Pleistocene, Holocene, Anthropocene, Chthulucene, Capital-ocene, to name a few, are terms developed (and debated) in an attempt to question the possibilities of a before and after, surviving and perishing. It is intertwined with threads of ontological upsets, interspecies livelihoods, and coalescences of contagions and contaminations. In our current moment, the 'where' of our creative and lived spaces becomes othered. Will it be inside or outside, before or after, distance and dying, reside. Antropoceno, carries with it messages of doom, survival, profound loss, and renewal visualized through trans-disciplinary cooperation. I defer to Donna Haraway's contact zones to underscore how we are constituted relationally.
The new edition of Contrapuntos Antropoceno aptly falls under the number IX. As one reads this text, he/she/they will be anticipating toward X, the unexpected, the precarious, what I would call the looping of the 'relative' and the 'relato.' The curation of Antropoceno collaborates with a range of artists as a collective and intimate act.
Beginning from the outside, Visual Artist Mariam Karbassi's Luchadores Tristes pays homage to his encounter with a familial COVID bereavement as visualizing masculine grief. As the reader opens the book, it provides permission to recognize what the present has done to our environment and as an invitation step through this ninth edition's literary door to see what has been created during our great inside/outside shift and the distance between us.
