Fieldnote May 2 2023 - 1:18pm
In this visit, we were focused on stringing seashells onto the wooden branches as art pieces for the exhibition.
Fieldnote Apr 19 2023 - 4:34am
In this visit, I spent most of my time talking to an ah ma from my weekly group.
FIELDNOTE MAR 29 2023
We started our time at Naluwan with some morning dance moves to warm up our bodies. It was pleasant to see the elders actively participating in the exercise.
Fieldnote Apr 12 2023 - 1:34pm
For this visit, Juanjuan and I were grouped with five grandmothers, three from the previous visit and two new grandmothers due to the absence of our classmates.
Fieldnote Feb 21 2023 - 10:56pm
Driving through the small alley of the place where the Amis live felt odd as the modern view on my left - wind turbines, bridges, was a vast contrast from the view on my right which saw village-lik
Statue at Naluwan, 22 Feb 2023
A statue is built in the middle of the walkway that separates the river and the land that the Amis lives on.
Mitigation, Extremes, and Water
weather_jenMETA: Water seems to be one important medium through which NOLA envisions the “impacts” of the Anthropocene—scarcity, abundance, temporalities and spatial distributions, management of, and hazards that emerge in its context. Less is said about the causal or attributional aspects of the Anthropocene. How might water function as an entry point into the assemblages of local anthropocenics?
I found the NOLA Hazard Mitigation Plan for 2018, which frames the impacts of the Anthropocene as an intersection of weather extremes amid climate change and evolving vulnerabilities of its people. Four of seven items in the executive summary note water as central to local interventions: flood awareness, flood repair, flood mitigation, flood infrastructure. Too much water or water in the wrong places and the aftereffect of water on infrastructure and lives. One expression, then, is preparedness.
MACRO: Mitigation is an interesting analytic for the Anthropocene. In the US mitigation plans are shaped by the 1988 Stafford Act (which amended the 1974 Disaster Relief Act). Constraints on communities come through rules, regulations, policies, (dis)incentives, and surveillance by state and federal authorities. Much of this is bound by economic and administrative discourses.
Goals are set in this document—broken out by timelines, activities, priorities, and capabilities. Another expression is classification of anthropocenics by subfields and accounting metrics. How do we measure progress and what is deferred to the future, 5-10 years out from today, a goal that has no tangible accountability but is named and acknowledged. What are the practices of naming, responsibility, and making (in)visible in the Anthropocene?
BIO: One new initiative, Ready for Rain, in particular is of interest to me as it highlights the more neoliberal vision for how the public should self-regulate risk and mitigate harm. I hear this as an extension of a government agency program to make the nation Weather Ready. Other bullets highlight “green” buildings, energies, and infrastructures. These could be examples of how the city envisions the Anthropocene feedback loop of humans changing/planning for climate alterations, which is a fairly typical lens.
Some questions: What does the water do? What does the water know? If we trace water in all its instantiations (e.g. historical water, flow of water, chemistry of water, application of water, temperature of water), what do we learn about the future imaginaries of what NOLA will / could / ought to become?
Transitional Bunun slate stone house, it is indoor construction and discrip Bunun house setting and culture.