Light, Metabolisms, Elemental Media: Theorising Human Mediality in the Anthropocene

Abstract

This paper applies concepts of elemental media and metabolisms to the case of cosmic and planetary ecologies that emerge from the interaction between Earth and Sun, manifesting in photosynthesis or carbon isotope chemistry. In doing so, it expands on registers of media theory and environmental studies and prompts the reader to consider the medial and archival affordances of the light-based interactions, and further processes they give rise to. The main aim of the paper is to use these observations to speculate about the human condition in the Anthropocene, characterised by the experience of human mediality. The paper addresses human mediality mainly in the dimension of affective qualities this condition may prompt, and the resulting narrative model of selfhood – the metabolic self. The paper develops its conceptual contribution in close proximity with several artistic examples, especially Eduardo Navarro’s performance In Collaboration with the Sun (2017–2019). The paper is positioned as a contribution to studies of multispecies cohabitation and more-than-human communication, while also developing a narrative strategy for talking about the decentred position of human species in the more-than-human world-making.

Keywords:

• Elemental Media
• Metabolism
• Narrative Self
• Light
• Selfhood
• Photosynthesis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 James F. Kasting, Daniel P. Whitmire and Ray T. Reynolds, ‘Habitable Zones around Main Sequence Stars’, Icarus 101 (1993): 108–28.

2 Lisa Kaltenegger, ‘How to Characterize Habitable Worlds and Signs of Life’, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 33 (2017): 443.

3 Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer, ‘The “Anthropocene”’, IGBP Newsletter 41 (2000): 17–18.

4 Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, Principles of Planetary Climate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 58–66.

5 Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers and William W. Behrens III, The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books).

6 Benjamin Lazier, ‘Earthrise; or, The Globalization of the World Picture’, American Historical Review 116, no. 3 (2011): 602–30.

7 In talking about ‘affective profile’ and ‘affective qualities’, this paper follows terminology established by Rosi Braidotti, ‘A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities’, Theory, Culture & Society 36, no. 6 (2019): 31–61.

8 Tomás Saraceno, ‘Solar Rhythms’, Studio Tomás Saraceno, https://studiotomassaraceno.org/solar-rhythms/ (accessed June 7, 2023).

9 See also Bronislaw Szerzsynski, ‘Planetary Alterity, Solar Cosmopolitics and the Parliament of Planets’, in Environmental Alterities, ed. Cristóbal Bonelli and Antonia Walford (Manchester: Mattering Press, 2021), 204–26.

10 Ema Čabová, ‘Sensing the Subtle, Moving Through the Quiet, Performing the Unspeakable’, Fotograf Mag 40 (2021): 29.

11 Margaret Boden, ‘Is Metabolism Necessary?’ The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50, no. 2 (1999): 231–48.

12 Pierrehumbert, Principles of Planetary Climate, 10–11.

13 Kasting, Whitmire and Reynolds, ‘Habitable Zones around Main Sequence Stars’, 109–10.

14 Peter Haff, ‘Technology as a Geological Phenomenon: Implications for Human Well-Being’, Geological Society London Special Publications 395 (2013): 301–02.

15 Mario Giampietro, Kozo Mayumi and Alevgül Sorman, The Metabolic Pattern of Societies (London: Routledge, 2012), 175–94.

16 Kojin Karatani, The Structure of World History (Durham, NC: Duke Unviersity Press, 2014), 15.

17 John Durham Peters, The Marvellous Clouds. Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), 48.

18 Ibid., 46–9.

19 Peters, Marvellous Clouds, 4.

20 See also Ibid., 48.

21 Ibid., 46.

22 Eyal Weizman and Jacob Lund, ‘Inhabiting the Hyper-Aesthetic Image. Eyal Weizman in Conversation with Jacob Lund’, The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 61–62 (2021): 230.

23 For the notion of ‘non-human photography’, see also Joanna Zylinska, Non-human Photography (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017).

24 Jussi Parikka and Abelardo Gil-Fournier, ‘An Ecoaesthetic of Vegetal Surfaces: On Seed, Image, Ground as Soft Montage’, Journal of Visual Art Practice 20, no. 1–2 (2021): 22.

25 Dietmar Offenhuber, ‘Data by Proxy – Material Traces as Autographic Visualizations’, (2019): 2, https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.05454 (accessed June 7, 2023).

26 Ibid., 2. Emphasis mine.

27 Pierrehumbert, Principles of Planetary Climate, 29–31.

28 Annemarie Mol, Eating in Theory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021), 3. Original emphasis.

29 Ibid., 4.

30 Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little Brown, 1991), 426–7.

31 Ibid., 418.

32 Thomas Metzinger, Being No One. The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).

33 Braidotti, ‘Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities’, 42.

34 Ibid., 49.

35 Ibid., 42.

36 Ibid., 46.

37 This recollection of research on Tagar burial clay relics is based on Natalia V. Polosmak, ‘Appearances Are Deceptive … ’, Science First Hand 27, no. 3 (2010): 130–7.

38 Stefan Helmreich and S. Eben Kirksey, ‘The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography’, Cultural Anthropology 25, no. 4 (2010): 552.

39 Bruno Latour, Down to Earth (Cambridge: Polity, 2018), 75; 80.

40 Stanisław Lem, Solaris (New York: Premier Digital, 2011); Radovan Richta et al., Civilizace na rozcestí (Prague: Svoboda, 1967).

41 Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015), 21–2; Peters, Marvellous Clouds, 170.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lukáš Likavčan

LUKÁŠ LIKAVČAN is a philosopher. His research focuses on philosophy of science and technology and environmental philosophy. He is a Global Perspectives on Society Postdoctoral Fellow at NYU Shanghai. He is an author of Introduction to Comparative Planetology (2019).