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The following exchange took place during the Question and Answer period following Anna-Sophie Springer (AS) and Etienne Turpin's (ET) talk, 'How Long Has This Been Going On: Natural History, Political Economy, and the Times of the Anthropocene.' The talk was given digitally on 3 March 2022 as part of Relative Time/Little Time, a speaker series designed collaboratively by Dutch artist duo Bik Van der Pol (LB and JVdP) and Mosaic. The Question and Answer session was moderated by Mosaic Editor Shepherd Steiner (SS). Keywords: Anna-Sophie Springer; Etienne Turpin., SS Wow, fantastic, thank you so much Anna-Sophie and Etienne. I really appreciate your completely pragmatic approach to thinking contemporary time through crisis, and in fact that you were delayed [...]

In this lecture, we consider the function of temporal 'what if?' frameworks to explain why so many questions related to human impact on the environment remain stuck within a Christian-derived fantasy of the 'fatal bifurcation.' As an alternative to the logical fallacy of some original (technical) sin, we propose that a multidimensional, multi-scalar approach to the various times of crisis that enables forms of humility replace those of humiliation within the discourse of the Anthropocene; to do so, we draw on the international exhibition-led inquiry Reassembling the Natural, which we co-curated from 2013-23, and consider lessons gained from our interventions in natural history museums. Keywords: Anthropocene; ecocriticism; activist art., It seems entirely justifiable to see the unfolding convergence of limits reached by the present technical, social and ecological systems as amounting to a systemic crisis equivalent to a Category [...]