jessie beier

anthropocene abécédaire

// collaborative illustrated book project w/ Dr. Chloe Taylor, Dylan Hall, Danika Jorgensen-Skakum //

Riffing on a children's ABC book (but instead of A is for Antelope, B is for Bear, C is for Cat... A is for Anthropocene, B is for a Billion Black Anthropocenes, and C is for Capitalocene) this book offers an introduction to the naming debates around our current geological era and time of ecocastastrophe.

Inspired by the pedagogical force of texts such as L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, as well as a range of recent encyclopedias, lexicons and bestiaries that attempt to itemize ecological debates and topics, this project will combine collectively-written text and original illustrations (by Jessie Beier) to ask not what each proposed name means, but what it does in terms of (un)thinking today’s pressing ecological problematics.

We have received a Research Development grant as seed funds for this project from the University of Alberta Intersections of Gender Signature Area.