fragments, glimpses, notes and the relentless present

(this text can also be found on the FoAM blog and photos are on Flickr)

“Dark ecology undermines the naturalness of the stories we tell about how we are involved in nature. It preserves the dark, depressive quality of life in the shadow of ecological catastrophe. Instead of whistling in the dark, insisting that we’re part of Gaia, why not stay with the darkness?” —Timothy Morton, Ecology without Nature.

Twice this year I have travelled north of the Arctic Circle, once to Greenland around Solstice, during the yearly cycle of continuous daylight and more recently at the edge of darkness in the Norwegian-Russian border zone. These two points hold open a larger temporality, the slow motion retreat of the glaciers, gradually shifting populations (human, animal and corporate) alongside the erratic winding down of industrial age metal smelting, pollution machines taking almost anything living with them. Outside of a tangible human immediacy, the inevitable geologic plays itself out.

To set the scene for the most recent journey north, Tim Morton introduced ‘Dark Ecology’ with an elaboration on non-anthopocentric approaches to ecological thinking. Central to this was his open-ended invitation to explore ‘Thinking at Earth Magnitude’, finding a scale, or shape or situation that bends human biases enough to oscillate at the resonant frequencies of planetary concerns.

And then…