Land \u0026 Animal \u0026 Nonanimal by Anna-Sophie Springer


Land \u0026 Animal \u0026 Nonanimal
Title : Land \u0026 Animal \u0026 Nonanimal
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0993907415
ISBN-10 : 9780993907418
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 160
Publication : First published January 1, 2015

Land & Animal & Nonanimal turns the attention from the built space of cultural repositories to the postnatural landscapes of planet Earth. In his interview about urban soils of the Anthropocene, landscape architect Seth Denizen considers a history of land use practices that is also reflected in artist Robert Zhao Renhui’s photographs of Singapore as a scenario of continuous development. Inspired by a recent visit to the environment of Wendover in the Utah desert, Richard Pell and Lauren Allen of Pittsburgh’s Center for PostNatural History make a case for a postnatural imprint upon the geologic aspects inherent in the concept of the Anthropocene. By encountering “the last snail,” environmental historicist and philosopher Thom van Dooren considers the meaning of hope and care in the context of species extinction. And while curator Natasha Ginwala’s paginated series with contributions by Bianca Baldi, Arvo Leo, Axel Staschnoy, and Karthik Pandian & Andros Zins-Browne turns to cosmological and ancestral human-animal scenarios, sound artist and researcher Mitchell Akiyama explores philosophies of consciousness against the background of the phonogram in nineteenth-century simian research.

Land \u0026 Animal \u0026 Nonanimal Reviews

  • Mary

    I picked up a copy of this dynamite reader the last time I visited the Center for Postnatural History, a museum I interned for a few years back. Pell and Allen's essay, "Preface to a Genealogy of the Postnatural" lends the collection much of its weight (physically and academically), however it was Mitchell Akyama's two-part contribution that made the text valuable, clever. "Unbecoming, Animal" documents the development of recording technology in relation to the logic of weaponry: as the reel-to-reel recorder emerged, "capturing" became polysemic. Indeed, "in the 1850s, at the height of British colonial power, taxidermy and photography were employed almost interchangeably to preserve exotic game for both glory and science" (p115). He goes on to deliberate what it means to be captured by the apparatus of language, etc.--it's delightful. I'd love to see further work done on what this means in the age of virtuality, how digital representation extends this historical narrative, etc.