Portfolio
Tales of the Symbiocene
A podcast for speculative imagining beyond the Anthropocene.
Episode 1 - Future Imagining for the Symbiocene
A short story offering a glimpse into a future world beyond possession and human exceptionalism - welcome to the Symbiocene.
Written and produced by Katie Cunningham.
Spotify link - https://open.spotify.com/episode/2S9qizkIHdx851JJx1bOt1?si=f61148e2b1404e12
Episode 2 - Future Archaeology for the Symbiocene
A short story offering a glimpse into a future world, where archaeologists of the future interpret our present era with new perspectives beyond possession and human exceptionalism - welcome to the Symbiocene.
Written and produced by Katie Cunningham.
Spotify link - https://open.spotify.com/episode/6kV1Ssb9dAo2D4VRaapfuy?si=e5b49b165d5a41c6
Episode 3 – Gardening for the Symbiocene
A short story imagining the concept of 'nature' in a future beyond the Anthropocene - welcome to the Symbiocene.
Written by Gabriel Pol and co-produced by Gabriel Pol and Katie Cunningham.
Spotify link - https://open.spotify.com/episode/0oDZEKWMlSHZTTYdNf1ixj?si=550f4f95ba534a09
Symbiocene – A term coined by Glen Albrecht in 2011 as a reaction to the Anthropocene. Inspired by the Greek concept of ‘living together with’, it imagines an epoch where humans are decentred and recognise their interconnection to all other beings.
Speculative Fiction/Speculative Archaeology
Archaeological theories carry the weight of potential power to influence ideas; theories can be taken as truths, but they are almost entirely speculative in nature as the subject involves interpretation and translation rather than lived experience. However, inclusion of local peoples in any projects concerning their culture or the geographical areas they inhabit is crucial, not only as they may have significant insight, but also because the telling of their past(s) may significantly affect their future(s).
Uzma Rizvi says speculative archaeology may allow a chance for a “stutter, to provide openings for possible other forms of knowing and being that can act as circuit breakers within quickly closed systems of theory building”.
Christine Fredengren notes that archaeology, or interaction with archaeological artefacts, has the “power to disrupt notions of inevitability or neo-social evolutionism to reveal alternative assemblages, arrangements and relationships”. But the retelling of the past does not go far enough in dismantling colonialism if the techniques used to tell the stories do not change. Ideas should be seen as just that: ideas, that are not immune to adaptation or change; fiction is a way to suggest new ideas in a way that (hopefully) encourages critical review rather than being taken as fact.
In their paper imagining post-anthropocentric archaeology, Ola Sthål and Mathilda Tham tell the story of future archaeologists interpreting present culture as one of anaesthesia, where the ability of humans to divide their “body and mind, and even develop a cognitive dissonance” is looked at with bewilderment. In the more hopeful future the future archaeologists inhabit, they imagine that a shift to aesthesis has taken place.
I recognise that ideas similar to the Symbiocene exist in many cultures, which share similar but different concepts around kinship, care and nature connection/being, many of which are much older.
Within my own works, I recognise that the ideas might not be relevant to all cultures, particularly the pieces that discuss archaeological practices of excavation, in the case of episode 2 - Future Archaeology for the Symbiocene and though an extended metaphor in my creative writing piece, Stratigraphy of Being. I try to offer these pieces as suggestions rather than instructions. Some of the key influences in the work are Uzma Rizvi, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Kyle Whyte, Mark Charles, Rutger Bregman and Guy Shrubsole. I collaborated with fellow student, Gabriel Pol on the podcast and his writing and voice can be heard on episode 3 - Gardening for the Symbiocene.
References to the “Great Conciliation” are inspired by indigenous US US presidential candidate for the 2020 elections, Mark Charles. He proposes updating the constitution to include indigenous people, people of colour and women, and as “we the people has never meant all the people”, he proposes “truth and conciliation as reconciliation implies there was a previous harmony”. The UK is not built on the same constitution, but Mark Charles’ idea could form a useful seed for us to examine and concile with our past and present.
References
Aalbrecht, Glenn. “Exiting The Anthropocene and Entering The Symbiocene,” December 17, 2015. https://glennaalbrecht.wordpress.com/2015/12/17/exiting-the-anthropocene-and-entering-the-symbiocene/
Black Trowel Collective. “Foundations of an Anarchist Archaeology: A Community Manifesto.” Savage Minds/ /Anthro{dendrum}, October 31, 2016. https://savageminds.org/2016/10/31/foundations-of-an-anarchist-archaeology-a-community-manifesto/
Bregman, Rutger. Utopia for Realists and How We Can Get There. London, England: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Charles, Mark. “MC2020 | Campaign Announcement Video (Full).” YouTube video, posted by “Mark Charles 2020.” May 28, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_livxZNCQeU
Fredengren, Christina. “Unexpected Encounters with Deep Time Enchantment. Bog Bodies, Crannogs and ‘Otherworldly’ sites. The materializing powers of disjunctures in time.” World Archaeology, 48:4 (2016): 482-499. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2016.1220327
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass. London: Penguin, 2020.
Long Time Project. https://www.thelongtimeproject.org
Rizvi, Uzma Z. “Archaeological Encounters: The Role of the Speculative in Decolonial Archaeology.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 6 (1) (2019):154-67. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.33866
Rizvi, Uzma Z. “Decolonizing Archaeology: On The Global Heritage Of Epistemic Laziness.” In Two Days after Forever - A Reader on the Choreography of Time, edited by Omar Kholeif, 154-163. London: Sternberg Press, 2015.
Shrubsole, Guy. Who Owns England? How We Lost Our Land and How to Take it Back. Croydon: HarperCollins, 2020.
Ståhl, Ola, and Mathilda Tham. “Towards a Post-anthropocentric Archaeology (through Design).” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 4(2) (2017): 238–246. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.32442
Whyte, Kyle Powys. “Time as Kinship.” In The Cambridge Companion to Environmental Humanities, edited by Jeffrey Cohen and Stephanie Foote, 39-55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. https://kylewhyte.seas.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Time-as-Kinship-April-2021.pdf
Whyte, Kyle Powys. “Indigenous Science (Fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral Dystopias and Fantasies of Climate Change Crises.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 1, no. 1–2 (2018): 224–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848618777621
