The Anthropocene Project

With the traditional methods of knowledge acquisition – the natural sciences on the one side and the humanities on the other – mankind has reached a limit. What can we do, how can we know? With what means, methods and senses can we encounter the world of our own creation? In A Report, an extensive program of events in conclusion to the Anthropocene Project, the HKW will be exploring precisely these questions.

In the Anthropocene, it will be necessary to reformulate a variety of phenomena and processes of being in the world and making the world. Rapid climate change, biodiversity shrinkage, or the dispersion of anthropogenic materials take on a life of their own: what practices, knowledge-forms, and modes of participation are required within the Anthropocene? What do material processes mean for the articulation of the world around us?

This project by Armin Linke, Territorial Agency (John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog), and Anselm Franke develops film productions on questions and implications of the thesis of the Anthropocene.

Understanding and shaping the complex transformation processes of the Anthropocene requires a collaborative, transdisciplinary practice of knowledge production and transmission. New modes and methods of collaboration between science, art, and civic engagement need to be explored and implemented.

The exhibition and the conference The Whole Earth are dedicated to the story of the image of the “blue planet” which has become one of the most influential images in history.

'Nature as we know it is a concept that belongs to the past. No longer a force separate from and ambivalent to human activity, nature is neither an obstacle nor a harmonious other. Humanity forms nature. Humanity finds itself embedded within the recent geological record.' This is the core premise of the Anthropocene thesis, announcing a paradigm shift in the natural sciences as well as providing new models for culture, politics, and everyday life.

For some time now, the Western musical canon has been expanded by an interest in non-European music. But it is now time to go a step further: in the age of humanity, with “Unmenschliche Musik” (Inhuman Music) HKW will take a look at compositions by machines, animals, and chance.

“The evil has no songs,” or so goes an old German saying. Yet an English saying contradicts this point of view: “The devil has all the best tunes.” More than any other art form, music seems to tend to romanticize violence, be it in gangsta-rap, death metal, mafia songs, the rembetiko, warrior songs, or old ballads in praise of murderers.

How do mortal remains, DNA samples, and satellite images become forensic evidence? What role do imaging techniques and methods of representation play in the investigation of crimes or political acts of violence? How are objects made to speak?

Theme of Stupid Music is escapism: the flight from everyday life, from reality, from bad news, and the role music can play in this – music that dulls our senses, deafens and numbs us, and makes us "stupid".