Anthropocene or no Anthropocene, that was the question. And last week, a group of international scientists responded, voting against a proposal to declare the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch to reflect how human activity has altered the planet.
The possible naming of the time period was the launching point for visual arts professor Kirsty Robertson’s museum and curatorial students’ year-end project and exhibit meromictic.
The anchor point for the installation is Crawford Lake, a small body of water that formed in a limestone cliff sinkhole near Milton, Ont. In 2023, the lake was selected by a subcommittee of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) as the “golden spike” marking the start of the Anthropocene.
Crawford Lake is meromictic, meaning the layers of water within it do not mix, allowing for the preservation of sediment deposits in the lakebed. Because of this, layers of sediment lie untouched at the bottom of the lake, showing, among other things, evidence of human impact on the world in a layer of radioactive plutonium from nuclear weapons tests – the marker that has been decided represents the moment human impact becomes evident in the strata (layers) of the geologic record.
Robertson, director of museum and curatorial studies and Western’s Centre for Sustainable Curating said the decision to not name a new geological epoch doesn’t change the wider conversation her students were hoping to inspire.
“The Anthropocene is understood solely in geologic terms,” she said. “The exhibition is about the idea of needing a language to talk about what is happening right now, and what that right language might be. We look to the artists for different kinds of approaches.”
Micropaleontologist Francine McCarthy: “It’s up to all of us”
Francine McCarthy (Christopher Kindratsky/Western Communications)
Francine McCarthy, a micropaleontologist at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., and a voting member of the ICS-appointed Anthropocene Working Group, welcomes a variety of viewpoints on the subject.
“I find it really rewarding to be in a field of research that doesn’t just involve a bunch of nerds like me and my colleagues,” she said. “There are people from the general public, the arts, the humanities and the social sciences who are all interested in this, which is good, because it is up to all of us to care about how we alter our planet.”
McCarthy visited Western Tuesday, March 12, to tour the exhibit and talk about her work leading a team in gathering sediment from Crawford Lake through a process called ‘freeze coring’. That research was instrumental in the site being chosen over 11 other possible sites as the location best showing the boundary of the proposed Anthropocene, brought about by major changes to Earth through human activity.
Regardless of the recent decision and its fallout, which McCarthy calls “a ridiculous kerfuffle,” she maintains that irrespective of a line on the time scale, “We are in the Anthropocene, and behaving accordingly is our only path forward.”
Creating impact with a light footprint
It’s our future actions that Robertson’s students hope patrons will consider while viewing meromictic. They brought together works by artists Janice Brant Kahehtoktha, Greg Curnoe (1936-1992), Simon Fuh, Stefan Herda, Lisa Hirmer, Tomonari Nishikawa, Nico Williams, and visual arts professor Kelly Wood to explore human interactions with water, earth, air, soil, wood, rocks and minerals.
Rock samples from Southwestern Ontario provided by the Western University Dana Minerals Collection from the Richard W. Hutchinson Geoscience Collaborative Suite. (Christopher Kindratsky/Western Communications)
“The artists were a joy to work with and the students were amazing and very invested in the show,” said Robertson, who also noted how support from Western’s Strategic Priorities Fund and other sources helped the project to run smoothly.
In keeping with the Centre for Sustainable Curating’s goal to create exhibits with low carbon footprints, the students were creative in designing the show, reusing abandoned bike racks, Styrofoam furniture packaging and repurposed materials as exhibit infrastructure.
Rather than using a vinyl adhesive for the didactic wall providing information on the show, Anneke Braam, Elizabeth Grayson and Alexis Green hand-painted the exhibit description using paintstone colours made from natural materials, including ethically sourced mica, tree sap, Manitoulin maple syrup, gum Arabic and naturally occurring pigments.
“Painting the wall took us 14 hours,” Braam said. “But it was worth it.”
Elizabeth Grayson and Anneke Braam stand beside hand-painted the didactic wall they created with Alexis Green (not shown) to provide information on the Artlab exhibit meromictic. (Christopher Kindratsky/Western Communications)
Bringing the show together was “a really good exercise in sharing authority and a vision with each other and with the artists,” said Michaela Yarmol-Matusiak, a fourth-year American cultural studies and scholar’s electives student. “As someone who wants to further their journey in curatorial studies, this was a very affirmative experience. Our goal was not to provide answers, it was to provoke questions and provide people with a moment where they can interact with different perspectives on something, that within the past few days, has become part of the news.”
Lauren Stoyles and Michaela Yarmol-Matusiak found working on the “meromictic” exhibit to be a rewarding and worthwhile learning experience. (Christopher Kindratsky/Western Communications)
Lauren Stoyles, a fourth-year history student, welcomed the opportunity to work with artists.
“I’ve done a lot of historical museum work but working on an artistic exhibit had me stepping outside of my comfort zone. I had no idea how it was all going to come together but put a lot of trust in Dr. Robertson and also in the class. They brought out a lot of different perspectives, which I was so excited to see come together in this rewarding and exciting way.”
