Roadside Picnics: non-fiction

Abstract

As if humanity had woken up from a night-long party full of excesses, the sudden realization of being in the Anthropocene fills us with confusion and despair. The accumulation of often unintended consequences of human action reminds us that plans do not always end up in the landscapes of our dreams. What is more, their overwhelming complexity destabilizes our capacity to imagine ways to move forward—a crisis of agency. Lots would be at stake. It is paralysing to think of any solution to climate change or biodiversity loss, less by design. But, what if, simultaneously, such landscapes of unintended encounters, with the technologies, monuments, ruins, traces, and waste of seemingly supernatural forces, may also afford, and teach us, new designs and tools for survival?