Anja Kanngieser Talk

THE INTERDISCIPLINARY CENTER for the STUDY of GLOBAL CHANGE presents a talk by Anja Kanngieser titled “Listening to the Anthropocene: Sound and Ecological Crisis” on Thursday, March 24^th from 3:00 – 4:30pm in Carlson Lower Level 122. Click here for more information.

This talk explores imaginations of the natural world at a time of accelerating global environmental crisis; in an era currently being defined as the Anthropocene, a geophysical term “which recognizes that human intrusion on the planet’s surface and into the atmosphere has been so extreme as to qualify our time on earth as a specific geological epoch”. It does so through mediums and methods ofsound being used contemporaneously by artists, bioacousticians and scientists to make sense of, and communicate, earth system changes. Mapping out a range of ecoacoustic practices from field recordings to data and geo- sonifications, the talk investigates how such practices seek to delineate, highlight, and/ or overcome, distinctions between natural and social, urban and rural, exceptional and everyday. 
This talk argues that these delineations are critical to perceptions of climate change, and its uneven human causations and effects. Fundamental to this investigation is the claim that such delineations affect the ability to listen to, and take care of, the myriad and complex ecosystems of which humans are a part. Through grounding in research coming from the geohumanities, this talk shows how rather than being separate realms, the natural and social are deeply entangled and implicated in one another. As this talk emphasises, sound, as a medium that brings the world into proximity and envelops us, is uniquely placed to approach and communicate these critical, and ever more urgent, entanglements.
Dr. Kanngieser's research explores a number of timely themes -- climate politics, labor and surveillance, colonialism and resistance -- in remarkably creative ways, including through the use of sound. She recently authored the book "Experimental Politics and the Making of Worlds," which explores creative activism as a means for opening up channels of communication and finding common sites for contestation. More information about Dr.Kanngieser's work can be found here: http://transversalgeographies.org/
Co-sponsored by: The Department of Political Science, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Sociology, the Department of Geography, Environment & Society, the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies (GWSS), and the Institute for Global Studies (IGS).