Performing the Anthropocene

In Performing the Anthropocene, a diverse community of students and their faculty from the School of Sustainability and the School of Music, Dance and Theater researched human consumption as they co-created original performances exposing disturbing sustainability concerns including human disconnection and the global consequences of inaction. For example, one Lab outcome is a short film created by a local/ international student collaboration that blends original footage from the Grand Bazaar of Turkey, the peak of A-Mountain, other locales, and interspersed holographic acting scenes that together create a haunting and enlightening depiction of human disconnection.

Scroll below to view a few examples of impact outcomes from this Lab.

Reflection Journal

In her reflection journal, Lab student Sydney Buhr paired her original artwork and research findings to expose human impact on the planet. View the artwork project here.

Short Performance Films

Students created a series of collaborative short performance films with topics including: “Is Food a Burden after Purchase?” and “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Evocative final films were titled: “Reconnect;” “Soil to Soul;” “Extinction and Food Waste” and “World in Confinement.” Watch an example below, titled “World in Confinement” by Kimberly Flores & Casey Rapacki.

Student Testimonial

“I loved the class very much. Being a doctoral student required a lot of work by yourself, and this pandemic has made that alone work even more evident. Taking the class in my last semester made me feel part of a community that cared about the planet and knew how to have fun with the art we created.”

Erica Berejnoi Bejerano

Fall 2020 4^th year ASU Grad Student in the Sustainability program (now Ph.D grad), researcher at the ASU Happy Lab & Performing the Anthropocene Humanities Lab student

Performing the Anthropocene Impact Outcomes