This essay examines cloud depictions made by the Swedish artist Charlotte Wahlström (1849–1924) during the turn of the twentieth century. The purpose of the essay is to increase the knowledge of the works of a relatively unexplored female artist and discuss how an ecocritical perspective can bring new light to landscape painting during this period of time. The material consists of a selection of six landscape paintings with cloud motifs displayed at the exhibition Kvinnliga pionjärer – Visionära landskap at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde in Stockholm. The analysis is based on formal aspects from Allan Ellenius’ scheme for image analysis combined with an ecocritical theoretical approach, which puts the cloud paintings in an Anthropocentric context. By painting, Wahlström positions herself to the clouds, which reflects the relation between human and nature. Wahlström’s cloud paintings tend to be seen as subjective mood paintings, on which human feelings are reflected, regardless of the stylistic depiction of the clouds. The result shows that an ecocritical focus enables an image analysis that puts the clouds and the nature in focus, free from human’s projection of her own feelings. Ecocriticism cannot, however, see beyond the fact that a painting is an artefact made by and regarded by humans, and in turn always subjective.

“Kollektiv odling i kris - en antropocen trädgård"  visar en vision av hur ytor i en svensk stad har omformats och omplanerats, kanske som en konsekvens av samhälleliga beslut, kanske genom ideellt arbete - kanske bäggedera.   Bakgrunden till allt det här är såklart klimatförändringarna, som med stor sannolikhet om några år även kommer påverka matförsörjningen. Det blir då nödvändigt att odla mer lokalt, i Sverige och i våra städer där merparten bor och lever.   Idén är att odlingsmarken och växthus genererar grönsaker och baljväxter, som vi idag importerar, och som kommer att utgöra en större andel av vår kost i framtiden. Transporterna blir minimalt korta, och maten konsumeras i första hand av stadsborna runt omkring, samtidigt som avfallet från odlingen genererar värme och jord till växthuset och odlingen.   Runt varje trädgård går en mur av jord som skyddar odlingen från ljud och avgaser från motorvägen, och även från vinden. Muren blir en tydlig figur i stadslandskapet som ramar in och skyddar odlingen. Alla trädgårdar har en mittaxel där vattnet leds, och bredvid ligger odlingarna, som ramas in av jordväggar som värmer upp jorden. Strukturen förstärks av längor av växthus längs med jordväggarna.   Den antropocena trädgården är varken en utopi eller dystopi. Projektet handlar bara om hur framtiden kanske helt nödvändigt kan komma att se ut, och om hur staden kan planera för att möta framtida behov. / ”Collective cultivation in crisis – an Anthropocene garden” shows a vision of how the spaces in a Swedish city have been reshaped and restructured, perhaps as a consequence of societal decisions, perhaps through local initiatives – perhaps both.   The background to this project is obviously climate change, which most likely, in a few years’ time, will also affect food supply. It will then be necessary to grow locally, in Sweden and in our cities where most people live.   The idea is thus that the cultivated land and greenhouses will generate vegetables and legumes, which we today import and which will make up most of our food intake in the future. Transportation will be minimised, and the food will be consumed firstly by the city dwellers living around the cultivation, at the same time as the waste produced will generate heat and soil for the greenhouse and cultivation.   Around each garden, there is a wall made of earth that protects the cultivation from noise and exhaust from the motorway and also from the wind. The wall becomes a significant figure in the cityscape that frames and protects the cultivation. All the gardens have a central axis where the water is conducted and next to it there are the cultivations, framed by the walls which heat up the soil. The structure is strengthened by rows of greenhouses along the earth walls. The Anthropocene garden is neither a utopia nor a dystopia. The project is simply about how the future may necessarily come to look like, and about how the city can plan to meet future needs.

Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach series has been a talking point for many ecocritical papers exploring themes of Anthropocene, uncanny, and hyperobjects. Despite the plethora of themes being investigated concerning climate change in Southern Reach, an important aspect, the climate change bureaucracy of the Southern Reach agency, is glossed over. This agency is responsible for containing Area X as well as understanding it. By primarily looking at Max Weber’s notions of bureaucracy and Jale Tosun’s and Michael Howelett’s discussion on public bureaucracy facing climate change, this thesis explores why the bureaucratic system of the Southern Reach fails to deal with climate change and, more importantly, claims that a rational bureaucratic administrative system is not equipped to deal with environmental changes of Area X because it defies the epistemological capacity of rational bureaucracy.

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Background: Cities worldwide are growing fast, and so is solid waste production, which calls for different stakeholders to come together and find creative ways to deal with urban growth and waste. This study explores how Augmented Reality (AR) could enhance public participation in public spaces and deal with solid wastein Mozambique’s capital city, Maputo. The study draws on material semiotics, detournement theorists and study participants’ views gathered through a questionnaire on urban public spaces in the city to make a case for AR technologies to enhance public engagement. Methodology: The study received responses from 57 participants (n=57). Inspired by theparticipants’ answers, Detournement theory, and AR activism, an AR experience called the Trash Snail to symbolise the slowness of the municipalityin gathering solid waste and properly managing it and the waste’s agency in shaping life in public spaces was created. Results: Three participants placed and experienced the Trash Snail in public spaceswith poorly managed solid waste. They also responded to two surveys, one before the experience with AR and the other after experiencing AR. The results were screenshots depicting the Trash Snail co-habitating with waste from human consumption and modes of living in contemporary Maputo and residents’ opinions about public spaces in Maputo. Conclusions: Drawing on those materials, Detournement theory and AR activism, the study concluded that AR, rather than just relaying computer-generated graphics information onto the real world, is best understood as an agent that shapes the users’ relations with it. AR has the potential to enhance public engagement in public spaces and in dealing with solid waste issues in Maputo. However, structural challenges related to the digital divide and financial shortcomings are limiting factors that one needs to consider when employing AR in Maputo and similar contexts. On a more extrapolative note, the study argues waste in public spaces needs to be seen as more than an administrative and technical problem, but one that is deeply embedded in lifestyles and accelerated consumption.

[pt] Esta pesquisa investiga como o conceito interdisciplinar do Antropoceno está sendo incorporado à política internacional para abordar preocupações com possibilidades para o nosso futuro global. Isso é feito por meio da análise de documentos-chave do PNUD, que vem utilizando esse conceito ao longo dos últimos anos para orientar a reformulação de suas estratégias de Desenvolvimento Humano. Em um cenário de intensas crises globais, o Antropoceno vem ganhando espaço na teoria das Relações Internacionais como diagnóstico da insustentabilidade dos atuais arranjos sociais, políticos e econômicos; e um ponto de partida teórico para os esforços de reconstrução. Por meio de discussões sobre o Antropoceno, vários pontos estão sendo avançados por estudiosos de RI: desde a ideia de que precisa haver uma mudança nas visões cosmológicas até a ideia de que entidades naturais como florestas devem ser determinadas como atores em arenas de tomada de decisão internacional. Esta tese visa complementar essa literatura, trazendo para a discussão as mudanças programáticas e políticas já apontadas por um ator internacional relevante. Com isso, pretendo colaborar para tornar essa discussão teórica mais robusta, e espero também apontar possíveis rumos que a política internacional poderia seguir na incorporação de preocupações antropocênicas com a sustentabilidade da vida no planeta. / [en] This research investigates how the interdisciplinary concept of the Anthropocene is being incorporated into international policy to address concerns with possibilities for our global future. This is done through an analysis of key documents by the UNDP, which has been using this concept over the last few years to orient a reformulation of its Human Development strategies. In a scenario of intense global crises, the Anthropocene has been gaining space in International Relations theory as a diagnosis of the unsustainability of current social, political and economic arrangements; and a theoretical start point for reconstruction efforts. Through discussions around the Anthropocene, multiple points are being advanced by IR scholars: from the idea that there needs to be a shift in cosmological visions, to the idea that natural entities such as forests should be determined as actors in international decision-making arenas. This thesis aims to complement that literature by bringing into the discussion the programmatic and policy shifts already being pointed to by a relevant international actor. With that, I intend to collaborate to make this theoretical discussion more robust, and hopefully also point to possible directions that international policy could follow in the incorporation of Anthropocenic concerns with the sustainability of life in the planet.

[pt] A presente tese visa apresentar uma perspectiva antropológica para a crise ambiental da Baixada de Jacarepaguá, situada na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, ao longo do século XX. Mais especificamente, essa perspectiva busca compreender a história dessa crise a partir da intensa transformação das águas e da terra, inserindo as ações antrópicas locais no contexto global de ações humanas que mudaram a relação entre os seres humanos e não humanos que configuram o Antropoceno-mais-que-humano da antropóloga Anna Tsing. Ao longo do século XX, principalmente a partir dos anos 1970, após a aprovação do Plano Piloto do arquiteto Lúcio Costa, as inúmeras e aceleradas ações humanas para modernizar a região, como as obras de infraestrutura urbana e os frequentes lançamentos de diversos empreendimentos imobiliários pelos agentes da transformação – poder público e empreendedores - iniciaram uma crise ambiental local que foi acentuada pelo comportamento feral de algumas espécies, como o crescimento descontrolado das gigogas e floração das cianobactérias em todo o complexo lagunar da baixada. Além disso, enquanto as tilápias, uma espécie exótica, contribuíram para a mudança na ecologia da ictiofauna, o jacaré-de-papo-amarelo, espécie local, passou a ser um reflexo dessas ações antrópicas, quando seu corpo foi deformado por conta da ingestão de plástico e outros produtos inorgânicos oriundo das atividades humanas. A transformação da paisagem e do comportamento das espécies proporcionou alteração na vida daquelas pessoas que dependem dos recursos naturais provenientes das águas do complexo lagunar. Dessa forma, a crise ambiental desencadeada por conta tanto da intensa e acelerada transformação da região quanto do comportamento feral de algumas espécies da Baixada talvez possa ser entendida como um exemplo local, dentre tanto outros pelo mundo, que revelam os riscos do Antropoceno. / [en] This thesis aims to present an anthropological perspective on the environmental crisis in Baixada de Jacarepaguá, located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, throughout the 20th century. More specifically, this perspective seeks to understand the history of this crisis based on the intense transformation of water and land, inserting local anthropic actions in the global context of human actions that changed the relationship between human and non-human beings that shape the More –than- human - Anthropocene by the anthropologist Anna Tsing. Throughout the 20th century, mainly from the 1970s onwards, after the approval of architect Lúcio Costa s Pilot Plan, the countless and accelerated human actions to modernize the region, such as urban infrastructure works and the frequent launches of various real estate projects by agents of transformation – public authorities and entrepreneurs – initiated a local environmental crisis that was accentuated by the feral behavior of some species, such as the uncontrolled growth of gigogas and the bloom of cyanobacteria throughout the lagoon complex of the Baixada. Furthermore, while tilapia, an exotic species, contributed to the change in the ecology of the ichthyofauna, the broad-snouted caiman, a local species, became a reflection of these anthropic actions, when its body was deformed due to ingestion plastic and other inorganic products arising from human activities. The transformation of the landscape and the behavior of species led to changes in the lives of those people who depend on natural resources from the waters of the lagoon complex. In this way, the environmental crisis triggered by both the intense and accelerated transformation of the region and the feral behavior of some species in the Baixada can perhaps be understood as a local example, among many others around the world, that reveal the risks of the Anthropocene.

Human disruption of climate, habitat, and ignition has altered the behavior of wildland fire at local to continental scales. In many regions, novel fire regimes are emerging that threaten to exceed the capacity for local management to protect human wellbeing and ecosystem function. Simultaneous changes in climate, species composition, and fire management have resulted in extreme fire behavior in many regions. For the Western United States, the emerging novel fire regime consists of more frequent, severe, and intense wildfires, with annual area burned by wildfire having doubled and high-severity wildfire area having increased 8-fold since the 1980s. The impacts of these increasing stresses in the Great Basin is especially pressing when combined with the many years of historically poor resource management. Here we complete a literature review of changing wildfire regimes globally (chapter 1) and a study of how the abiotic and biotic aspects of aquatic ecosystems stabilize after a megafire in the western United States (chapter 2).

An interrogation of architecture's prevailing myths, and a practice for how to live and die well as an architect in the Anthropocene epoch.  It is an effort to combine joyful representation and speculation (because architecture is both too serious and not nearly serious enough), with philosophy, for still possible pasts, presents and futures. For this it leans mainly on the ideas of Donna Haraway, Gilles Delueze and Felix Guattari, to present a methodology called Nomad Storytelling. A methodology that aims to move between a multiplicity of adjacent sites as to care for them in appropriate ways, with the intention of contributing to the idea of relationally unmaking the environmental urgencies of the 21th century. It consists of 8 chapters dealing with juridical care, letting be as care, humour and shaming, fabulous speculation, non-quantifiable architecture as dissent and graphic design as a crucial part of remembering what the cost of architecture is beyond the monetary, in the end suggesting the idea of architect-as-worm and compost architecture. It’s about not telling another killer story, because they always end with apocalypse or dystopia, and instead tell stories of gathering and fabulous futures, as Ursula K. Le Guin called it. Because it matters which architectures architect architecture and which lines line lines.

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