In 1887, The Illinois General Assembly reversed the  Chicago River, bringing water from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi instead of the other way around. Completed in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, the process ensured that the city of Chicago could reliably...

How can we tell stories about life on the planet that provide
information on both where human civilizations come from and
how they could develop? What should this narration contain?
How could it place civilizations in a position to guide future
planetary developments?

Essay by artist, environmentalist and curator Ravi Agarwal that provided a background to the State of Nature in India conference in Mumbai, 2018—part of the Anthropocene India initiative in partnership with the Goethe-Institut. With planetary futures at stake, how might we examine notions of power and ethics in order to address the current ecological crisis?

Such is the bubble of hope in which I have survived. It is also a reminder of the fragility of life and its everyday presence, which we ignore. The birds seem to know it better. Outside, there is mayhem.

Is it possible to free the non-human (‘nature’) from the anthropogenic gaze?

Essay- Invisible Natures – Art and Covid -19

“What is its nature, and how do we look at something we cannot see?”

Despite awareness of the serious impacts of climate change, why has the consumption of natural resources remained unabated?How can awareness of these facts and a lack of action coexist? The involvement of the capitalist system in climate change has been widely recognised (Barry, 2012; Storm, 2009). An imperative of economic growth, driven by capitalism, it has pushed people to consume more and more. As a result, natural resources are depleting and the climate system has already been severely affected. This system has also created inequalities and concentrations of wealth, besides being ecologically unsustainable. Yet, it is still in force.

Ravi Agarwal’s 2008 art piece Extinct? was located at two separate sites in New Delhi—the National Museum of Natural History on Barakhamba Road, and out-doors at a nearby busy, parklike traic roundabout, a few hundred meters from the museum grounds. Agarwal’s work was part of a larger group show entitled 48 Degrees Celsius Public.Art.Ecology, for which twenty-five artists—fifteen from India and ten from other countries—were enlisted to construct art pieces on the theme of the environment in urban public spaces within Delhi.

The following are occasional notes from October 12th, 2013 to August 17th, 2015 written by Ravi Agarwal. The exhibition Ecologies of Loss, curated by Marco Scotini at PAV, is the first Italian solo exhibition of the Indian artist, as part of a series investigating into the relationship between artistic practices and ecological thought in the Asian continent.

This article discusses the medium of documentary photography, looking closely at the work of Ravi Agarwal and his engagement with the changing nature of labour and environment under the impact of global capitalism. Agarwal’s photos are marked by their visceral quality, such that images cease to be static documents but give one a larger sense of the sound, smell and taste that define a person, scene or condition. Agarwal’s ability to shuffle between photography, video and installation and his research rooted in activism enables him to keep pushing the boundaries of the art world and of documentary.

Nature’s Present. Seminar 690. February 2017

Published writings on the Yamuna Elbe Project, 2011 (Pl see under Curation)
1. Re-imaging the River. Seminar 657. may 2014. New Delhi Pp 27-31
2. Yamuna – Elbe. Contemporary Flows, Fluid Times. Art Fair 110