Reduction Linocut, 2019

There is a lot of discussion among academics when the era of the Anthropocene began. One could argue that it germinated with the domestication of crops and animals, when humans started to consciously manipulate their surroundings approximately 10,000 years ago. Domestication of our plants and animals have certainly spurred human population growth on our planet, which has resulted in diminished ecosystems and extinction of species. A re-discovery in the Anthropocene is that ‘nature’ is not inanimate after all; it is animated. It reacts and moves in response to our actions, because we are part of it. However, our mainstream perceptions of conservation still tend to be very fragmented. As Anna Tsing observes: “Conservation biologists segregate nonhumans; political ecologists too often take them for granted as resources for human use. Instead, we might want to look at how species and populations slip in and out of markets, in and out of cultural attention, and in and out of a whole spectrum of not-yet-fully-described interactions between humans and nonhumans.”[1]

In my Domestication and Extinction series, I want to examine the intricate, Anthropocenic interconnectedness of the actions of humans with our non-human environment through the hourglass lens of those two related themes.

[1] Quote taken from:

Nixon, Rob.  Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, 2011, Harvard University Press, p. 175