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Cultural Politics

Special Section on Mediated Geologies

DEEP TIMES of
PLANETARY TROUBLE

Jussi Parikka

Abstract This introduction to the special section on mediated


geologies contextualizes the articles that follow within recent
discussions concerning cultural politics of the environment,
ecological contexts of contemporary media, and debates concerning
the Anthropocene. The special section approaches the topics from
the angle of media studies and argues for new ways to understand
media culture as read through a materials focus: from waste to
building materials and from temperature control to more conceptual
developments concerning new materialism. The introduction discusses
these ideas as extensions of material media theory and addresses how
they can complement already existing ideas in the field.
Keywords Anthropocene, media theory, environmental humanities,
media studies

Deep Times of Planetary Trouble

C ultural politics of geology sounds rather oxymoronic,


considering the distance geology seems to have from con-
cerns of reproduction of cultural inequalities, power struggles,
formations of identity, and issues of governance. Geological
investigations of the earth and its layers, resources, dynamics,
and histories occupy a timespan that is assumed to speak to
an altogether different set of questions than what we consider
as the taskor even the capacityof the humanities. Yet the
past years have seen a rather dramatic increase in debates
about geology, although often through the term Anthropo-
cene. The concept refers to the impact of human agriculture,

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Cultural Politics, Volume 12, Issue 3, 2016 Duke University Press
DOI: 10.1215/17432197-3648846

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Cultural Politics

Jussi Parikka

science, and technology on a planetary the coming nonhuman future. As Seth


scale; it could be said to function as Denizen (2013) has noted, the consider-
nothing less than a modern design brief ation of the Anthropocene in the geophysi-
(Bratton 2016) for how the earth has cal sciences is relevant not only because of
been reformed and, as many would argue, the scientific value of the measurements
catastrophically pushed to a point of no of the planetin itself an interesting
return when it comes to the amount of aspect of the media that frames our under-
toxic content in the air and soil, to global standing of the planetbut also because
temperatures, to sea-level rise and polar of the role such practices and discourses
ice melt, and to many other interconnected of knowledge play for us as contemporar-
chemical reactions and consequences. ies of deep times, cultural memory, and
These debates have also led to intense a politics of the present: In this way, the
discussions in the humanities and the arts, geological sciences are not only called on
including the Haus der Kulturen der Welts to reconstruct the past, but also participate
(Berlin) significant long-term project, the in the construction of the present. Recent
Anthropocene Observatory, involving calls for the establishment of a geological
artists, curators, theorists, and other par- epoch known as the Anthropocene are,
ticipants. Although that project concluded, in fact, calls for the production of what
similar projects continue, with an abun- cultural critic Laurent Berlant has named a
dance of art works and theoretical writings genre of the present, in which a geologi-
starting to address a set of interrelated cal catastrophe too slow to watch could be
questions: What are the political stakes rendered present and, perhaps, intelligible
in the nonhuman context of the human (30). The technoscientific practices are also
impact on the geological scale? In which essentially involved in how a sense of the
particular territories, case studies, con- present is produced. Such practices are a
cepts, and questions are the entanglement condition of the present but also a condi-
of the scales most visible, most prescient? tion of one particular language, or genre,
In many of the perceptive theoretical that constructs how we consider what is
and critical accounts, the issues have been meaningful at the moment. This genre of
contextualized in relation to debates in the present, however, shows how divided
CULTURAL POLITICS 12:3 November 2016

architecture and art. Such discussions have the sense of the present is. Although a
been instrumental in articulating the con- planetary concept such as the Anthropo-
nection across time-scales and focusing on cene has a unifying force, it also forces
how the geological expands into issues of us to reject the idea of a shared planetary
temporality of cultural reality: not only the moment. The postcolonial and neoco-
intersections of issues of cultural memory lonial (Cubitt 2014) contexts of waste
and media culture but also the timespan distribution, hand-in-hand with the violent
of the Anthropocene as it manifests to us processes of resource extraction, are one
(see Beck 2014). The question of the mul- such expression of the present not
tiple overlapping times also raises other always being present as one experience
questions about the concepts, methods, of what we are facing now. The nature of
and even fields of knowledge in which the problem is not merely the unification
geology could be discussed without falling but the geographical and temporal distri-
into mere cultural commentary of the hard bution of the term and its weight. Hence,
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sciences or mere apocalyptic rhetoric of gradually, alternative concepts are taking

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DEEP TIMES of PL A NETA RY TROUBLE

shape in the arts and critical humanities: the threshold of having to negotiate its
some, such as the Capitalocene, are partic- relation to the wider material worlds (see
ularly apt to consider the entanglement of Grosz 2005: 186; see also Braidottis arti-
contemporary modes of production as an cle in this issue).
inherent part of the environmental disas- This special section takes a related
ter (Moore 2015; see also Wark 2015); route to such questions but with an
some, such as the Anthrobscene, view emphasis on the role of media in the
technical media culture as one relay in the discussions of the Anthropocene and
production of planetary level obscenity the alternative terms that want to situate
(Parikka 2014, 2015); and some, such as it in the historical and critical contexts,
Donna Haraways (2015: 160) powerful including gender and the postcolonial
feminist term Chthulucene, conceptually debates. As such, it is not about the term
express the complexity of the situation, Anthropocene but about the geologies,
which entangles myriad temporalities and thermocultures, environmental ethics, and
spatialities and myriad intra-active entities- new materialities that constitute key parts
in-assemblages including the more-than- of the contemporary material politics of
human, other-than-human, inhuman, and media. Broadly speaking, it is about the
human- as- humus. The Anthropocene environment in contexts of media culture,
and its kin have also become terminolog- with an emphasis on how the question
ical sites where conceptualization of the of the environment is not resolved into a
complex spatiotemporal events that cannot subject-object pairing of general terms: we
be resolved by way of a human-centered humans, that nature. Instead, the complex
cultural politics takes place. entanglements range from the small and
Even without the use of the A-word, seemingly mundane (microchips, for exam-
the humanities have adopted a language ple, or bare hands ripping apart obsolete
of layers and deep timesfrom the media electronics) to questions of technocultural
archaeological deep times proposed by practices: human embodiment in media
writers such as Siegfried Zielinski (2006) environments that are far removed from
to the environmental humanities. Both the promise of immateriality. We were told
within and beyond the Anthropocene and to expect artificial intelligence and cyber-
its conceptual friends (or kin, see Haraway space; we also got dirty landscapes of
2015), we are dealing with issues of time discarded toxic electronics.
scales that are not necessarily authored This section gathers together articles
only by the loose category of humans. that involve fresh methodological ways
Instead, we find ourselves orienting in non to address issues of materiality in urban
human long durations, as Kathryn Yusoff technological worlds, including the toxic
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(2013: 785) points out, arguing for a residue of technological culture, by letting
geological turn in the critical humanities, surprising themes narrate the argument.
as well. In short, this emphasis, whether it Mud, temperature, plastics, copper, and
is a turn or a return, informs the question synthetic silicon are some of the material
about what nonhuman, or even inhuman, agencies that become anchors of cultural
forces produce the human and also makes analysis.
clear that the humanities, as a formation of The articles do not refer to media
knowledge with its own sense of relevant representations of geology or even, all
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temporalities and research objects, is at that much, to the specific instruments and

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Jussi Parikka

techniques used in geological fieldwork Wolfgang Ernst, Bernhard Siegert, Claus


(although that is a particularly interesting Pias, Cornelia Vismann, Markus Krajewski,
mode of mediated knowledge in techno- and others) and partly from other direc-
science and something that features in this tions that have elaborated the irreducibility
issue in Starosielskis article). Instead, the of issues of media to the usual focus on
articles primarily use geology to refer to text, audience, and industry (Peters
the geophysical underpinning of contem- 2009: 45). As Peters and subsequent
porary technological culture: it becomes a writers (Young, forthcoming) identify, the
useful term to discuss, in a broad sense, fourth, minor tradition is where influences
materiality of technology and media. Geol- from Canadian media studies (Marshall
ogy of media is used in earlier contexts McLuhan, Harold Innis, and others) have
(Parikka 2015) to rethink discussions in resonated with the work in German-
media studies and theory about media speaking areas since the 1980s. Without
materiality and to connect that to wider going into much detail, it is important to
historical and environmental contexts. note that these debates have led to discus-
These articles move some of this earlier sions of materiality that, at least in some
work forward by way of new examples and versions, have been accused of technolog-
critical insights and discussions, by bring- ical determinism and hence a lack of pol-
ing to the table new sets of art and design itics, by which is often meant a particular
work that further emphasize the idea of way of reading politics only through text,
the visual production of the Anthropocene, audience, or industry. Rather than accept
and by presenting visual, art, and design this particular angle, this issue investigates
methods that contribute to the sense of the particular politics in and of materials
the planetary media culture arising from that are relevant for media, both the stan-
mines and metals, minerals, and flows of dardized materials of construction and also
energy. the sorts of materials we rarely discuss in
I will briefly discuss the contexts media studies: obsolete, discarded, and
in which geology of media as a term electronic waste.
emerges before introducing the particular This move toward a different set
articles that form this section as an input of questions fits rather well with what
CULTURAL POLITICS 12:3 November 2016

to discussions in a cultural politics of the Thomas Pynchonso dear to many media


environment. theorists, not least Kittlervoiced about
twentieth-century technical culture: This
A Media Theory of the Environment War was never political at all, the politics
So, first: Why geology of media? For sev- was all theatre, all just to keep the people
eral years, some of the most interesting distracted . . . secretly, it was being dic-
debates in media studies and theory have tated instead by the needs of technology. . . .
elaborated materiality as a key context The real crises were crises of allocation
for concepts and methodological ideas and priority, not among firmsit was only
that relate to media archaeology and to staged to look that waybut among the
the wider context of theories of techni- different Technologies, Plastics, Electron-
cal media culture. Such debates have ics, Aircraft, and their needs which are
partly stemmed from so-called German understood only by the ruling elite (1973:
media theory (a loose conglomeration 521; quoted in Winthrop-Young 2012:
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that includes Friedrich Kittler, as well as 407). Geoff Winthrop-Young turns to this

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DEEP TIMES of PL A NETA RY TROUBLE

passage from Pynchons Gravitys Rainbow was based on a revaluation of traditional


as a way to elaborate the particular theo objects of humanities. In detailing what
retical attachment to war that Kittler voiced. this meant both in terms of an intellectual
But it also applies to thinking about the history of the emergence of new disci-
wider sense in which one can approach plinary attachments and as a methodology,
media culture. In other words, perhaps it he writes:
was never so strictly about meaning as
we thought it was, nor even the devices or Much like crew members of British ships of the
the end-users only, but the flow of materi- line in the seventeenth century who deserted
als in which the devices, users, and others their ships only to board them again as pirates,
become part of the assemblage. As I argue media analysis deserted literary studies to
in A Geology of Media (Parikka 2015: 5), board them again and replace the emphasis
this passage provides a way to narrate an on authors or styles with a sustained attention
alternative media theoretical lineage that to inconspicuous technologies of knowledge
does not include necessarily [the proper such as index cards, writing tools, typewriters,
names of] McLuhan, Kittler, and the likes discourse operators (such as quotation marks),
in its story but materials, metals, waste pedagogical media such as the blackboard,
and chemistry. media like phonographs or stereo sound
Such arguments have interesting technology, or disciplining techniques like
consequences for a media theoretical and alphabetization.
historical account that could become a way
of narrating issues of culture from the per- Could we say that we are now experi-
spective of material assemblages. It does encing a similar sort of a pirate takeover
not mean discarding the political aspects but of a second order? This would be a
of the given situation, however nonhuman takeover of the body of so-called material
it is, but incorporating them into the focus media studies that comes with its own
in new ways, as many of the articles in this set of already inspiring and well-traveled
section do. Such an emphasis hints at the theoretical concepts, mostly from across
rather different sort of politics that goes the Atlantic (see Ernst 2013: 2331), but
on in infrastructural arrangements and that is also ripe for another set of dis-
governance, a politics that is not merely at courses, concepts, and methods to be
the level of ideology. In other words, the taken aboard. In the case of this special
articles also respond to the question: How section, this could mean materials such as
to articulate the political that is distributed mud and plastics; in general geophysics
across a wide set of agencies, contexts, and environmental issues, it could mean a
and scales? Perhaps the shift in the media green (yet also muddy and dirty) version
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theoretical discussion and concerns about of media theoretical materiality that is


the materiality of media could be elabo- both drawing on media theory and also
rated through the following example. revising it. A rather good example of recent
Bernhard Siegert (2015: 81), writing discussions and research is found in John
about media after media and Kittlers Durham Peterss (2015) The Marvelous
impact on media studies, reminds us how Clouds. It articulates the point that not only
this particular field of German media are media understandable as environments
theory (which he reminds was neither (as we learned from McLuhan and others)
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so much about theory nor only German) but that environments are mediathe

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classical four elements of water, fire, sky/ media of new synthetic materialities and
air, and earth. Such a cue leads us to their aftereffects (not least, electronic
consider the massive processes of fire waste). Mircea Eliade (1978: 17374) put
and combustion, the skys movement and this in rather poetic terms when articulat-
periodicity, watery habitats for fish and ing the political, economic, and ideological
information cables (Starosielski 2014), and underpinnings of chemistry: By conquer-
liquidsand much moreas both media, ing Nature through the physico-chemical
in themselves, and as mapped by media; sciences, man can become Natures rival
the sciences of nature work with tech- without being the slave of Time. The less
niques that participate in the measurement poetically phrased story would be to nar-
of multiple realities that escape direct rate the history of material sciences as the
human perception. Geology and astron- ground of technical media solutions, from
omy are sciences of media that relate to corporations that combined meticulous
scales of the planetary and the extraplan work in chemistry and technology (such as
etary, both in terms of distance and time: Bell Labs) to the global routes of resource
Telescopes are machines of time travel extraction as part of supply chains. It is
as of space travel; we could call them also a different sort of media archaeology,
paleoscopes, argues Peters (2015: 363), which, as Nicole Starosielski notes in this
continuing on the topic of deep times. issue, is not always so much about depth
Could we pick up geology books, then, as and literal excavation as about the thermal
odd inspirational sources for media theory? and chemical reactionsthe metallurgical
Or astronomy and meteorology books as interactions of materialsas the condi-
part speculative, yet real, maps of airborne, tions of technical culture.
space-bound media realities? Or zoology To follow the line of reasoning sug-
books as media theory (Parikka 2010; gested by Paul Virilio and others, every
Peters 2015: 370)? technology comes with its accident, and
this leads to the question: What are the
Slow Technological Violence forms of accidents that emerge in the
Second: What does this altered media elemental media? The natural, intuitive
after media after nature perspective response relates to the massive toxic
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mean in the context of the politics of the pollution that penetrates in and through the
Anthropocene? mobilization of such media; the burning of
Let me elaborate this idea by way fossil fuels still firing up cloud computing,
of some add-ons and specifications to the invention of our petrocultural1 moder-
Peterss account. One the one hand, we nity since the nineteenth century (Jones
are dealing not only with the classical 2016), air pollution and smog, soils and
four pre-Socratic elements but with the liquids of toxic residue. But there is also the
multitude of elements and combinations sense of the historically accidental that is
that are defined in the nineteenth-century- part and parcel of the image of such natural
originated tableau of chemistry, up until media accidents as technological failures
the identification of all rare earth elements embedded in historical time. Benjamin
by 1939. Dmitri Mendeleevs Periodic Bratton (2015) argues that the governance
Table is, in this sense, an even more apt of planetary infrastructures as multi
way to start unfolding the chemistry of scalar interlocked realities is what defines
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contemporary technical media as the this particular geopolitical situation. The

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definitions of the elemental are situations of narrative and concepts that are able
of computational, visual, and other techni- to speak to this slow, emerging death
cal media; the earth and its elements are count, which is too easily left unaccounted
organized and visualized in media assem- for. It also fits into the context of other
blages while they feed as part of the con- temporalities in which we have to think
struction of planetary level infrastructures, of the accidentboth the long durations
such as cloud computing. We can also call of the Anthropocene and the events that
this medianatures (Parikka 2015: 1214), fail to cater to the immediate perceptual
a term modified from Donna Haraways reality and yet remain as real. Hence
naturecultures. Medianatures picks up on scalespatial, temporal, conceptualis a
the co-defining continuum of media and core issue, one that pertains to questions
nature, where technical media plays an of the accident in geologies of media
essential part in perceiving, analyzing, and culture; media are such multitemporal
mobilizing the earth, the air, and more, planetary environments in which planetary
while technical media itself is based on pollution becomes perceptible and
the usefulness of many chemical and earth sometimes also experienced. This aspect
elements. These include not only energy comes out clearly in how Verena Conley,
but also things like rare earth minerals, in her article in this issue, speaks of care
another key focal point for analyses of while also touching on the sensor realities
geology of media, which have been that escape human sensation and yet can
addressed in many recent art and design somehow be addressed in contexts of a
projects (see Samman and Ondreicka posthuman care.
2015). Aesthetics and visual arts are at Many of the debates about the
the core of this planetary situationas ethical responses to this situation of
interlocked fundamental processes of the Anthropocene have resulted in
visualization, as enabling actionability, and highlighting the importance of scale.
as material conditions of perception.2 How do the cultural and media theories
But the accidents of the elemental react to subperceptualtoo slow or too
media do not necessarily come as fastrealities, massive infrastructures
flashy spectacles. As Rob Nixon (2011) that are not experientiable in immediate
has argued, meticulously and with flair, embodied perception? As Joanna Zylinska
particular attention needs to be paid to the (2014: 20) puts it, we need to be able
reality of slow violence that takes a to address the environmental less as a
temporal and visual form different from thing and more as a dynamic movement
the form taken by immediate explosive across scales: Minimal ethics for the
accidents. Nixon addresses key accidents Anthropocene is not just an updated form
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and aftereffects of past years across of environmental ethics: it does not pivot
a range of geographical contexts, on any coherent notion of an environment
including the Bhopal industrial disaster, (or, as mentioned earlier, nature) as an
the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the use identifiable entity but rather concerns
of depleted uranium in the wars in the itself with dynamic relations between
Middle East with long-term effects on entities across various scales such as
humans and crops, and cases addressing stem cells, flowers, dogs, humans, rivers,
environmental justice in Nigeria. Nixons electricity pylons, computer networks,
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particular interest is to develop forms and planets, to name but a few (see

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also Braidotti 2012). It is in this spirit of practices of inscription demand particular


mapping the media of environment, and material substrates, and following this
environments of technical media, that the other genealogy is what becomes a
articles of this special section were also particularly apt approach for a media
gathered. They represent particular takes history of materials written hand in hand
on the critical posthumanities (Braidotti) with a media history of standardization of
and geopolitical issues, but with an eye materials and elements. The governance
to movements across scales: from the of symbolic writing becomes tightly
detailed travels of a plastic (Taffel), to urban connected to what we do with materials
histories of material surfaces of inscription and what types of things these materials
(Mattern), to the realities of temperature enablea discussion Mattern extends
as a part of media (Starosielski), to the to Bernhard Siegerts notion of cultural
just mentioned ethical responses through techniques: these are techniques that,
care (Conley) that does not contract on both symbolically and in material design,
an assumption of a unitary subject but draw spatial, temporal, and conceptual
becomes a vector of movement that boundaries, including between culture
folds multiple scales into this particular and nature, between inside and outside.
nonanthropocentric form. It is in this sense, and relying on the
The articles respond to the design Harold Innis tradition (Peters 2015:
brief to address media histories of 1819), that Matterns realization gradually
matterto map the media archaeology becomes a way of writing the material
of contemporary technical condition history of the standardized architectural
from the perspective of components, forms, including brick and also, broadly
minerals, metals, chemicals (Parikka speaking, concrete. To paraphrase her,
2015: 25) while paying attention to the media techniques of settlement, urban
cultural politics in which such practices planning, and administration serve as
arrange reality (as design, as plans, as backbones for organizing and arranging
programs). Hence it is important to read everyday life. And yet they also become
Shannon Matterns Of Mud, Media, and platforms for alternative inscriptions,
the Metropolis: Aggregating Histories contested spaces that are also vertical,
CULTURAL POLITICS 12:3 November 2016

of Writing and Urbanization as both such as the reemergence of the wall as


thematic and methodological insight into a key partitioning feature in geopolitics:
how materialities of media are written from the threats of American presidential
in our stories about culture, including candidates, to the graffiti realities in
cultural memory. As Mattern observes, Palestine, to the contested public use of
the textual sites of inscription are tightly walls in Calcutta. A politics of inscription
connected to the emergence of the city accompanies the emergence of the
as a material media infrastructure for standardized material forms of the urban
living. Implicitly writing her argument as conditions of life.
part of the Anthropocene discussions, I suggest reading Nicole Starosielskis
she starts from Mesopotamian agriculture article in relation to Matterns, with a
and the emergence of cities. The mud focus on the idea of standardization.
and other mixtures that compose cities Investigating the cultural techniques
also compose one element in the that allow us to standardize elements
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emergence of writing. Administrative is not a question restricted to things,

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in the purely tough-as-concrete sort lifetime. Magnetic media will last fifteen years
of materiality, but can also be applied in a warm room of 25 degrees Celsius but,
to chemical reactions that bind and even in cold storage at 0 degrees Celsius,
unbind media. Starosielskis take on will become unplayable after six hundred
thermocultures takes measurement of years. Incorrect temperature . . . is an agent of
temperatures as a thing itselfor, more deterioration.
accurately, as something of a mediating
factor in how standardization works. She This is surely no revelation for anyone
addresses standardization of materials in the museum or archival sector, but
from paper to silicon, as conditioned by it becomes a way to reconsider the
their temperatures, a point that becomes passages between media studies and
developed into important insights that temporal practices. Indeed, many of the
relate to different technoscientific ideas expressed here are not meant to
practices. There are no raw materials, no claim speaking on behalf of specialist
raw earth that is part of the cultural politics fields such as material sciences but to
of media but various levels, geographics, open up discussions between disciplines.
and processes of mediation in which Starosielskis and Matterns articles, as
the thermacultural becomes one way to well as the one by Sy Taffel, layer on top
address this ecology of practices. of various fields of knowledge and, by way
First, the functioning of media is of that work, offer a dialogue with media
conditioned by processes that we are able studies and cultural politics. Whats more,
to open up as mediations (see also Grusin Starosielskis article starts a discussion
2015 on radical mediation as a material- that is important when it comes to the
ontological reality of relations): in short, vocabulary of media materialism: the text
it is mediation all the way to the bottom reminds us to be critically aware of the
of how materials become produced as specifically masculine connotations of
part of media assemblages. Second, it geology while also suggesting alternatives;
is also the basic parameters we discuss how about the gendered histories of
as mediathe spaces and times of thermacultural practices that have been
mediathat are made in such chemical left out of technological histories of
and thermocultural conditions. Archives heating and cooling, the ones that exclude
should not be conflated with storage, pottery, cooking, and so on. What, then,
but any discussion of cultural memory are the conceptual limitations of adopting
is always tied to the maintenance of terms like geology and how can those be
conditions in which memory is passed on complemented and critiqued by way of a
as media. To quote Starosielski: set of alternative terms for the chemical
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transformations in and of media culture,


Black-and-white photographic negatives on including the set of cultural techniques
glass, produced in the nineteenth century, will brought into play?
remain usable for approximately seventy-five Starosielskis article underlines a
years in a hot room of 30 degrees Celsius but broader conceptual theme that runs
will live fifteen hundred years at 10 degrees through the special section and the
Celsius. Newsprint and celluloid film will last mobilization of the concept of geologies of
only six months if left out in the sun but in a media: it deals with the transformations,
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normal room temperature will last a human reactions, and dynamics of materiality,

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instead of a list of objects. Geologies comprehending the technological


of media involve a perspective on how genealogy that encompasses plastics,
geology is constantly mobilized as part of photography, and cinema. What has been
cultural practices and technical media. identified as the new materialist (Dolphjin
The transformational quality of an object is and van der Tuin 2012) perspective that
also prevalent in the extended sense stems from feminist theory, as well as
of media that falls out of use and becomes Manuel Delandas theoretical work, is
waste. Sy Taffel articulates this aspect mobilized in this context into a media
in Technofossils of the Anthropocene: theoretical focus on environmental issues.
Media, Geology, and Plastics, which The chemical reactions producing plastic
contrasts the natural geologies of the culture are also issues of media of new
earth with the accumulating strata of spatiotemporal dimensionsnot least the
petrochemical-derived synthetic plastics. slow degrading process that filters through
The fossil-fuel deep times, which have the soil and the food cycles of a different
been transformed from an external sort of a planetary cultural residue.
condition to an internal motor of modern Instead of pertaining to a narrative
capitalism (Salminen and Vadn 2015), of apocalyptic closure, such situations
are here also transformed into object- demand alternative conceptual
like symbols of that same modernity: coordinates. As Verena Conley demon
the various products floating in the sea, strates in The Care of the Possible,
from shampoo bottles to food wraps, this is a matter of establishing ethical
not only make up a natural ecosystem positions that require more than just
of the oceans but also, according to taking care of nature and some sort of
some sources, will eventually outnumber stable environment ready-made for the
the fish in the same waters by 2050 Anthropos. The multiple relations across
(Al- Jazeera 2016). The unglamorous human politics, natural formations, and
nature of plastic hydrocarbons made of technological cultures does not resolve
oil, coal, and natural gas is, however, into an idealized stability of a perfect
a testimonial to the already mentioned living balance, but this does not remove
chemical media culture that finds its the necessity to think about relations of
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media archaeological crystallization care in this situation. Quite the contrary:


early on in bakelite. Taffel articulates it forces us into an ethics of a posthuman
the folded genealogies of materials kind, one that acknowledges the
of old new media: The inception of necessary complexity of the situation.
modern synthetic polymers is historically It also acknowledges situations that
entangled with media technologies; the are complex mixes of humans and
development of nitrocellulose plastics nonhumans, of aesthetic and existential
and synthetic polymers emerge from territories, in which we inhabit a world
the same technocultural milieu, with that exceeds our sensory capacities.
developments in one area creating the Taffels discussion of Karen Barads term
environment out of which the possibility intra-action and Conleys conceptual
of the other eventuates. The similarities development both implicitly link up with
in the developmental processes of these Haraways call for an investigation into
substances is one way that the materiality the tentacled Chthulucene that defines
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of matter matters when it comes to this entangled situation. Conleys

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emphasis is on a potentiality of a future of selections from their travel diary and


as a sort of a philosophical design brief meditations about a geography of the
for the humanities: how to map the materials of media culture as part of the
possible emerging futures by way of postcolonial landscapes. They write:
creative fabulation and by way of taking The demand for Congolese minerals
in the lessons already in place from and organisms has consistently been a
feminists, ecologists, postcolonialists, direct result of industrial developments,
and anthropologists, and from other making the Congolese soil the birthplace
scholars who have succeeded in creating of objects of desire and destruction that
methodological and conceptual ways to are actualized in other realities, in other
think with others. In a situation where parts of the world. The nuclear bombs on
perceptual capacities cannot be returned Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained parts
merely as a capacity of the human subject of the Congo, just as every smartphone
and where sensibility operates outside of and laptop does today. These technological
the divisions of subject-object or human- objects exist in all places, while the
world, it is also the matter of (a critical Congo exists in all these technological
posthuman) ethics to engage in this sort of objects. Their contribution illuminates
an enmeshed reality across a continuum of how even the seemingly most displaced
nature- culture- media. part of electronic culture, whether the
In addition to the theoretical articles, gold extracted from devices or mineral
we have included two artist contributions. dust, also has a spatial logic as a vector of
These are not meant as illustrations or movement that entangles with the lives
ornaments of the nature-culture-media of miners, mining corporations, border
continuum but as examples of visual procedures, maps, and memories.
methodologies that engage with the The second visual essay and con
electronic culture of technologies, tied tribution comes from Unknown Fields (Kate
to specific geographies and also tied Davies and Liam Young). Their projects
to the mobility across planetary supply have extended the design and architectural
chainsor the planetary-scaled conveyor studios spatial vector to extreme locations
belt, as architect Liam Young (2015) that constitute the backdropsometimes
puts it. Artists Revital Cohen and Tuur a condition, sometimes an obscure
Van Balen offer in their photo essay shadow worldof contemporary
Take a Good Lamp a sort of a reverse (technological) culture. According to their
engineering of that conveyor belt. Their biographical information:
artistic expedition to the Democratic
Republic of the Congo entered the Unknown Fields is a nomadic design research
CULTURAL POLITICS

geographies of one of the most important studio . . . [whose] members venture out on
minerals for digital culture: coltan. Their expeditions to the ends of the earth to bear
earlier works, such as H/AlCuTaAu and the witness to alternative worlds, alien landscapes,
later D/AlCuNdAu, have engaged industrial ecologies, and precarious wilderness.
with the material realities and residues These distant landscapesthe iconic and the
of electronic culture. For this special ignored, the excavated, the irradiated, and the
section, Cohen and Van Balen offer a pristineare embedded in global systems that
glimpse of their artistic work as well as connect them in surprising and complicated
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some insight into their recent trip by way ways to our everyday lives. In such a landscape

Published by Duke University Press


Cultural Politics

Jussi Parikka

Figure 1 Bayan Obo, China, December 21, 2010: inside the highly restricted Bayan Obo rare earth mine. The
treasure mountain deposit is the worlds largest and, as of 2005, is responsible for 45 percent of global rare earth
metal production. Photographer Toby Smith gained access in 2010 by waiting until a Chinese national holiday and hiding
in the back of a pick-up truck, working below the radar of the authorities. Making use of GPS coordinates calculated
from satellite photos, he ran the final 10 kilometers across the desert to the mine edge with a discreet point-and-shoot
camera. Photo Credit: Toby Smith/Unknown Fields

of interwoven narratives, the studio uses film travels are documents of the stages along
and animation to chronicle this network of the line of material refinement becoming
hidden stories and reimagine the complex and part of technological culture and its toxic
contradictory realities of the present as a site of double. With Unknown Fields work, along
strange and extraordinary futures. with Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balens,
CULTURAL POLITICS 12:3 November 2016

we are able to point to alternative art and


The Rare Earthenware project was design methods that have been employed
executed for the Victoria and Albert in recent years in a visual cartography of
Museums What Is Luxury? exhibition the planetary conditionthe making and
(2015), and the collaboration surveyed unmaking of objects, as Unknown Fields
the travels of materials across the globe. puts it in their essay.
But instead of merely focusing on (luxury) The section is concluded by Rosi
objects or electronics, the chemical Braidottis important overview of how the
realities and toxic landscapes were brought issues addressed in this section can be
to the fore: the wastelands in Baotou in contextualized as part of the discussion
Inner Mongolia produced as the residue of of posthumanities. Braidotti elaborates
rare-earth metal processing became the on the theme of medianatures as part the
material provider for an alternative sort of a genealogy of critical studies from feminist
luxury objects travel, a mock version of technocultures to contemporary versions
29 0

a Ming vase. The photographs from these of environmental humanities that insists on

Published by Duke University Press


Cultural Politics

DEEP TIMES of PL A NETA RY TROUBLE

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in motion.

Published by Duke University Press


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Jussi Parikka

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CULTURAL POLITICS 12:3 November 2016

Jussi Parikka is professor at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. His
books cover a wide range of topics relevant to a critical understanding of network culture,
aesthetics, and media archaeology of the digital. Digital Contagions (2007; 2nd ed., 2016),
Insect Media (2010), and A Geology of Media (2015) make up a media-ecology trilogy that
addresses the environmental contexts of technical media culture. Other books include What
Is Media Archaeology? (2012). He has also edited several books, including, most recently,
Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History (2015, with Joasia Krysa) on the Finnish media art
292

pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi. His website and blog can be found at jussiparikka.net.

Published by Duke University Press

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