The Anthropocene Epoch
Chief Seattle
Overview
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| The Innocent: Christmas Dinner, (c) 2017 Elisabeth Sunday |
Each passing day brings us closer to a planet that is no longer hospitable to life. This is an extraordinary moment in the history of the world. After millennia of life on earth, we find ourselves in a global, environmental, state of emergency.
This is a catastrophe of such magnitude, we find it difficult not only to measure, but to comprehend and accept. Due to the challenges we face, anything we can do as individuals, artists, or other, to raise consciousness— and help stem the decline of life on earth— is a critical step in the right direction. To do nothing, is to be complicit in our mutual destruction, and condemn our planet; ourselves, and our fellow creatures, to a certain death. We are in the fight of our lives: Not just our own, but the whole of the world. We are all—from the smallest to the largest creatures on earth—at risk of extinction.
This is a catastrophe of such magnitude, we find it difficult not only to measure, but to comprehend and accept. Due to the challenges we face, anything we can do as individuals, artists, or other, to raise consciousness— and help stem the decline of life on earth— is a critical step in the right direction. To do nothing, is to be complicit in our mutual destruction, and condemn our planet; ourselves, and our fellow creatures, to a certain death. We are in the fight of our lives: Not just our own, but the whole of the world. We are all—from the smallest to the largest creatures on earth—at risk of extinction.
“Spirits Rising: Extinction” is a visual arts project of contemporary photographs and video. The focus is on the newly designated Anthropocene epoch and the sixth mass extinction, scientists believe we now face. Endangered places; people, and living things, on the front lines of climate change and environmental destruction, will all be part of this new work.
The Anthropocene epoch is the age in which human activities have significantly altered our world in ways that wouldn’t otherwise have existed without our interference. Environmental contamination and wanton destruction of habitat, has led to the extinction of an untold number of species annually, (estimated 67% of wild animals by 2020). This is the most relevant and important issue confronting our world today. In Europe and across North America, birds are in precipitous decline, and flying insects have fallen by an unimaginable 75%. France has reported a 50% decline in their bird population due to pesticides alone. Wetlands, forests, and ponds fall silent as frogs disappear from the face of the earth.
There are multiple fronts that threaten life ranging from; air toxicity, increasingly lifeless soil, raging drought-fueled wildfires, and record high temperatures. Methane. There is also the alarming decline in global oxygen levels due ocean acidification. This is fueling a massive die-off of marine plankton that provides 70% of the world’s oxygen.
In addition to all of this, we no longer connect with the food that we eat, but have created factory farms that house animals in shameless, inhumane and appalling conditions. These practices both ruin the environment, cause health problems, and wreck us spiritually and morally. It is believed by senior members of the scientific community— that I am in direct contact with for this project—that if we don’t alter our behavior within the next 20 to 40 years, there will be no human life on earth, in as little as 150 years from the present day. We will be extinct. And we will drag the earth down with us.
Go to Spirits Rising: About and continue...
Go to Spirits Rising: About and continue...
Please contact me for more information.
Elisabeth Sunday
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