Fieldtalks, at the Anthropocene Campus Philadelphia

Abstract

What would a conversation with a piece of asbestos, or a piece of plastic stranded on the shore of the Schuylkill River be like? And how could a conversation transpire, between things and researchers and other things, if they landed in the same place and found for themselves a common language? Imprinted by Philadelphia’s singular industrial and technological history, the soils, water systems, and infrastructures of the Delaware Valley tell a story of the Anthropocene, the contentious and debated terminology for this new and anthropocentric geological era in which human activities have forever altered the Earth. For the Anthropocene Campus Philadelphia (ACP), continent. attempts to listen to the material utterances of sites that voice intertwined economic, technological, and political histories of The Athens of America, a city, a factory, a riverbed, a valley, an escarpment.

Collaborating with researchers, activists, scientists and student groups, continent. conducts a set of field walks and discussions that gather objects, samples, sounds, stories, and conversations. We might visit former asbestos production areas at Ambler, call on the developments around Philly’s harbour and waterfront developments, check out conditions along the Schuylkill River and will perchance examine archives at the Academy of Natural Sciences, amongst other areas of interest. Brought to the APC to constitute an anthropocenic evidence locker, a sample table for the technosphere, these artifacts will provide material interfaces and witnesses in the institutional ecosystem of the campus.Inviting more human and linguistic beings to think with and through these collected materials, continent. will issue a series of recorded audio interviews, subject and objects in discussion: Fieldtalks is a continent. podcast at the Anthropocene Campus Philadelphia.

Based on observations and collections of materials at symptomatic and Anthropocenic sites, continent. hosted and recorded Fieldtalks in and around the Anthropocene Campus Philadelphia. Participants were invited to think about and bring along documents, objects, artifacts, images, texts that speak to their experience of industrial activity and ecological interactions in the region.

Fieldtalks, at the Anthropocene Campus Philadelphia is a collaboration the ANTHROPOCENE CAMPUS PHILADELPHIA (ACP), Scott Knowles and his students preceding the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology.