The "Elemental" Potency of Climate to Think Communication in the Anthropocene

• In Event: Elements: Thinking Our Present Elementally - II

Abstract

To propose thoughts with the elements seems to us a powerful way to experiment other possible ways of communication in the Anthropocene. We are particularly interested on a communication in which the human ceases to be at the center of relations and, thus, it can be populated by nonhuman forces (winds, clouds, rains). Forces that open fields of interests among heterogeneous (Stengers) and that create effective means of combating diseased anthropocentric and ethnocentric logics. To think the elementary from a multidimensional perspective, we propose to articulate different practices - philosophical, scientific and artistic - focusing on the climate as a fundamental intercessor to think in the communicational processes. Establishing a dialogue with the Elemental of Deleuze & Guattari, specially the idea of the continuums between humans and the elements opening a perspective to the elements as affections that generate life. The essay “The Apocalypse” by the poet Lawrence gives us the possibility of thinking with pagan peoples on how to activate the wide range of elemental relationships "in us" that have died and need to come back to life. By inviting climate models into the picture, we want to embrace the problem of contemporary sciences going into communications with a constant moving matter and formation process (Prigogine), and connect these authors to the collective artistic experiments that we have developed in the journal ClimaCom (National Institute of Science and Technology for Climate Change Phase 2), in which the climate emerges as a vital condition of creation, in its elemental power.

Authors

• Susana Oliveira Dias, University of Campinas

• Antonio Carlos Rodrigues de Amorim, University of Campinas

• Renato Salgado de Melo Oliveira, Institute Federal Baiano