Re: The Watershed in Your Head

[Brian Holmes]

On Sat, Nov 2, 2019 at 10:51 AM John Hopkins  wrote:

> My formal work currently includes being the archivist for, among many other
> items, the maps of now-abandoned coal and metal mines in the state of
> Colorado.
> The state is literally riddled with holes -- somewhere around 25,000
> abandoned
> mines alone, not to mention hundreds of thousands of hydrocarbon and water
> wells. Brian's pipeline mapping project only scratches the surface of such
> manifestations, they are practically fractal, given that anyone using
> natural
> gas has a pipeline right to their house, and so on.


This whole post is a profound response indeed. Thank you John, both for
recognizing what I am doing and for throwing your own parallel efforts into
the mix. That is the best one can hope for in these kinds of exchanges.

You are absolutely right about scratching the surface, and one can also be
rightfully perplexed as to what to do about it - whether to go more deeply
into the subject, or to just immediately stop using more energy in any form.

Perhaps wrongly, I have chose to go deeper into it, such as here:

https://mississippi.rivertoday.org/featured/7597

A general-purpose ecology map of the Mississippi River Delta could
definitely focus on the wetlands (which I try to do) and it could
definitely go into such things as the Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" (which I
do elsewhere in this atlas). This particular map focuses on petrochemical
exploitation. First in the Gulf of Mexico. The slider at bottom left draws
on the kind of official GIS data that John mentions, in order to reveal all
the wellheads and rigs that have been installed in the Gulf since the
fateful year of 1947. A painfully large number, which has recently gone
into decline, at the same time as much deeper wells have appeared. The red
dots mark those where exploitation has  stopped, the wellhead sealed
(hopefully), and the rig either removed or simply blown up and scuttled in
place, as is often sadly the case. The green dots mark rigs that go on
pumping (the majority of those located in deep water are, sadly, newer ones
that do just that). Zooming in a little closer, you can see the underwater
pipelines, again divided into active (black) and junked (gray). Clicking on
any of these features generates yet more details. However it remains
difficult to even imagine how much oil wreckage besmirches the seafloor in
this area; and it would also be necessary to tally the major leaks that
have occurred or are still occurring, just to get some idea of why the Gulf
of Mexico is currently dying.

Now let's look on land, for instance just south of New Orleans. Zooming in
you will see the town of Jean Lafitte, and south of it, a black cluster of
still-active wells. They are located on marshes, but not really, because
the vegetal mat of these marshes could never support such infrastructure.
In almost all cases, a canal has been cut into the marsh, just to install
and service the wells. But you will see that the still-operating black
wellheads are surrounded by a ghostly halo of off-white dots. Each of these
represents an abandoned well, of which there are some 90,000 in Louisiana
all told (oil and gas combined). Those shown are only former oil wells, and
only the ones located in the wetlands zones: click them for a company name,
date and depth. In the area south of Jean Lafitte, a canal has been dug for
each of these too. In some cases, a brown smudge at the edge of the canal
shows the dredge spoil that was piled up on the living marsh. Only
sometimes though, because in most cases, these crisscrossing canals have
let in so much storm surge that what formerly appeared to be land has just
been ripped to shreds by the waves, spoil and all. "Louisiana's
disappearing coastline" (a veritable commonplace in recent journalism) is
due largely to this shredding action, augmented by sea-level rise,
subsidence and a lack of fresh sediment because of the levees that channel
the Mississippi River. Every year, Jean Lafitte floods a little more; and
with every hurricane, it's an emergency situation. The mayor of the little
town keeps finding public and private money to build more and more public
architecture there, in hopes that one day, the town will be valuable enough
for the Army Corps of Engineers to surround it with levees and turn it into
an artificial island. That's not likely to happen. Flooding is. Jean
Lafitte, and most of the Louisiana coast, and the entire planetary ecology
is being eaten alive by the oil and gas industry.

Is it useful to know these things? You will probably say that you already
knew, you have the general picture. But you do not really have any idea,
not in most cases at least (let's except John and others like him). You do
not know enough to really protest these things in aggregate, in their
systemic reality, let alone take any concrete steps to change them at the
aggregate level of the production system. I went out in a small boat in
this general area, south of 

Re: The Watershed in Your Head

[John Hopkins]

As an addenda to Brian's work -- w/ kudos to him -- I would highly recommend
the work of The Center for Land Use Interpretation in the US (West, and
elsewhere). Founded by Matt Coolidge in 1994, they have focused on precisely
this issue of the spatial manifestations (not only of capitalism) but with an
early focus on (the military-industrial complex in the western US as well as
moving through many many other 'systems').

"The Lay of the Land" is their publication

http://clui.org/newsletter/archive%20

worth reading, all 33 volumes, for a deeper understanding of, to most people,
the invisible infrastructures that bring you your entire 'lifestyle'.

My formal work currently includes being the archivist for, among many other
items, the maps of now-abandoned coal and metal mines in the state of Colorado.
The state is literally riddled with holes -- somewhere around 25,000 abandoned
mines alone, not to mention huundreds of thousands of hydrocarbon and water
wells. Brian's pipeline mapping project only scratches the surface of such
manifestations, they are practically fractal, given that anyone using natural
gas has a pipeline right to their house, and so on. Historical coal mining in
the 'Front Range' of Colorado is present under many of the modern suburbs,
causing all kinds of problems in the grand scale of things. Thankfully, there is 
only one or two operational coal mines left in the state, at least most of the 
power stations have shifted to natural gas.


And, yes, the hydrocarbon infrastructure is ... everywhere.

Many local, state, and federal agencies engage in conflicting impulses to both
hide information about such infrastructures in the name of state security, while
much of it is available online (if you know where to look) via the movement to 
GIS mapping that is then shunted to the cloud for network consumption. And with 
90% of that controlled by esri.com, a privately-held corporation driving the 
mapping of these 'territories'.


While these historical resources and current-use maps are of import to
understanding what kind of fragile existence we have on the planet, there are
many more worrying developments -- for example, with groundwater issues -- I am
preparing, with colleagues, a deep survey of Colorado groundwater. The only word
I can use to characterize it is "grim". And Colorado is relatively well-off 
compared to many other locations on the planet where groundwater supplies (as 
the *only* local source of water) are being overdrawn by 4-500%. We are making 
this information available to the public, though at the cost of participating in 
'cloud computing' which should be an anathema, given its energy cost. (see, for 
example 
http://neoscenes.net/blog/77439-the-energy-of-archive-re-membering-the-cloud) 
These kinds of conundrums are evidence that we yet have not fully understood 
where we stand as a species, thinking that we stand separate from everything else.


The fight to 'deal' with how we live, how we overdraw our most critical
resources, is something that the wider earth system will set the conditions on,
as we are mostly *not* dealing with it, despite our best efforts.

Brian's work begins to reveal the complexity of what we have 'achieved' as a
species, but also that all those achievements are predicated on access to
hydrocarbons. One crucial point, though, is that 'other world' is not 'other' in
any sense except within the space of our own ignorance -- it is inextricably
*ours*. Our ignorance of what Brian labels 'political ecology' is monumental.
And when he proposes the 'banality of economics' as a impediment to
understanding, it is only a proxy for what I would propose: that a deep look at
how one perceives their own usage of energy (in *all* forms - food, transport,
housing, lighting, water, thought, embodied action) will begin to reveal our
dependencies, and thus will also mandate a political pathway where the paradigm
"the most efficient use of energy is energy *not* used" will ground all actions.
(And those 'actions', which themselves use energy to express, will reflect and
be consequent at all levels of our participation in all levels of the planetary
system.)


And esthetics -- languages and methods of making this other world
visible -- are an important aspect in this struggle that can only succeed 
if it finds a language that informs action, a language to express 
multiplicity (of actors, and of cultures) and belonging (that is, a kind of

care for the place in which one finds oneself) at the same time.


JH

--
++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++
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Re: The Watershed in Your Head

[Brian Holmes]

Hello Felix -

You've summed up the keys of a spatialized critique, to show how my work
overlaps with your own thinking and doubtless that of many others, how
generous, thanks for that. The reality is that these ideas are in the air,
necessary and emergent, collective at inception. What's more you put your
finger on exactly the reasons for expressing such thoughts outside the old
essay-form:

And esthetics -- languages and methods of making this other world
> visible -- are an important aspect in this struggle that can only
> succeed if it finds a language that informs action, a language to
> express multiplicity (of actors, and of cultures) and belonging (that
> is, a kind of care for the place in which one finds oneself) at the same
> time.
>

This is exactly what I have learned in my life, while experiencing the
relative failures of successive insurgent movements. It informs everything
I do now, all the time.

 Hello Max -

In the single most charming and wildly creative response I ever received on
nettime , you draw a circular causality that encompasses three of the
things that have influenced me most: early cybernetics (especially
Bateson), earth systems science and indigenous thinking/action. I like your
original interpretation of the Mona Lisa and just as importantly, this
observation that water became the core of Leonardo's thinking when he
realized that brute force could not hold back on the Arno. Do you have some
further thoughts about your own feedback relations with the Mississippi?
Why don't you put them on the map, I mean mississippi.rivertoday.org, it
would be great to have your insights about water. And also, what about
James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis and Gaia theory?

Hello Everybody -

The Argentines just voted down their local oligarch, the Chileans kicked
theirs out by massive street protest, the Lebanese have done the same but
like the Chileans they won't stand down until the whole corrupt lot pack up
and leave, and the Iraqis are making similar demands under personal risks
that stagger the imagination, while Hong Kong goes on demonstrating the
persistence and inventiveness of popular power in the face of
business-as-usual. Are these mobilizations going to spill over into the
West, as they did in 2011, or are they going to evolve into bloody backlash
counter-coups by the military, as again happened in the wake of 2011?

One of the things I saw while traveling down the Mississippi (in addition
to the proliferating dead zones of extractivism) is the degree to which
young people in particular see no future in the current system, and how
could they? The difference from previous no-future generations is that this
time it's clear that a change has to be collective, organized, large-scale,
rule-based, all the things that political scientists insist on. At the same
time it's only going to come from a revolt, and that too seems to be true
for a lot of people. What could such a revolt look like? What language
could express the multiplicity of those actions, and those forms of care?

In the US it is time to bring down the government. It takes leadership, and
sorry, for too long and in two many ways, post-68-style anarchy has been
the objective ally of the neoliberals. But in Carbondale where we did our
Field Station 4, Sarah Lewison organized a panel including new generation
of anarchists influenced by Rojava and municipalism, who have created a
kind of party able to integrate people across ideological lines and insert
themselves pragmatically into local governance issues, notably through
elections. It takes a lot of people to bring down a modern government, and
in my view, the model of Revolution is no longer the French one that starts
in the streets and ends at the guillotine. David Garcia's insights about
the need for truth-finding practices among citizens are spot-on for me,
along with the refusal of epistemological relativism, because that just
doesn't cut through the problems we are now facing. Doesn't a new revolt
need a new theory? Our modest cultural aim on the Mississippi is to open
the aesthetic door for one.

best, Brian
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Re: The Watershed in Your Head

[Felix Stalder]

Hi Brian,

thanks for this update on your work and thinking.

It fits well into what I see as part of a larger (re)introduction of
physical space onto techno-political thinking.

One source is of this, exemplified by your work, is the rapidly rising
pressures of ecological devastation engendered by a capitalist economy
that sees particular space, and the particular places that make it up,
as just an other exploitable resource, to be discarded when used up.
I've become increasingly interested in the visual parallels between the
graphs showing the "great acceleration" and those showing the spread of
digital infrastructures, The same absurd hockey-sticks.

Another source, in my view, comes from the realization that a focus on
space, particularly city space, can create a new framework to think
about collective conditions at a moment when the collective dimension
has been squeezed out almost completely from social relation after a
half-century of neoliberal policy introducing (market-based) competition
everywhere.

I think there is also a third stream of thinking feeding into this
return of space: the need to balance the self-mirroring, dis-orienting
and easily malleable, hence manipulable, character of digital systems
which need to be reconnected to resistant materiality.

I think all three together provide a way of being, thinking and acting,
that perhaps offers an alternative to being sucked further and further
into the ecological and mental devastation offered by the technocrats of
Silicon Valley and Wall Street, while avoiding the backwards nostalgia
that wrecks much of the West, but also places like India and the
Philippines (to the degree that I understand their politics).

And esthetics -- languages and methods of making this other world
visible -- are an important aspect in this struggle than can only
succeed if it finds a language that informs action, a language to
express multiplicity (of actors, and of cultures) and belonging (that
is, a kind of care for the place in which one finds oneself) at the same
time.

All super urgent, because the far right is doing its own kind of spacial
politics, which leaves a lot of people drowning, metaphorically and
literally.

Felix







On 30.10.19 09:05, Brian Holmes wrote:
> [Dear nettime, we were old friends. But so much has changed in the
> tumultuous decade that's now drawing to a close. Here's what I learned.
> It's still tactical media in a way. There's some links at the end. If
> you like it, let's collaborate. In any case, good luck to all for the
> upcoming years on planet Earth - Brian]
> 
> https://anthropocene-curriculum.org/contribution/the-watershed-in-your-head
> 
> 
> THE WATERSHED IN YOUR HEAD:
> Mapping Anthropocene River Basins
> 
> The biogeochemical transformations of the twenty-first century demand a
> new analytic of society: not political economy, but political ecology.
> It's the study of the technological powers, organizational forms, and
> decision-making processes whereby human groups reshape their
> environments. But it's also a more difficult and sometimes incalculable
> approach to the multiple forms of agency exerted by non-human others,
> whether on themselves, on us, or on any other component of the living
> world. Political ecology mingles nature and culture in an unlimited
> feedback system at planetary scale, with consequences in all directions.
> How to achieve at least a beginner's literacy in its manifold concerns?
> How to express them with the exactitude of science and the passion of
> direct engagement? And how not to exclude the crushing banality of
> economics, which continues to produce so many unwanted changes in the
> earth system? Finally--it's no mere detail--how to inject the uncertain
> wonderment of art into this devastating panorama of ecological
> overshoot? The questions are immense, but that's the point. It's time to
> develop a cultural critique of too-late capitalism, aka the Anthropocene.
> 
> I'm going to give it a try in the first person.
> 
> I used to be involved in the critique of political economy and the
> practice of tactical media--a cultural cycle that had kicked off back in
> the '90s. Then in 2015 I began work on a serious reboot, mixing public
> science, environmentalism, and open-source cartography. The idea was to
> produce a web-based map about pipelines and oil infrastructure, under
> the title Petropolis. I wanted to learn contemporary reality in public,
> by locating fossil institutions in lived rural and urban spaces that
> could expand out to continental scale, but that could also be explored
> close up, by groups deliberately convened for experiments in collective
> perception. Yet the confrontation with petroleum infrastructure was
> paradoxical. On the one hand, it's absolutely necessary, because the
> crucial power structures of Ant

The Watershed in Your Head

[Brian Holmes]

[Dear nettime, we were old friends. But so much has changed in the
tumultuous decade that's now drawing to a close. Here's what I learned.
It's still tactical media in a way. There's some links at the end. If you
like it, let's collaborate. In any case, good luck to all for the upcoming
years on planet Earth - Brian]

https://anthropocene-curriculum.org/contribution/the-watershed-in-your-head


THE WATERSHED IN YOUR HEAD:
Mapping Anthropocene River Basins

The biogeochemical transformations of the twenty-first century demand a new
analytic of society: not political economy, but political ecology. It's the
study of the technological powers, organizational forms, and
decision-making processes whereby human groups reshape their environments.
But it's also a more difficult and sometimes incalculable approach to the
multiple forms of agency exerted by non-human others, whether on
themselves, on us, or on any other component of the living world. Political
ecology mingles nature and culture in an unlimited feedback system at
planetary scale, with consequences in all directions. How to achieve at
least a beginner's literacy in its manifold concerns? How to express them
with the exactitude of science and the passion of direct engagement? And
how not to exclude the crushing banality of economics, which continues to
produce so many unwanted changes in the earth system? Finally--it's no mere
detail--how to inject the uncertain wonderment of art into this devastating
panorama of ecological overshoot? The questions are immense, but that's the
point. It's time to develop a cultural critique of too-late capitalism, aka
the Anthropocene.

I'm going to give it a try in the first person.

I used to be involved in the critique of political economy and the practice
of tactical media--a cultural cycle that had kicked off back in the '90s.
Then in 2015 I began work on a serious reboot, mixing public science,
environmentalism, and open-source cartography. The idea was to produce a
web-based map about pipelines and oil infrastructure, under the title
Petropolis. I wanted to learn contemporary reality in public, by locating
fossil institutions in lived rural and urban spaces that could expand out
to continental scale, but that could also be explored close up, by groups
deliberately convened for experiments in collective perception. Yet the
confrontation with petroleum infrastructure was paradoxical. On the one
hand, it's absolutely necessary, because the crucial power structures of
Anthropocene society remain functionally invisible, concretely unimaginable
by most people, posing obvious barriers to any conceivable change. But at
the same time, petroleum infrastructure is just plain deadly; it's the
epitome of instrumental rationality divorced from any form of human or
ecological interdependence. When you examine it up close, you become
terribly conscious that the stakes of this economy do not lie contained
within its sprawling infrastructural footprint. Instead they're elsewhere,
everywhere, in a fundamental entanglement with no end in sight. Political
ecology has to begin with that condition.

To go further in a positive way I reached out to a friend with extensive
experience in grassroots eco-advocacy: the artist and activist Alejandro
Meitin, known for his work with the Argentinean group Ala Plastica. We had
an opportunity to do a project together in the context of an exhibition
called The Earth Will Not Abide, about industrial agriculture and land-use
change in the Americas. So we launched an "interbasin collaboration," which
continues up to the present. The aim is to explore watersheds as
laboratories of governance. The first results took the form of a double map
and multimedia archive entitled Living Rivers/Rios Vivos, comparing two
major watersheds in North and South America.

Alejandro brought twenty-five years of knowledge and experience to bear on
the Parana River and its vast drainage basin, the Rio del Plata watershed
extending from the middle of Argentina to Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and
Brazil. As a comparative greenhorn, all I could do was throw myself body
and soul into the political ecology of the Mississippi River and its
tributaries, which cover roughly 40% of the continental US. Both of us were
focusing on the accelerated land-use change brought by a single phenomenon
that also dates back twenty-five years: genetically modified grain planted
in endless monocrop fields and sprayed from the air with glyphosate, which
is the active ingredient in Monsanto's RoundUp. This weirdly industrial use
of the tranquil countryside has exploded over the last quarter-century, due
especially to the telluric pull of the Chinese soybean market, and more
broadly to the rising global demand for grain-fed meat. How could urban
publics, far away in their bubbles of prosperity and entertainment, begin
to perceive and talk about such things? Artistically we were attempting to
combine embodied experience, social exper