Paper short abstract:

“The Impossibility of a Planet”, by artists and researchers Jeremy Bolen and Jamie Allen, is an ongoing research and media project that seeks out dialogues with people who compose planetary images, thought, narratives, and models.

Paper long abstract:

As earthlings, we must understand ourselves as part of a planetary commons. There are modes of thought, experience, and media that provide registers of access to the material fact of kinds of planetarity (Spivak). Prime examples include those much-discussed photographs of Earth—1968's “Earthrise” and 1972’s “Blue Marble” images—that were thought to have the potential to precipitate a worldwide, common planetary consciousness.

Some practitioners and institutions of science and otherwise are acutely aware of the common planet on which we all live; they are compelled to choose planetary magnitudes as their main frame of reference. In the natural sciences, researchers sample and interpolate data from all over the globe and those who derive large-scale models of planet-wide systems. In macroeconomics and geopolitics, there are those who template and influence things like currencies and markets, international conflict and policies. In the humanities and social sciences, studies of transnational cultures, globalisation, and migration hold perspectives that include the entirety of planet Earth as a research subject or context. “The Anthropocene,” “technosphere,” and “planetarity” are characterisations attempting to name such global knowledge practices and orientations. “The Impossibility of a Planet” is a textual and multimedia artistic research project that socialises the active processes that are now helping to reform the imaginaries and realities that come along with the continually resurgent idea of planetary health. We propose a brief presentation of the ongoing critical media and artistic project, as well as interviews and an activated discussion session with media prompts for EASST/4S in Amsterdam.