26.04.2021

What is the name of the epoch we will die in?

The Golden Spike is a geological marker that indicates the boundary of a new epoch. You visited the Golden Spike of the Permian-Triassic Boundary, the time of the great dying, and found a theme park erected around it.

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Text extract from an interview with @loren_rubicana and Colin Waters, Secretary of the Anthropocene Working Group, originally published in Copper by Loren Kronemyer, as part of the Lost Rock series by @apublishedevent, 2021. Written while supported by the Australian Research Training Program Scholarship at University of Tasmania.

Epoch Wars research photos from 2019 at Golden Spike Park, Zhejiang Province
@helloponyexpress by @_julian.f_ for
Australia China Exchange @loren_rubicana @houstonsinclair.

27.04.2021

After passing through the bottleneck of the 6th Extinction, those that survived were finally allowed to thrive in a new epoch of scavengers, synanthropes, parasites, rhizomes, microbiomes, and symbionts. You evolved the muscle to digest the human strata, human technology, and the human body politic.

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Text extract originally published in Copper by Loren Kronemyer, as part of the Lost Rock series by @apublishedevent 2021. Written while supported by the Australian Research Training Program Scholarship at University of Tasmania.

“Symbiocene” refers to @glenn.a.albrecht’s 2015 essay Exiting the Anthropocene and Entering the Symbiocene.

https://glennaalbrecht. com/2015/12/17/exiting-the-anthropocene-and-entering-the- symbiocene/

Epoch Wars research photos from 2018

28.04.2021

After passing through the bottleneck of the 6th Extinction, those that survived were finally allowed to thrive in a new epoch of scavengers, synanthropes, parasites, rhizomes, microbiomes, and symbionts. You evolved the muscle to digest the human strata, human technology, and the human body politic.

--

Text extract originally published in Copper by Loren Kronemyer, as part of the Lost Rock series by @apublishedevent 2021. Written while supported by the Australian Research Training Program Scholarship at University of Tasmania.
“Symbiocene” refers to @glenn.a.albrecht’s 2015 essay Exiting the Anthropocene and Entering the Symbiocene.

https://glennaalbrecht. com/2015/12/17/exiting-the-anthropocene-and-entering-the- symbiocene/

29.04.2021

Death in the Pyrocene feels like sitting in the lecture hall, as three enormous fires blanket the state with smoke. The smoke raises alerts as far as New Zealand, both this time and the next. This happened in lutruwita / Tasmania in 2018, but it happens somewhere every year, now.

You open the Tas Fire warning map every 20 minutes, incanting a silent prayer that goes “watch and act, watch and act.” A “watch and act” warning means “A heightened level of threat. Conditions are changing; you need to start taking action now to protect you and your family.” This may include raining embers well in advance of the front of the fire, but it means you're still in what is technically considered a safe zone.

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Text extract originally published in Copper by Loren Kronemyer, as part of the Lost Rock series by @apublishedevent 2021. Written while supported by the Australian Research Training Program Scholarship at University of Tasmania.

“Pyrocene” refers to Stephen J Pyne’s 2015 essay "The Fire Age." Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/ how-humans-made-fire-and-fire-made-us-human.

30.04.2021

You didn't die.

And if you did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.

--

Text extract originally published in Copper by Loren Kronemyer, as part of the Lost Rock series by @apublishedevent 2021. Written while supported by the Australian Research Training Program Scholarship at University of Tasmania.
Epoch Wars research photos from 2018

“Manthropocene” refers to Kate Raworth’s 2014 article “Must the Anthropocene be a Manthropocene?”, The Guardian, Mon 20 Oct 2014

01.05.2021

Death in the Technocene may be delivered in a billion ways, according to your exact preferences, your search history, your playlist. You may drown in an ocean of information, or be crushed under a landslide of content.

Swimming upstream, liquid crystal larvae may pierce your eyes and worm into your brain. Their eggs may incubate in your grey matter, hatching into parasites who reanimate your body like a skin suit.

You are mourned by a teenage troll farmer, a billionaire, a human disguised as algorithm, and a catfish. Your obituary reads: "We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it". Terminal FOMO. You only live twice.

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Text extract originally published in Copper by Loren Kronemyer, as part of the Lost Rock series by @apublishedevent 2021. Written while supported by the Australian Research Training Program Scholarship at University of Tasmania.

“Technocene” refers to Alf Hornberg’s 2015 essay "The Political Ecology of the Technocene: Uncovering Ecologically Unequal Exchange in the World-System," from The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch, edited by Clive Hamilton, Christophe Bonneuil and Francois Gemenne.

02.05.2021

It was the Vermicene all along.

It's a worm's world, and we're just living in it. Moving mountains by the mouthful, the true terraformers, life-givers, they modelled the earth in their image just by eating, fucking, and shitting.

Worms, without which there is no soil, without which there is no agriculture, without which there is no industry, without which there is no human epoch. Worm labour: patient, quiet, ongoing, underground, monumental.

"It is a marvellous reflection that the whole of the superficial mould over any such expanse has passed, and will again pass, every few years through the bodies of worms. The plough is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man's inventions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly ploughed, and still continues to be thus ploughed by earth-worms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organised creatures."

- Darwin, C. R. 1881. The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms, with observations on their habits. p. 313.

Death in the Vermicene is the death of chordate supremacy. We dig down into the darkness, and there we find new roiling, curling, slimy pleasures together. Ingest, digest, excrete: a perfect performance. Nothing more needs to be said. It begins and ends here. Soft-bodied strength. Why did we ever ask for more?

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Text extract originally published in Copper by Loren Kronemyer, as part of the Lost Rock series by @apublishedevent 2021. Written while supported by the Australian Research Training Program Scholarship at University of Tasmania.
Epoch Wars research photos from 2018