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0172 Anthropogenic Landscapes ×

Anthropogenic landscapes have emerged across the Earth as the result of sustained direct human interactions with ecosystems, forming the social-ecological crucibles within which human systems gained the capacity to alter the trajectory of the entire planet. As a defining context of the Anthropocene, anthropogenic landscapes are at once local and global, background and foreground, human and natural, nurturer of humanity and nurtured by humanity. To engage in shaping a better Anthropocene is to engage in foregrounding and co-creating the landscapes within which both humans and non-human nature can thrive. The seminar “Anthropogenic Landscapes” took place on the occasion of Campus 2014: The Anthropocene Issue at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin and explored modes of engagement with anthropogenic landscapes ranging from stewardship to emergence, engineering and design together with the challenges, opportunities, and trade-offs arising in the act of co-creating the Anthropocene. Read more

Fundamental to this commitment was the need to confront processes of knowledge generation and creative action with the socio-ecological structures and dynamics of anthropogenic landscapes as they are experienced directly on site, while at the same time applying them to local case studies and intervening onto world systems. To accomplish this, diagnostic analyses of selected case studies were applied to assess a wide range of social-ecological strategies and outcomes of inhabiting, using, adapting to, and coping with landscapes across different world communities from local habitats to megacities. To put this knowledge into action, students were challenged to bring their own hypothetical strategies of proactive landscape change into a contested urban environment to engage in a process of anthropocenic knowledge co-creation. A flash fieldwork trip to the former VEB Elektrokohle site, a GDR state-owned factory for graphite production in Berlin-Lichtenberg (0154 San Gimignano Lichtenberg), helped to observe, study, and reshape the shift from the larger context down to the local. Read less

Category
Initiative
Place
Berlin
Year
2014
Venue
Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)
Title
Campus 2014: The Anthropocene Issue
Collaboration
HKW with Brandlhuber+
Team
Elena Bougleux, Arno Brandlhuber, Erle C. Ellis, Tobias Hönig, Natalie Jeremijenko
Contributors
Ally Bisshop, Jeremy Bolen, Guido Caniglia, Zachary Caple, Benjamin Casper, Enrico Costanzo, Søren Dahlgaard, Seth Denizen, Jonathan F. Donges, Maialen Galarraga (Maia), Paz Guevara, Michael Jakob, Maya Kóvskaya, Jonas Loh, Chip Lord, Mahrizal Mahrizal, Ben Mendelsohn, Enrico Giustiniano Micheli, Navjot Altaf Mohamedi, John Moran, Marta Niepytalska, Eric Paglia, Sascha Pohflepp, Christopher Reznich, Marc Schleunitz, Annegret Schmidt, Isabell Schrickel, Emily Eliza Scott, Francesco Sebregondi, Emanuele Serrelli, Jorg Sieweke, Hendricus, Andy Simarmata, Anna-Sophie Springer, Anna Lillie Svensson, Yesenia Thibault-Picazo, Zev Trachtenberg, Marija Uzunova, Helge Wendt, Thilo Wiertz, Andrew Yang, Pinar Yoldas

Flyer for Campus 2014: The Anthropocene Issue © HKW with an illustration by Benedikt Rugar

© Jens Kirstein

© Jens Kirstein

© Jens Kirstein

© Jens Kirstein

© Jens Kirstein