Visual analysis of popular disaster culture : an insight into the urban Anthropocene

Abstract

The approach of this research was conducted via an Anthropogenic Anthropological voice focusing on the life, death, life cycles of nature and culture within the Urban Anthropocene and the impact this have on non-human kin. This was done through visual analysis and ethnographic practice-based research methods via engagement with wilderness areas in my immediate environment. I further investigate ecological utopian and dystopian lenses of nature and culture pertaining to life, death and life cycles within Popular Disaster Culture exploring the Urban Anthropocene. Investigating Popular Disaster Culture assisted me to determine a view of the image that the public might conceive in terms of the Urban Anthropocene and how this can hamper a Natureculture approach towards nature as proposed through the practices of various selected artists working with urban areas in an anthropogenic perspective of storytelling. These elements in return led my practice and practical choices within my artwork which was created for non-human kin within a gallery space. My artwork became a representation of ecological storytelling of Natureculture through complex layering of nature and culture depicting life, death and life cycles of selected organic and building materials as well as established ecosystems and life critters. While further providing these non-human kin with entertainment of video projections of themselves in the past, present and possibly a future within the Urban Anthropocene serving as comment to the mechanical approach of displaying natural materials in museums in conjunction to a more accurate depiction of function ecosystems.