Genealogically traceable to the development of earth system science 2 the Anthropocene concept favors a macroscale, extended “bird’s eye” point of view to observe, analyze, and grant perceptual access to the large-scale impact of anthropogenic activity. But inasmuch as it offers new ways to reflect on such entanglements, the Anthropocene concept is also a particular way of putting them into visual perspective. Many scholars of the environmental humanities have therefore engaged with the Anthropocene in search for more relational ontologies that account for the manifold entanglements between humans and earthly processes. By attributing to humankind the capacity to collectively (and unconsciously) operate as a “major geological force,” 1 and thus to be efficacious at the scale of geologic and planetary processes, Anthropocene science-quite literally-brings into view that the ontological dualisms between nature and culture, humans and nonhumans have no efficiency at planetary scale. Since it was first proposed in 2000 the Anthropocene concept has triggered widespread and ongoing debates beyond the scope of the disciplinary fields it originated from-that is, earth system sciences and geology. Geology and art, sensory experience, anthropocenic temporality, materiality Discussing deCaires Taylor’s and Smithson’s works, the authors argue that the artists’ aesthetics is not only a way of granting experiential access to an earth that resists objectification but also a manifestation of the processes through which earth’s materiality transforms throughout time. Both artists not only allow recipients to be confronted with complex earthly entanglements but also have a material and aesthetic impact on their respective sites. Focusing on works by Jason deCaires Taylor ( Anthropocene and La Gardinera de la Esperanza) and Robert Smithson ( Spiral Jetty), the authors interrogate how artistic engagements with anthropocenic materiality and temporality have the potential to articulate a double bind between aesthetics and ontology. In this view aesthetics does not rely on a subject’s capacity to apprehend the world as a perceptually objectifiable entity. Aesthetics is not only a way of making sensible but also contributes ontologically to the world it makes sensible. This article focuses on an important aspect of aesthetics in the context of the Anthropocene: the situatedness of aesthetic techniques and operations within earth’s (changing) materiality.
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