A IS FOR ANTHROPOCENE: Living in the Age of Humanity
Climate Strike, Hope, and Catherine Chalmers
Welcome to our very first episode! Hosts Eric and Sloan recap the climate strike, find inspiration in Generation Z, and welcome our listeners to the Anthropocene. Later, Sloan discusses the borders of art, nature, and science with acclaimed artist and photographer Catherine Chalmers.
Welcome to our very first episode! Hosts Eric and Sloan recap the climate strike, find inspiration in Generation Z, and welcome our listeners to the Anthropocene. Later, Sloan discusses the borders of art, nature, and science with acclaimed artist and photographer Catherine Chalmers.
Welcome to a Anthropocene living in the age of humanity with Eric Dorfman and Sloane McCray. I'm Eric Dorsman. I'm Sloan McRae.
Speaker 1:Hello salon. Hello Eric. Welcome to a is for Anthropocene living in the age of humanity. Our brand new podcast. Yes, it's our brand new podcast. It's very exciting and it is going to look at a whole lot of really important issues, both ones that are quite serious and also some that are very helpful. And we'll be looking at new technologies and new ways of looking at the world. Yes. A new ways of living. Yes. As a sort of acceptance that this is the new world and what kind of world would we want it to be? Right. Because you know, 20 years ago we were all talking about how to stop environmental change, climate change, those sorts of things. And now the conversation to some degree is about adaptation. Yeah. What are we doing? How are we doing it? Looking at responding to a changing world. Right. And even if we do make improvements, the scale is not going to even out, right. There's going to be recovery time. So it is. It is a new world. Well in recovery too. What? In this podcast we'll also be interviewing lots of people, thinkers, artists, scientists, right, our own scientists who are lucky enough to work with here at Carnegie museum of natural history and scientists from around the world. But everybody we interview will be thinking about the future, thinking about what we take with us into the future, what our perspective is and our voice. Tell us a bit about yourself. Well, I'm director of Carnegie museum of natural history. I have a PhD studying waterbirds in Australia. I've looked at behavior of animals at a landscape scale and the changes that human activity has imposed on animal species. I've also had a career in the arts doing exhibitions. I sang opera for a while. I have written a number of books, one on climate change, a couple of them on museology. The most recent one was the future of natural history museums that came out in 2018 and Sloan. Tell us about yourself.
Speaker 3:I am not a scientist. I have a master's degree in playwriting, but I am marketing director at Carnegie museum of natural history. I'm a lifelong outdoors person. I've always enjoyed hiking, kayaking, a little bit of mountain climbing. I, I'm also a father of two and I want my children to live in a world where there is still capacity for natural beauty. I've written about the environment. I've actually written several series of children's nonfiction books about biological subjects and outdoor pursuit suits.
Speaker 1:Everything you need to know about poisonous fish and things like that. Right. Well I think a lot about where the planet is heading and what it's going to be like when we get there. Wherever there is and whenever. That is. One of the things that really engages me within the context of a natural history museum is thinking about the future and how museums which take art came science and presented to the public in an engaging way. What we can do to make the world a better place and actually have some control over where we're headed. I think that if we're not intentional about where we're headed, the future will be decided for us and it will inevitably be worse than what we could come up with ourselves. So creating responsible citizens, encouraging the kind of behavior that will ensure a sustainable future is the kind of thing that gets me out of bed in the morning, gets me really excited. So this podcast really is part and parcel of a, a whole program of activities that Carnegie museum of natural history is engaging on. Museums are uniquely positioned to sort of have a megaphone in that process. Absolutely. This is speaking to your, your book title, the future of natural history museums. I feel like we've done the dire Ramah. We've done the, it's on display and as old as dead, but our science is still active. The other thing is that the S, the diorama's as beautiful as they are, they represent a world with no human influence whatsoever. And this is where I think the museum, this is the history of the museum and it's no gust history that we build on. But as you say, the science that we're doing, that thinking about the connectivity of humans and the rest of nature is fundamental to the work of a lot of our scientists here. And it's also kind of the great untold story about this natural history museum and probably many natural history museums is that scientific work which people have an appetite for. One of the things that energize me about this was all the stories we get to share that's right about fascinating collections. You know, any natural history museum, what you see on display is not even in the tip of the iceberg. Well, science and collections as at the heart of what natural history museums are all about. People come and see the amazing displays and often don't realize that it's just one to 2% of everything. In our collection, we have 22 million objects and just a tiny, tiny fraction is observable on the floor of the museum and the galleries and the work that scientists and researchers in each of those collections is doing. It almost always is impacted by human behavior. Well, it's really hard to find an environment, a space on the planet that isn't impacted from Antarctica to the Mariana's trench. It's all being changed, all being effected. So if that's the case, what is a natural process? What is natural behavior of species? What is the natural chemical makeup of of organisms, if not in the context of human activity? Every episode we are going to do our best not to be blindly optimistic and sort of Pollyanna because we're going to be realistic about the real challenges that face us. But we don't want this to be a burdensome, depressing, overwhelming kind of thing. We want us to be hopeful and it's all about human agency and, and what can we do and we want to inspire people to make changes in their philosophies, in, in their lives. And there is a lot to be hopeful about. There are so many things happening worldwide, so many technologies, so many people deciding to take the future in their hands. And this report of Gretta Tarun Berg and the climate strikes is just a, a fantastic example of, as you said, Sloane human agency. Do you want to tell people about it? Sure. I'm sure you've been following. This is absolutely inspiring and Gretta and young people like her are sort of on the front lines. And I think if you look at social change and you know, even economic change throughout our history and especially in our recent history, it's always been driven by activism. The leaders don't get there until the activists move, uh, the populations and change ideas. And right now we seem to have an entire generation for the first time who is very engaged possibly because they realize that they are the inheritors. Um, and it is up to them, but they are very engaged to the point that there are sort of several disputing statistics on this, but most people seem to agree that about 25% of members of gen Z have participated in activism, have volunteered credible, have demonstrated, have done something climate related that is more than a tweet, right? They put their skin in the game. Well, and it seems to be that things that older generations consider deprivation, having to give up stuff to save the planet. The younger generation is not considering that this is hopefully, well this makes her a hopeful future. This is, it's very exciting and they get the urgency. It's very hopeful. Let's say. It's one of the things that inspires me about my own children and the that makes me feel that it ain't over yet. We can do this. It's really interesting that the report of the climate strike talks about New Zealand as being the, where the action first kicked off and of they're the first to see the sunrise. A huge amount of people, 170,000 people, 3% of the country's total population to part in this activity, which is great. Having lived for many, many years in New Zealand, it's a personally exciting but also New Zealand has a special reason to care because climate refugees are popping up in the Pacific and islands like Kiribas and they're coming to New Zealand nations full of people are arriving on the shores of New Zealand and saying, where's our culture? Are we bringing it with us? Do we integrate into New Zealand culture? And even the indigenous Maori culture is not anything the same as the Island nations that are taking refuge in New Zealand. So they have a very palpable challenge ahead how to welcome these people or welcomed these entire cultures whose Island nations have been inundated and do something constructive with it. And certainly New Zealand, which has always been at the forefront of this kind of thinking. I mean think about the strike against the rainbow warrior, the Greenpeace boat because of the whole nuclear debate. And they still will not allow nuclear warships into their waters. They've always been a nation that has been forward thinking around the environment. We should probably mention Pittsburgh and yes, own mayor, bill Peduto encouraged participation in this climate strike and excused a school students if they participated in the walkout and he's been very committed to placing Pittsburgh in this global conversation. It's very important. Pittsburgh also in many ways is a very progressive city and it's um, it's quite exciting to be at a museum that tells that story in the city. It gives us a lot of partners. It does locally. It does, many of whom you'll perhaps here on our podcast. You absolutely will. We'll we'll be getting lots of our, our neighbors in to talk about this sort of thing. Lots of people in Gretta Turnberg. If you're listening, we would love to have you as a guest. Yes, please come. Come in and visit us or we'll phone you. Oh well we will, we, we will call you after the break. I'm speaking with artist, photographer and self-described insect collaborator. They claimed Catherine Chalmers
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Speaker 3:and we're back. I'm thrilled to welcome acclaimed artist and photographer Catherine Chalmers, who's working vices to challenge the condition notion that boundaries exist between humans and nature. Katherine, welcome to our humble podcast. Thank you. Nice to be here. You're the ideal inaugural guests for us because this podcast helps lay people sort of come to terms with living in the Anthropocene and what that means. And your work invites us to stare into the eyes of say, aunts. And what happens to me personally is I'm captivated by their behavior and then there's a temptation to call it humanlike. And then I'm wondering, am I just projecting that my humanness onto them or am I making a connection? And now I'm, I'm part of the nexus, right? That blurring of boundaries.
Speaker 4:Uh, probably a little bit of both. And I think humans have been projecting themselves onto the natural world for a very long time. So I don't think that that is unique to the Anthropocene, but, um, I think to draw an audience into, look at, uh, the insects that run the world and run the ecology and to make any connection with that, to help broaden, uh, the vision of what nature is in particularly something as essential to the ecology of the planet as insects. I think that, I think however that is done, that it's important,
Speaker 3:as we've said, the subjects of your worker, insects, including ants and cockroaches, you call them collaborators. Can you talk about that term collaboration and, and how they collaborate?
Speaker 4:I work with the animals natural behavior and then I use that behavior to essentially create narratives, whether it's in drawing or film, photography, even sculpture, uh, narratives that sort of work with what they do and have my ideas so that there's sort of a coal mingling of, uh, nature and culture to try to bring those two separate avenues together to even be close enough to have a dialogue. And so I'm not doing science, but if you would see me out in the rain forest filming ants, it looks like I'm probably a field biologist, but the aim is a little bit different in that I'm not proving that they do this, that or the other. But in terms of the ants highlighting the connections between them as a very sophisticated social species and ourselves,
Speaker 3:it feels scientific. For instance, leaf cutters, which is what I'm most familiar with because it's on display at our museum. It feels very neutral and observational and documentary like, so they're in the white background. And so this is what there'd be doing. In any case, how do you accomplish that?
Speaker 4:Well, leave caravans, cut pieces of leaves from high in the court forest canopy. And they prayed across the forest floor for up to maybe a hundred yards and go into the underground colonies with the pieces of leaves that they cut up and raise a fungus or a fungus farmers. So they take vegetation and they parade on these dark forest floors and it's really beautiful. And that gave me, let's say for instance, uh, the idea to what would, you know, can I get them to take flowers? Can I turn this parade into a pageant? Um, is it like a ritualist PR procession where they're bringing their colorful offerings and, and are these special offerings? And so you can kind of take it one step further and you think of if humans in different rituals, rituals or religions or ceremonies that we do, let's say in like in like the balling these festivals bring in special offerings to lay that at the feet of golden idol. And so I work with their behavior and I go out and collect the flowers for them because they will target flowers but won't specifically harvest them unless the sources abundant. I give them the flowers and the ants readily took them. I mean, it's free vegetation, it's a value added to them. And so then this parade through the forest is just this ribbon of color and it's so, so this is how as an artist, I work with their natural behavior but push it a little bit in particular narrative ways that then dovetail was things that we think are particular to ourselves, let's say like ritual, um, like ceremony and down into the, in their underground colonies where we cannot get, I mean you can do, you can do a presentation at zoo and make colony structure for them, but essentially we can't get down there. So what are they really doing down there? Maybe they are, uh, you know, attracted to the color and the specialness of it. Maybe those things mean more to them than we can scientifically ever approve.
Speaker 3:Do your collaborators ever disappoint you? Did they ever not deliver what your expectations are or do they exceed those expectations or, or is it just what they do is what you were hoping for all along?
Speaker 4:No, they, um, endlessly do all of the above. They disappoint me. They show me better ways. They, and I think that's a thing. It's a, it's a path of discovery. It's an exploration. You don't really know what's going to happen. And every time when I would go down there thinking I really knew what they were about and this should be really easy, I find that it doesn't work and I've got to completely change my ideas to suit what they are doing. Then when I am down there, because they have such a, a variety of, uh, vegetation, let's say that the answer will, will target. So they don't always take what I think that they should take or that they seem seems logical. And also the ant colonies have kind of crazily different personalities in terms of how flexible they are or how stubborn and how warlike they are. Uh, their reaction to my lights is different. Some of them run and hide. Other ones are attracted to them and other colonies just ignore them. So, and those behaviors are consistent year after year. So there's a range of their behavior as a range of climate that changed their behavior. And in terms of, uh, let's say like working with the praying mantis or a cockroach, there is variation among, amongst individuals. I mean some roaches are really, really trigger trigger, happy, quick to flee and the ones who kinda chill. And um, and so, you know, you know, as a particular species exhibits these traits, but then when you're working with individuals or in groups, you see there's a wide variation. Can you talk a bit about your research and how you select the species? What comes first? The anticipation of what that's going to do or the research? It kind of usually starts randomly. I think sometimes it's random. I mean nature is everywhere. So it w there is an infinite directions I could go. Oftentimes it's um, personally where I have been, what I've seen, um, being from California, moving to New York and coming across the cockroach for the first time, being a person who seems to, you know, celebrate the environment, I was absolutely terrified of it and I hated them and they completely unnerved me. And I thought that that was an interesting dichotomy between what I thought my personal views were. But then this LIS little creature completely, you know, like it's like you see, you wake up the middle of the night and see some cockroaches in your kitchen and you kind of freak out and it's a, it's a standard response. So, uh, I was interested in, in how that came about, not really knowing what was there, you know, maybe this was a short investigation. Maybe it was more a leaf cutter. IAM project was the same way I saw them in Costa Rica. I thought these lines are really of ants carrying these green leaves, you know, across the forest floor was really beautiful. I'd never seen anything like it and I knew that there was something there for me to work with, but I had no idea what it was. And that's then when the research comes in, then I started doing research and then that gives me ideas. So when I'm producing one project, I'm doing research for the one coming up. Can you talk a bit about what's coming up? Oh, I'm a, yes, I'm interested in a system. Uh, that was a beneficial system that has become a destructive system in the pine forest of the American West. I'm interested in the bark beetle and the pine tree and fire and those, so the bark beetle in the fire are devastating. The forest out there. Um, we certainly blame the beetle as we oftentimes do blame the insect, but they are native to the forest, uh, a much a part of the forest as the forest themselves, the trees themselves. Um, and they are not the cause. They are a symptom of the imbalances. So our forestry practices and climate change has allowed fire and the bark beetle to become, become out of balance and destructive. So that's a system that's interesting to me. And I personally spend time out West. So I see that and I've been, I've been there when I've had to evacuated from fires and I see the destruction, the green trees turning red. Um, and so that is what brought me into that.
Speaker 3:That sounds fascinating. Wow. Can you talk a bit about, and I'm sure you get this all the time, how you started collaborating within sex. And apologies if that's a very mundane question.
Speaker 4:It's, I mean it's not, I, I started out as this, I was an engineer undergraduate and then I got an MFA in painting. I moved to New York thinking I was going to be a painter and live happily ever after. I had no really desire to go out of that. I love color. Color has always been something that fundamentally sort of sits below everything that I do. But I found that painting wasn't a medium to explore the world. It, it would be like having shoes on in the wrong environment or something. It just wasn't taking me in anywhere. And I, I had been painting things that were in animal figures, part animal, part human, maybe more mythological, uh, certainly created out of nothing. There were, they weren't necessarily animal, they weren't necessarily human, but sort of hybrid. And I started becoming more interested in the animals themselves. I was trying, I was looking for dead houseflies to introduce to the work to put into the work and putting elements from the landscape into the work. And it just wasn't doing it. And I certainly wasn't finding a fly. So I started raising them and then when I started raising the flies I thought, wow, they're so beautiful swarming in this terrarium that I have. I said, well maybe before they die, you know I should take pictures of them. And that was his start and I never looked back. It was working with the live animals and the live plants that became the[inaudible] and through the observation and working with them alive, whether it was raising them in the studio or working out in the landscape, that interaction with a live elements of the landscape was what I was most interested in.
Speaker 3:Can you talk about that landscape and and how I'm, I'm sure sometimes it interferes with, with the art and, and sometimes you have to move. You mentioned lighting and I'm sure you have to control the environment at times and I'm sure the environment depending on where you are in the club.
Speaker 4:No, I mean the leaf cutter and project was the first time I've worked in the wild and I worked on that project for 10 years because I was working in Costa Rica. And that's thousands of miles away from my studio. So it took a long time and I went in the dry season every year. Prior to that I had been raising the plants and animals in my studio so there was a little bit more control over in terms of the condition. So if I was shooting cockroaches molting and let's say the thing that really then becomes, um, an issue you have to face is they're mostly nocturnal and these things will happen at night. So you have to switch and try to become, not nocturnal in order to capture these things. But you know, other than that, if I'm, I'm feeding the Caterpillar to a praying mantis, I have to know that the brain mantis is hungry or that the Caterpillar is not too big because the Caterpillar can attack the praying mantis. I mean the predator predator play pride, it can reverse itself. So those are the more of the conversations I was having in terms of the lifecycle of different animals. But once, yes, you get into the rain forest, um, every thing, it just, the, the, the amount of luck I had to have for all this stuff line up really kind of astounds me. There are very few ways for an average person, let's say, you know, probably an urban person, somewhat screen-based. I mean that's a generalization of people, um, that they feel that the natural world is, uh, you know, for leisure, let's say go take a hike or something. Um, but that the interaction with it and on a more in depth level is for the, the group it was for science. Like somehow nature has been associated with science, the scientific study of things. But ultimately artists, um, can equally, you know, be out there making investigations of their own to do whatever projects they want to do, to bring back to the cultural world and showing an institution and actually create meaning for other people. And so we think, we think of the early natural historians and certainly the basis of the natural history museum here is just going out and collecting things and bringing it back and it had relevance. And then at some point, science became professionalized and institutionalized in some of those areas where science acts, the public doesn't feel necessarily welcome. And I think, what if I had anything to say, you know, go out there and do a project. You know, we even if it's on something that's not adding to scientific knowledge, that doesn't matter what, what is, what is, is you're making a connection between, uh, you know, nature and bring you into the cultural Wolf for other people to then relate to. And I think that that's an important Avenue to try to connect the human world to the natural world so that we can move forward together as opposed to in these separate camps.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's at some point, I feel like biographically growing up science was fascinating and there was an aesthetic element. It was fun and full of wonder and then it became a math problem. Yes. And intimidating and I'm sterile.
Speaker 4:Yes. Yes. Became a data problem too. Yeah. Yeah. If those things that say aren't, uh, really exciting to you, you know, basically making, let's say a data and a math problem, uh, out of, uh, the observations of the natural world and that certainly the Gitelman way to go, but there are other ways to interact and just because you don't have, um, an I have never taken an entomology course. I, you know, you know, read a couple books, go out and explore and, and, and bring back what you've, what you've gained. And I think that, um, as, as creative people, you know, that's, that's a great hope for, for humanity to try to bridge these two divides and that artists are more than qualified to go out there and do their, their own, you know, investigations and observations and art can be used as a tool to, to go farther into nature at a time when now, you know, you'd go out for a hike, you're a tourist, you know, you bring your economy, you're a bag lunch from someplace else. It's kind of the definition of a tourist. And I don't knock it because I go out and hikes too, but that there, there aren't very many avenues in, in which to go further. I mean, how do you go further than taking a picture and um, I guess, you know, I say just go further, you know, sit on the ground and see what's there and what appeals to you. Then maybe do a little research and then maybe you know, if you are a visual artist or writer, you know, bring something back and um, and then that's a connection for all of us to enjoy.
Speaker 3:Are you familiar with eye naturalists? It's kind of the social media for this very thing. Some of the schools locally, even working with our museum actually just a couple of weeks ago, the city nature challenge, so they all went out the students and competed with our botanist to make observations. And so you take a picture and then the app sends it to other users in those users with NFI it. So there's sort of a leaderboard. It can be a competition of observations and then different species and then different verifications. Yeah, it really took off for us.
Speaker 4:That's great. Yeah, that's great. Wonderful. I see. I seems like kids are, you know, natural naturalists and tell a certain age and then somehow, I don't know what that is. The education or the kids love insects at a certain point and then it after a certain point they're like, Ooh, get me my screen back. I don't want to say, you know, I don't know. That's true.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm sorry to a ton, unfortunately, cut this short, but I've enjoyed this conversation so much for joining us and please everyone. Um, you know, radio show does not do your Catherine's work justice. You really have to see it. It's, it's beautiful. This is, this is a cliche, but it's certainly true for me. You will never look at leafcutter ants the same way again. It's visually stunning and emotionally engaging and please, um, please visit Catherine chalmers.com and, um, and please follow her career.
Speaker 4:Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Speaker 3:A special thanks to Catherine Chalmers for joining us on our very first podcast. And next time we'll be talking with dr Jennifer Sheridan, curator of herpetology here at Carnegie museum of natural history. This has been a is for Anthropocene living in the age of humanity. We'll see you again next time. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2:A is for Anthropocene. Living in the age of humanity is the podcast of Carnegie museum of natural history. Our producer and engineer is Tim Evans, and our webmaster is Kathleen. Young.