Earth: Elementals, vol. 1

I had the pleasure of co-editing and contributing to the Earth volume of a new series called Elementals, published by the Chicago-based Center for Humans and Nature.

Earth is at once planet, place, and material. Both tiny and huge, earth can manifest as a single grain of sand and a blinding storm in the desert. Earth nurtures a budding stem and the expansive rhizomic roots of an ancient forest. What if we understand ourselves as creatures who exist because of generational, collaborative, creative, earthen exuberance? The stories and poems in this volume offer elemental paths toward an ethic of interdependence, connection, and care for planet, place, and other earthlings. Welcome to Earth.

The Elementals series explores how people from various cultures across the planet have worked with these powerful forces of change and regeneration to shape landscapes and deepen personal and place-based relationships. Contributors for Earth, Volume 1 include: Gavin Van Horn • Bruce Jennings • Hannah Eisler Burnett • Kristi Leora Gansworth • Oyah Beverly A. Scott • Alexis Pauline Gumbs • Marcia Bjornerud • Laticia McNaughton • Rita Dove • Jane Slade • Emma Gilheany • Melissa Tuckey • Imani Jacqueline Brown • Franny Choi • Danielle B. Joyner • Liam Heneghan • Nickole Brown • Tia M. Pocknett • Andreas Weber • Jessica Jacobs • Robin Wall Kimmerer

Living on the Edge: Oysters, Life, and Property on Louisiana’s Coastal Frontier

Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, Living on the Edge lays bare how racialized property regimes operate offshore under conditions of climate change, showing how those with power seek to stabilize their claims to nearshore places when the constitution of water and land are radically transforming. I focus on the effects that shifting shorelines and state-funded water management projects have on power-laden, proprietary attitudes towards “common” offshore resources, such as oyster fisheries. Engaging with discourses of environmental justice, political ecology, STS, and legal anthropology, I interrogate the technical and everyday strategies people in coastal communities deploy to protect and extend their claims into the future under changing conditions.

Slop Chest

(Hannah Eisler Burnett & Tucker Rae-Grant, 2019)

This experimental film documents the two weeks artist Tucker Rae-Grant and I spent crossing the Atlantic on a cargo vessel that carried 4,400 shipping containers, twenty-three crew members, and four passengers. Turning our gaze away from the monumental, we studied the everyday items that came along for the ride. A “slop chest” is a store operated on merchant ships that sells personal requisites (such as tobacco) for issue to the crew, usually as a charge against their wages.
 Taking its cue from this institution, “Slop Chest” draws on ethnographic and visual methods in order to explore what is necessary—and what is desired—to survive a nine-month contract on a container ship.

Elaborating Waste

(Hannah Eisler Burnett & Allison Turner 2018)

In 2018, Allison Turner and I carried out a multidisciplinary project exploring the idea of waste. Over the last three centuries, capitalist growth has relied not only on the apparent abundance of the Earth’s natural resources but also on the ability of human innovators to transform waste products into raw materials for new ventures. Focusing on wastewater, we carried out interviews and site visits throughout the region serviced by Chicago’s Water Reclamation District. The project culminated in a sculptural installation that highlighted the material qualities of water that remain unaddressed by current regulatory and epistemological systems of water management, critiquing the idea of waste as a form of equivalence that is capable of endless repurposing.