CATALOGUE FOR /
The Carbon Imaginary
Isabella Jacob, Jemila MacEwan and Kai Franz
September 11 — October 31, 2020
curated by Jeannine Bardo and John Ros

Do rocks listen? Can rocks die?

In our current age of the Anthropocene, a disputed term used for the geological epoch during which human activity has been the dominant influence on Earth’s climate and the environment, anthropologist and critical theorist Elizabeth Povinelli, asks the above questions as a challenge to the destructive systems of settler colonialism, a form of colonialism that seeks to replace the Indigenous population with the settler population, and late liberal capitalism by bringing into focus the relationship between Nonlife entities and Life.

Povinelli posits The Carbon Imaginary as an “in between”, what exists between Bios (Life) and Geos (Nonlife). This “in between” is the separation we have formed by elevating Bios and commodifying Geos as if they are separate entities instead of parts of the whole, an assemblage of living and nonliving substances that breathe in and out as one.

We need a language of the ages, an understanding of the past, an informed knowledge of the present and humanity’s role in the current collapse of ecosystems and a high regard for what that future that will be.

The artists of The Carbon Imaginary have their own aesthetic language that speaks of/ to and for elements of the Geos and the human connection to non-life entities through artistic process and use of materials. Their work inhabits “the pulsing scarred region between Life and Nonlife” and makes us pay attention — by contributing their own literacy to the language of the Geos.