“Picture after picture [by photographer Chris Jordan] depicts the decomposed bodies of albatross chicks – just bones, feathers, and a beak remaining, and in the middle of each, a multicolored pile of plastic and other debris: cigarette lighters, bottle tops, toy soldiers, and so many other little items.”
“Millions of years of albatross evolution – woven together by the lives and reproductive labours of countless individual birds – comes into contact with less than 100 years of human “ingenuity” in the form of plastics and organochlorines discovered or commercialized in the early decades of the twentieth century.”
Reading Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction by Thom Van Dooren in preparation for chairing a discussion on Sunday 16th November at the Only Human? Festival in Glasgow. [note: the discussion on Sunday 16th is with the author Thom Van Dooren]
The humanities and creative practices have a role in comprehending the meaning of the anthropocene, where all of the world is affected by one/our species. We have a role in addressing extinction, the end point of millions of years of the evolution of, for example, the albatross becoming itself as a species, and its-selves as individuals. We have a role in challenging human exceptionalism. Face it, we need to talk about it.
Will you be recording your talk on extinction Chris? Your previous comment/post on recent celebrity extinction event in London was something I also resonated with – when are the arts really going to connect with these issues in some depth – relying on you so 🙂
Hi I’ll be chairing a discussion with the author Thom van Dooren who has written on extinction. I don’t know if it will be recorded.