This week we witnessed a magic act in class.
I saw, with my very own two metaphorical eyes, the emergence of a metaphorical bunny out of a metaphorical hat.
That is, after reading 5 powerful lectures aimed at subverting the very notion of what it means to be human and live on this planet delivered by Bruno Latour we stood in silent awe (ok, joking, we read and conversed in utmost captivation) as Latour explained how we might begin to more accurately understand our being on this planet.
What Latour did throughout his lectureship was challenge the way our species conceptualizes its “role” on the earth while simultaneously criticizing our species relationship to Nature and Gaia. In other words, Latour is critical of how “moderns” face backwards in time and exert themselves while running away from the tragedies of the past. Latour argues the wiser thing to do today is to face forwards in time by looking into the future and preparing for impending ecological catastrophe. Latour places trust in the sciences to inform us about changing climates and the impacts of such change on human settlement. Latour believes these changes might not be so pretty for future generations of humans. These disastrous changes, Latour contends, result from our own activities, essentially equating humanity with the chick who sits spoiling its own nest. The problem is that we realize these changes are coming (see the geological epoch “The Anthropocene”) but do little to nothing to avert them. Why? Are we paralyzed with fear? Latour says no! Fear of armageddon could help us act, in fact, in a prophylactic way. So how might we harness our fear and use our understanding of our role in creating a dangerously changing planet?
This is where Latour’s bunny emerges triumphantly from the lecturer’s complex hat: Latour argues that in order to understand the impact our species has on the planet, while realizing how our actions loop back and impact us, we need to creatively represent our place in the complex system that is our planet. Latour argues that art is particularly adept at communicating this concept, and references a specific installation by Tomas Saraceno, “On Space Time Foam.” Saraceno’s installation puts participants on an inflated sheet of plastic where their environment reacts to their movements and the movements of others, therefore influencing their potential actions and the actions of others. Saraceno’s work presents an adept metaphor for the current age of Latour’s Gaia, helping us (whom Latour calls the “Earthbound”) conceptualize our position and status on the planet.