Nr. 23 - THE ANTHROPOCENE Part I
2014, MAT
video 1:57 min
excerpt TEDx Talk to be seen here

1800. We are 1 billion, just to start. There is Haydn and the noise of steam machines. Machines that allow for even bigger machines. Colonialism, the brutalization of Man. There is social revolt. Bombs and fertilizers. The First World War and the explosion of global population. 

1920. We are 2 billion. The Thirties, with New York competing with London … and Berlin. The first deployment of weapons of mass destruction, followed by the Declaration of Human Rights. Oil, hence raw material for plastics, fuel for cars. Sprawling cities. 

1965. Three billion. There is demand and supply, mass production and mass consumption. The glorious Sixties, an explosion of creativity. The throw-away society. The first heart transplant. More plastics, plastics everywhere. Pesticides and Genetically Modified Organisms. Freons and the ozone hole. Space travel. The personal computer: Pacman and Super Mario. CCN and MTV. East and West. North and South, with China in between, Africa forgotten. Internet, financial markets. The search for sustainability: open pit mining. Biodiversity: burning forests. Global networks, global warming, global terrorism. 20 billion chickens. Automatic slaughterhouses. Head transplants. Virtual life. 

2015. We are more than 7 billion and it is the inequality between this woman and that one, that generates conflict after conflict, emergency after emergency, disaster after disaster, war after ….