Earth Indices. Processing the Anthropocene

Who is writing the chronicles of the planet? What are the tools and practices that allow us to read Earth’s changes? For many years, artists Giulia Bruno and Armin Linke have closely followed the Anthropocene Working Group’s research on the geological evidence for the new Earth epoch of the Anthropocene. Earth Indices portrays both the natural landscapes from which anthropogenic sediments are extracted as well as the complexities of laboratory processes and the inscription devices they employ to transform the sediment into data that can be interpreted. For the exhibition a multilayered archive is created that relates the anthropogenic traces in the Earth system to the emerging body of knowledge of a new geological epoch. This pdf is a “In progress” digital publication resulting from the artistic installation presented at HKW Berlin 19.05-17.10.2022 and is part of the art work developed and activated through commenting sessions with the scientist of the AWG by Giulia Bruno and Armin Linke.Earth Indices was made possible through the collaboration between Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG). Earth Indices was realized within the framework of Evidence & Experiment (2019–22), a project of HKW in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG, Berlin), supported by the Federal Foreign Office within the framework of The Anthropocene and its Implications for Archives and Museums and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media in accordance with a ruling of the German Bundestag