internationally broadcast television series), and two award-

winning books about the natural world—Heart and Blood: Living with Deer in America, and The

Island Within. He is the originating producer and narrator for Encounters, a nationally broadcast

public radio program about the natural world. He is infatuated with the outdoors and his special

passions are the wild country of Alaska and Australia. Banking the Forest: Loss, hope and conservation in Hawai‘i

THOM VAN DOOREN

Hawai‗i is one of the extinction capitals of the world. Amongst a wide range of threatened taxa, the islands‘ forest species – including many plants, birds and snails – have been particularly vulnerable to extinction. This paper weaves its way through three sites of intensive care for threatened species – a seed bank, a captive bird breeding centre and a snail ark – to explore some of the problems and possibilities of attempting to ‗bank‘ biodiversity. What forms of hope animate these projects? What modes of loss do they imagine and perhaps stem? Ultimately, can Hawaii‘s disappearing forests be banked, and at what cost?

Thom van Dooren is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Humanities at the University of New South Wales. His most recent research focuses on ethics and extinction and can be found in his forthcoming book Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction (Columbia University Press, May 2014). He is also co-editor of the international, open-access, journal Environmental Humanities. t.van.dooren@unsw.edu.au

PANEL Discussion: Beyond words: Re-signifying the non-human world Encountering the (Fungally-Entangled) Anthropocene

ALISON POULIOT

For many, the word fungi means a mushroom, especially one that we can pop in our mouths. Wild harvesting and commercial production of edible mushrooms has an extended and expansive history. However, fungi in their entirety represent something way more than food, but rather, the very infrastructure that binds terrestrial ecosystems – including the systems that produce our food. Fungi underpin the functioning of the biosphere.

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In this presentation I expand the concept of this kingdom and its matrix of interconnectivity. I argue that considering a fungal future in all its manifestations is one of the challenges of the Anthropocene. Thinking beyond the human, and even the mammalian, is a project for the Environmental Humanities.

I explore both scientific and cultural perspectives on fungi in developing a thesis about their ecological and cultural significance. Imagining and engaging with fungi might enable us to move beyond discussions of issues of the Anthropocene and catalyse outcomes for change. That is, change that includes all life-forms in understanding the journey of biodiversity through the Anthropocene. It seems the Anglophone world has little interaction with this kingdom, yet the 5000+ year old Ötzi the Iceman discovered on the Austro-Italian border two decades ago indicates ancient human-fungal associations. Indeed, in his first aid kit was the birch polypore fungus known for its antibiotic and styptic effects. That such curative properties may have been recognised in the Neolithic period yet have been forgotten by present-day Anglophone societies is a conundrum. Fungi have also truly been the forgotten kingdom of present-day biodiversity conservation. Will an entire kingdom of organisms also slip through the interdisciplinary cracks of the Environmental Humanities?

Alison Pouliot is an ecologist and environmental photographer. Her work melds scientific and artistic approaches in representing and communicating environmental issues. She is currently undertaking a PhD exploring fungal-human relationships at the Australian National University.

Mobilising Materiality: Food Histories, Museum Objects, and the Resilience of Place

GEORGE MAIN

Industrial culture drove the pastoral and agricultural colonisation of inland Australia during the nineteenth century. The establishment of a modern farming landscape imposed profound environmental erasure and disruption. At odds with Aboriginal modes of tending country to foster ecological resilience and the wellbeing of land and people, a new food production system that utilised wire fences, agricultural machines, and railways to generate produce and feed the residents of distant urban centres relied upon cultural processes that devalued the local and the particular. The emergence of agricultural science as a distinct discipline in the late nineteenth century consolidated a modern stance towards Australian farmland as material terrain devoid of agency and story, as blank surfaces upon which to apply abstracted scientific and industrial imaginings. Agriculture connects everyone ‗in the most vital, constant, and concrete way to the natural world‘ wrote Donald Worster.

Across the inland slopes and plains of Australia, dynamics of history and culture hid such intimate ties.

The establishment of a modern Australian agricultural landscape in the nineteenth century, and its operation into the present, created an array of ‗shadow places‘, a term used by environmental philosopher Val Plumwood to define those ‗places that provide our material and ecological support, most of which, in a global market, are likely to elude our knowledge and responsibility‘. The obscuring of material and ecological ties that nourished Australians and recipients of exported food throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries involved a cultural process of dematerialisation, through which people could not easily identify or take responsibility for the material and ecological dynamics that sustained them. Today, might materiality itself be mobilised to uncover deep histories of human embeddedness within material and ecological networks? Can the repositioning of museum objects within rich contexts of particular places and their histories enable and vitalise understandings of human ties to productive terrains? At this time of unfolding climatic chaos and its cultural challenges, could embodied and imaginative encounters with material particularities of rural places and historic agricultural objects allow storytelling that instils resilience within land and people?

George Main is an environmental historian and a curator in the People and the Environment program at the National Museum of Australia. His work explores the capacities of ecological ways of understanding and engaging with land and materiality to bolster the resilience of places and people, and to foster the productivity of rural and urban terrains.

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Or, the whale PHILIP HOARE

The sea surrounds us. It gives us life, provides us with the air we breathe and the food we eat. It is where we came from, and what we are made of; it represents home and migration, ceaseless change and constant presence. It covers two-thirds of our planet, yet caught up in our everyday lives, we seem to ignore it, and what it might mean. In his recent books, Leviathan and The Sea Inside, Philip Hoare has attempted to rediscover the sea, its animals and birds – and the way we see them. From familiar stories of his south coast home in England, to the Azores, Cape Cod, Sri Lanka, Tasmania and New Zealand, he has explored other narratives - western, indigenous, folkloric and scientific - with particular focus on whales, fascinated by the tensions and splendours created by the uncertain meeting of human and natural history. By looking at changing attitudes in the extraordinary shared history of humans and cetacean – he will examine the nature of this rapidly changing partnership, from myth to exploitation and exultation – and note how it reflects on our greater relationship to nature itself. Taking a personal look at this sense of a shared culture – human and cetacean – and the deep-seated, often emotional connections we make with the sea, and its largest and possibly most sentient creatures, he will ask questions about what their fate, and our part in it, means for us now.

Philip Hoare is the author of seven works of non-fiction, including biographies of Stephen Tennant and Noel Coward, Wilde’s Last Stand and Spike Island. Leviathan Or, The Whale won the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for 2009. His new book, The Sea Inside, is published by Fourth Estate. He is associate professor in creative writing at the University of Southampton, UK, and artist-in-residence at the Marine Institute, Plymouth University, UK. He is also curator of the Moby-Dick Big Read - www.mobydickbigread.com - a free online version of Herman Melville‘s book featuring readings by, among others, Tilda Swinton, Stephen Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch, John Waters, Simon Callow, Fiona Shaw, David Cameron, Witi Ihimaera, and Sir David Attenborough.

PANEL Discussion: 'The Persistence of Limits'. Chair: FIONA PROBYN_RAPSY Welcome to the Anthropocene: a cultural politics of scale, temporality and the future

FIONA ALLON

In The Order of Things Foucault expresses his 'profound relief' that Man is only a recent invention and that he will disappear again as quickly as he appeared. Ironically, the concept of the Anthropocene confirms this sense of relief as both prescient and as somewhat optimistic. In this respect, and in many others, the idea of the Anthropocene seems beset by a range of paradoxes: about time, agency, scale, life and matter, and in particular by a human centredness that decades of critical thought have sought to decentre. If the past is the key to the future, as much of the literature on the Anthropocene suggests, how are we to understand the folding together of multiple temporalities in both the strata of the past and the possible futures to come? Such ambiguities of temporalisation seem to have been lost in the urgency of recognising the fossil-fuel based economies of industrial capitalism as the key source of anthropogenic climate change. Conventional categories of time and the future, likewise, seem unable to adequately apprehend the ‗derangements of scale‘ (Clark 2012) in the era of climate change. This paper addresses the disavowals that underpin narratives of industrial capitalism as a promise that has now become threat; as salvation that is now peril. Rather than positing fossil fuels as either promise or threat, this paper suggests that what needs to be acknowledged is their full imbrication and co-existence in shared forms of life in order to better understand the possibilities of living otherwise. It also argues for more nuanced models that can reflect the unevenness of space and time in the context of differentially climate-changed futures.

Fiona Allon is ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Her research areas include urban and suburban cultures, communities and belonging, and environmental humanities. She is currently working on environmental sustainability and everyday life.

The enigma of the geomorphic fold

BEN DIBLEY

While no doubt a pithy appellation for humanity‘s folding into the Earth‘s system, the notion of the Anthropocene nevertheless remains an enigma. Enigmatic, I contend, since this concept is at once inescapably anthropocentric, and yet works tirelessly to de-centre the human that it would seemingly enthrone. That is, it announces a human

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exceptionalism in which humans, not just figuratively with words and signs but literally with their tools and animals, are changing the Earth. Yet the processes that the Anthropocene designates – climate change, ocean acidification, mass extinction and so on – and the temporal scale in which these are enmeshed necessarily decentre the human as sovereign subject and planetary master. Ironically then, the concept of the Anthropocene puts the anthropos at the centre of the world and being at precisely the moment when the impossibility of disentangling the human and the nonhuman is recognized. At the same time it confirms the human as central to a temporal scale whose geological and cosmic span can only demonstrate the relative insignificance of human life, and thus of the interval in which it appeared and, most likely, will disappear. It is this enigma that this paper seeks to explore.

Ben Dibley is a Research Associate at the Institute for Culture and Society, the University of Western Sydney. He has research interests in social and cultural theory, particularly around questions of colonialism and the environment. His has recent publications in Australian Humanities Review, History and Anthropology, New Formations, and Transformations.

Curing plant blindness and illiteracy

TIM ENTWISLE

Humans display symptoms of two potentially life-threatening diseases: plant blindness and plant illiteracy. We either take plants for granted, viewing them as a kind of green wall-paper, or we fail to appreciate just how important they are to life on Earth. Botanic gardens have always celebrated plant life, displaying its variety and beauty. Now they must do more. Without losing their whimsy and charm, botanic gardens have a job to do. In my role as Director and Chief Executive of Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne I look after two truly iconic botanic gardens. In 1969, the Melbourne Gardens were described as 'the most beautiful of their kind in the southern hemisphere and perhaps the world' and last year the newly opened Australian Garden at the Cranbourne Gardens was said to be 'after the Opera House [in Sydney]...the most stunning piece of design in Australia'. Our National Herbarium of Victoria is the oldest, and historically and scientifically richest, collection of preserved plants, algae and fungi in Australia. More recently we established the Victorian Conservation Seedbank as an insurance policy and investment bank for our State‘s flora, complementing Sydney‘s PlantBank and contributing to a national partnership supported by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew‘s Millennium Seed Bank in London. Add to that more than two hundred staff, volunteers and associates who are experts in horticulture, systematics, ecology, conservation and education. With assets like these the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne is not only well placed to contribute to a cure, it must surely be obliged to do so. I‘ll explain how botanic gardens worldwide will help us survive the Anthropocene, and why its plants, algae and fungi that are really in control of this planet.

Tim Entwisle was appointed Director and Chief Executive of Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne in March 2013. He has a Bachelor of Science (with Honours) from The University of Melbourne and a PhD from La Trobe University. His botanical career began at Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, as writer and co-editor of the Flora of Victoria then Research Manager. He moved to Sydney in 1998 to become Director of Plant Sciences, then Executive Director for eight years, of Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust. Prior to returning to Melbourne, Professor Entwisle moved to London for two years to be Director of Conservation, Living Collections and Estates at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He has published extensively on the systematics and ecology of freshwater algae, being honoured in 2013 when a new genus (Entwisleia), family and order of algae were named after him. Professor Entwisle is a prolific communicator of science, including a five-year-old blog Talking Plants, and frequent contributions to radio, television, print and social media. He is a Visiting Professor at Durham University and Honorary Professor at Sydney University.

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VENUE INFORMATION – LAW SCHOOL FOYER

EXPLORING THE ANTHROPO – SCENERY Tuesday 25 February 2014 6 – 7.30pm Law School Foyer - Level 2 Eastern Avenue, The University of Sydney

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VENUE INFORMATION - Dockside

From CBD: Walk down Market Street past the Darling Park monorail station on your right. Go down the escalators onto the Pyrmont Pedestrian Bridge level and turn left past the restaurant Chinta Ria, walk behind Coast Restaurant and take the escalators down one level. Dockside is on the right hand side. From Ibis Hotel King St Wharf: Walk along the Foreshore towards the Aquarium. Follow the foreshore under the pedestrian bridge. You will pass a new row of bars and restaurants. On the Left the right hand side (near Lindt Café) take the escalators up 1 level. Dockside is directly ahead on The Balcony level. Via Train: Alight at Town Hall Station, walk down Market Street past the Darling Park monorail station on your right. Go down the escalators onto the Pyrmont Pedestrian Bridge level and turn left past the restaurant Chinta Ria, walk behind Coast Restaurant and take the escalators down one level. Dockside is on the right hand side Via Taxi: Ask to be dropped off at Cockle Bay Wharf under the blue canvas awning. The driver needs to take Wheat Road by keeping left going past the IMAX Theatre. Take the escalators up one level to Dockside.