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C-URGE

C-URGE is a Doctoral Network centered in the Department of Anthropology at KU Leuven, Belgium, training doctoral candidates to research different perceptions on environmental and climatological urg

What have you learned about anthropocenics in this place?

AllanaRoss

Annotation of

QUOTIDIAN ANTHROPOCENES: NEW ORLEANS

In response to

What have you learned about anthropocenics in this place?

My interests center around soil--its preservation, regeneration, and remediation. Living farther up North on the Mississippi in Saint Louis has changed my thinking around the relationships between soil, water, and contamination. Saint Louis and New Orleans are linked not just through their shared river and its attendant water management issues, but through patterns of extraction and contamination. New Orleans may also provide some clues (and potential solutions) to my community's changing relationship with water as we confront climate change. My work as an artist explores our relationship with landscape through tours of contaminated sites and remediative interventions in the landscape, so I approach New Orleans with questions about contaminated environments and water management through landscape design, gardening, and education.

West Lake Landfill

AllanaRoss

Annotation of

Land Use Scales and Systems Questions

In response to

DATA: How & what kind of data is being produced, visualized, inscribed, authorized, disseminated, and mobilized to shape future land use? What data infrastructures have been developed, are being developed, or are perceived as necessary for land managment?

Most of the citizen-produced data is discounted by officials. There is little authorized data, though data has been collected and can be found with some effort. Dissemination of information is on a grassroots level. PRPs have been engaged in misinformation campaigns as well, creating organizations with misleading names who advertise on the radio and distribute flyers.

West Lake Landfill

AllanaRoss

Annotation of

Land Use Scales and Systems Questions

In response to

TECHNO: How does technology enable particular kinds of land use? What technologies are used to produce data about the setting and its use?

Monitoring. Decisions from the EPA about 'safe' levels of radiation exposure.

West Lake Landfill

AllanaRoss

Annotation of

Land Use Scales and Systems Questions

In response to

BIO: How are bodies (human and non-human) in this setting differentially impacted by current and historical forms of land tenure, management, and use? How are these embodied inequalities naturalized, racialized, homogenized, erased, and/or politicized?

Cancer cluster. Not racialized in this particular area so much as class-based. Bridgeton is a working-class, mostly white suburb. The neighborhood closest to the landfill is a mobile home park.

West Lake Landfill

AllanaRoss

Annotation of

Land Use Scales and Systems Questions

In response to

ECO-ATMO: What effects do current or historical forms of land tenure, management, & use have on the ecological health of this place? What ecosystems are depended on, protected, or compromised to enable certain land uses, & how is this recognized (or not)?

Dualistic attitude of humanity as separate from nature led us to believe that we can dump nuclear waste in a floodplain and it will not affect us. Refusal to trust in ecological processes, hubris of engineering, and faith that we are not subject to natural laws because we are above nature led us to use the land in this way. Ecosystems compromised are innumberable because of the nature of the site--its proximity to water and the porous nature of the karst beneath it. This is still not recognized as a fundamental issue as evidenced by the fact that our solutions to these problems are always based on engineering, attempting to outsmart geography, geology, and physics...never a long-term solution or re-thinking land use practices.