I am very excited to announce my next project: Anthropocene. The Anthropocene Project will include a feature documentary film, which will be the third in a trilogy that includes multiple award-winning films Manufactured Landscapes and Watermark. The film is again a collaboration between myself, co-director Jennifer Baichwal, and producer / cinematographer Nick de Pencier of Mercury Films. It will be accompanied by a museum show incorporating virtual reality, a photographic exhibition of new work I am producing, and a book. Expected release date is fall of 2017. We will also be launching an online digital conversation around the topic of the Anthropocene including a website that will go live at the end of this month and various social media channels. Please follow @anthropocene on Twitter. You can also find us on Instagram and Facebook.
The Anthropocene Project follows members of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), a number of scientists who are trying to determine whether our impact as a species on the earth mandates a name change from our present geological epoch, Holocene, to Anthropocene (age of man). The project seeks to document the most salient examples of AWG evidence that is being collected all over the world. Some examples include: terraforming of the earth for human needs and its effects (agriculture, mines and extractive industries, dams, sediment perturbation, tunnels, urbanization); extinctions and the proliferation of invasive species; technofossils, such as aluminium, plastics and concrete, and their ubiquity world- and ocean- wide; radionuclides from nuclear fallout, which have global correlate signals; climate change and sea level rise.
We, as the dominant species on earth, working together, have the capacity to change our home for the better. What does it mean to live in the Anthropocene Epoch?
– Edward Burtynsky