The Centre of Research Architecture students at Goldsmiths University of London participated in a workshop organized by Sonic Acts & BAK "Basis voor Actuele Kunst" in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The workshop focused on what the Anthropocene means for ontology as well as for politics.
Speculative Realist philosophy is known to seek the world as it is apart from human access. Given that the Anthropocene is, by definition, a geological era created by human activity, it might seem impossible to ask about the Anthropocene apart from interference by humans. Yet the fact that humans triggered the Anthropocene does not mean that the features of the Anthropocene are transparent to human knowledge. This ambiguity in the human relation to the Anthropocene (we created it, yet do not understand it) is the basic puzzle of Anthopocene ontology on which the workshop focused.
The workshop masterclass which followed an exhibition by Territorial Agency, was led by Graham Harman who is a distinguished University Professor at the American University in Cairo, and chief exponent of object-oriented philosophy and a founding member of the Speculative Realism movement.
