Quotidian Anthropocene Database

Caption

This screenshot points to data resources that gathered on a short field research trip to St. Louis, which are both heavily impacted by industrial pollution. Granite City, just north of St. Louis, artist Chris Carl carried out gardening projects in the vicinity of his studio, including a “DIY remediation” of a lead contaminated site. The city was created for steel manufacturing and featured a lead smelting plant. The area also endures severe lead stress through paint dust emanating from deteriorating housing stock. Chris Carl gathered data resources and documentation about the site, which are not publically accessible or extensively usable. An aim of my project is to understand what kind of civic data infrastructure could help turn these data resources into more of a community resource, contributing to an environmental data commons.

Design Statement

This image works on at least two levels: it literally collects and displays field data points (examples of data resources that I learned about through field research), but also points to the aim of my overall project: to understand the gap between unavailable and needed environmental data resources to address complex environmental problems and “the Anthropocene.” In turn, the process of looking for existing data and visualizations turned into a way of doing ‘data ethnography’. At the same time, conceptualizing and ‘sketching’ what a potentially useful database could look within the Disaster STS Platform is a way of re-imagining the anthropologist’s role as designer, curator and collaborator in the field (Estallela & Criado 2018). Using the screenshot as a visualization also raises the question of how online platforms can be included meaningfully in traditional scholarly forms (such as print or PDF articles, but also exhibitions).