The Call of the Anthropocene

Bibliographic Data

ID6141819
AuthorsJohn Beck (0000-0002-8128-8194, University of Westminster, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume10
Issue3
Pages404-414
Publication date2014-11-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCultural Politics an International Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1743-2197 • E-ISSN: 1751-7435
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/17432197-2795765
OpenAlexW2010038851
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited6

In late 2012 a communications satellite called EchoStar XVI launched into space from Kazakhstan where it remains in a geostationary orbit around Earth. The satellite contains artist and geographer Trevor Paglen’s The Last Pictures, a collection of one hundred images, sourced from libraries and artists, microetched onto a gold-plated disc. Paglen’s project is both a continuation of, and a critical response to, the notion of the time capsule as a means of delivering, either to a terrestrial future or to some extraterrestrial destination, an abbreviated representative sample of “civilization.” The utopianism that motivates many time-capsule projects, whether it is articulated through a belief in the power to communicate with a distant future or with some cosmically remote intelligence, is also a manifestation, this article argues, of progressive modernity’s commitment to timekeeping—to the successful capture and command, interpretation and anticipation, of past and future times. Paglen’s project is considered here as a retort to the repressions and exclusions that underwrite the optimism of the conventional capsule; The Last Pictures is the futureless call of the Anthropocene

Anthropocene · Archaeology · Civilization · Environmental ethics · Modernity · Political science · History · Law · Philosophy · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life

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