The Water City
The Political Epistemology of Hydrogeological Praxis

The Kaveri Delta region of South India has witnessed attempts at large scale changes to its land and rivers, over thousand years. Different forms of control over labor and resources marked these transformations in these landscapes. The changing social relations around these changes mediated different regimes of extraction, even though preferences of what can be extracted, kept changing. The laboring people of the Delta and their fields of work carried the traces of these changes. This research line trace these changes through the changing relation between canal irrigation, rice cultivation and bondage at three distinct moments of this region – the medieval Chola Empire, the British colonial interventional moment, the moments of the nation state and food security and the present-day moment of climate adaptation programs. Understanding these changes would provide us the resources to reimagine the possibility for justice to nature and labor of these landscapes. 

Principal Investigator: Senthil Babu D.

One of the first, but generally forgotten, examples of the human impact on the environment in its modern form was the rise of Ibero-America. The inception of the New World involved not only a mixture of cultures but also of natures, which would shape the world as we know it, including imperialism and colonial practices. In this way, this process was not impartial and innocuous, but rather transformed local worldviews, practices, and environments at once to adjust them to European conceptions. One of the most dramatic examples of these changes is the Basin-Valley of Mexico. Originally the Mexica promised land located between lakes, it became a place of struggle between the city and the waters. With Spanish rule, new water policies were developed trying to dry the lakes to keep the city safe from flooding. This urban vision not only went against the needs of life linked to the lakes, but also encouraged their transformation into reclaimed land in favor of the expansion of the city. Due to the scope of the task which was a lasting process with huge geomorphological consequences, this transformation was not achieved until the consolidation of the independent nation, and even continues to this day. Therefore, colonization practices have not stopped transforming the watershed into a large metropolitan area, as well as taking water from nearby basins to relieve the thirst of the city’s inhabitants, but also of real estate business.

Principal Investigator: Omar Rodriguez Camarena

In March 2024, the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy of the International Commission on Stratigraphy rejected the Anthropocene thesis. According to this most reputable scientific body of geologists there is no necessity to introduce a new epoch into the International Chronostratigraphic Chart, in which the ‘anthropos’, that is to say, human societies and technologies, have become the main drivers of the Earth System. We are still in the Holocene. Yet, this authoritative decision that ‘we are not’ in the ‘geological’ epoch of humankind, while the human impact on the planet has objectively altered it in irreversible manners, is an invitation to reconsider the ‘nature’ of the forces of this transformation. Although the Anthropocene debate has led to new considerations on humanity as ‘species’, the negation of a geological definition of human agency can also offer an opportunity to move beyond essentializing tendencies and reductionisms. By contrast, it can reactivate the most important of history’s temporalities from a political and ethical viewpoint: the future. If (for now at least) the epoch of the humans does not exist, what can such epoch look like from a cultural and environmental perspective. The ‘humanization’ of the planet reopens the question about de-essentialized freedom and self-determination as a more fundamental comprehension than any reified understanding of history. If the rejection of the Anthropocene implies the rejection of a fixed determination of ’what' it means to be human, this impasse is an opportunity, too. It guides the debate towards new possibilities, in particular prescriptive ones or even utopian explorations of possible futures to be achieved through collective ecological and political decisions. In other words, the question of the Anthropocene humanity without ambiguities now shifts from fact to choice, from geology (or biology) to agency.

Principal Investigator: Pietro Daniel Omodeo

Principal Investigator: Giovanni Fava

Drawing on the field of critical theory and the most recent environmental humanities, the research attempts a reinterpretation of environmental aesthetics capable of focusing on the ecological crisis and then analysing it with renewed tools. 
The first section starts precisely from this problematic issue: how is it possible that environmental aesthetics, despite having been born ("Contemporary aesthetics and the neglect of natural beauty", Hepburn, 1966) at the same time as the emergence of the ecological crisis within the public debate, has often left this object of study on the background, moreover assuming a purely analytical and depoliticised attitude? The aim of the introductory section will therefore be to introduce the discipline, first outlining the dichotomies that usually structure its field, then advancing new constituent oppositions which have often remained under the surface but are now more central than ever within the ecological debate.
The research will then proceed with Maskit's invitation ("On Universalism and Cultural Historicism in Environmental Aesthetics", 2014) to move away from universalism in environmental aesthetics, turning instead towards a continental approach capable of contextualising - that is, historicising, socialising and politicising - both the perceived object and the percipient subject. Drawing on recent developments of critical theory, the second section will thus try to overcome the opposition sketched before, showing how our aesthetic object (be it nature, the environment or, especially, the ecological crisis) can be considered as an entanglement of matter and meaning, how bodily perception can never be detached from shared and enacted interpretative habits, and how ethics and aesthetics always overlap and intersect with each other.
After showing the malleability of our objects, the situatedness of perception, as well as the ethical-political dimension of sensibility, the third and last part of the research will open by giving voice to the concern recently expressed by Latour and collegues ("Why has critique run out of steam?", 2004). A common trait of the various presented strategies is in fact that of criticising, devaluing or doubting the scientific enterprise and its results, affirming the indeterminacy of scientific objects, the specificity of the scientific gaze and the partisanship hidden in every scientific observation and description. If this awareness can lead some towards a critical understanding of science, the same can (and does) also foster science scepticism and denialism. In order to stem these drifts, we will return to the roots of the operations analysed, recovering the work of one of the main initiators (if not the founder) of the socio-historical critique of science: Ludwik Fleck. Thanks to the epistemologist's writings, it will thus be possible to elaborate new strategies useful for the ontological articulation of the climate phenomenon, the harmonisation of ecological perspectives and the ethical orientation in times of crisis.

Principal Investigator: Matteo Savoldelli

How can we adopt a more inclusive ecological perspective to create integrated knowledge encompassing humans and non-humans? Can art contribute to this new, knowledge-based approach, which values body-centred awareness alongside intellect perspective? Art and art theory represent realms where the opportunity to exercise freedom of action, aimed at creating shared spaces – both material and immaterial – can cultivate a sense of proximity between humans and the other aspects of nature. Art has historically served a symptomatic function, reflecting the collective feelings of society. Additionally, it can be viewed as a communication tool that employs a specific language to bridge various spheres of knowledge with the goal of fostering connections. Three empirical experiments will serve as entry points to explore the theoretical framework, investigating through on-field experiences the various potential developments of a new vision of art as a means of accessing and transforming the world. The Anthropocene represents a shift that necessitates a reassessment of how humanity experiences the world. It demands practices that foster an ethics of care for humans and non-human entities. Witnessing the collapse of Earth systems as they have been understood involves transcending partial perspectives and adopting a more comprehensive, planetary viewpoint. This necessity for an integrated perspective is examined by analysing contemporary art practices and scrutinising their societal roles and potential political significance. The aim is to question the subjective perspective and address the epistemological need to rewrite our collective experience. The feeling of uncertainty and bewilderment provoked by the awareness of living within a system that modifies the Earth system itself connects the two realms of aesthetics and epistemology. Revaluating senses and perception can help humanity overcome this impasse. A body-centred paradigm fosters knowledge connected to the sensible empirical. It encourages us to take responsibility for human actions and to discover new ways of accessing the natural world, reorienting human positionality. Can art promote an eco-centred view of the world? Can it be seen as creating Commons – common action, shared knowledge, communal goods, and community? The qualities of the artistic act will be revealed through the narration of experiences held in India (Kaveri Delta), Sweden (Umeå), and Italy (Venice). By approaching diverse contexts, the application of art as research from a site-responsive perspective is what is at stake. This aims to demonstrate that its capacity as a reflective practice for creating new Commons can serve as a means to integrate philosophical investigations into Anthropocene ontology and epistemology, seeking to understand the current lived experience of art and art practice while situating their approach within society and the era in which we live. 

Principal Investigator: Francesca Melina