Dr. Saadia Mirza
What does the Anthropocene mean to you?
The Anthropocene is a term that necessitates critical reflection. Like many thinkers have already argued, it flattens the 'anthropos' of the anthropocene, and with it, the question of which groups, in which wealth brackets, and where, have driven the anthropocene. It was useful to catalyze a certain consciousness in previous decades, and we did need this term in order to go beyond it.
How does the Anthropocene play a role in your work?
I use the Anthropocene as a critical term in my work; one that reflects a valid geological reality, but which is socially and culturally losing its agency. I work with it as a playground for a critical imagination of other speculative worlds and forms of human-environment relations, since I try to move away from the descensionist thinking it has become associated with.
What project(s) are you working on during your fellowship at the Forum Basiliense?
During my fellowship at the Forum Basiliense, I am expanding on an ongoing research-creation project about methods and means of environmental sensing, with a focus on mysterious and elusive glacial processes that are hard to image or capture. I use cultural and scientific imagination as a way to understand their hidden processes with greater sensitivity and envision a future paraglacial world. I work ethnographically with geophysicists to this end, and I employ sound and immersive media to create expressive works from the data I gather.
Podcast Episode: The sound of cracking ice, and why language matters
A dive into melting glaciers and lies about climate change
When ice cracks, it produces sounds that are often imperceptible to the human ear. Using specialized equipment, artist and anthropologist Saadia Mirza translates these sounds into immersive installations that invite audiences to engage with the effects of climate heating. Climate change is also the subject of Doriana Cimmino's work, but in different sense: she explores the way newspapers and social media influencers talk about this subject in order to distort public perception. In the age of the Anthropocene, both skills are essential: to listen to nature, and to distinguish lies from truth.