Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Welcome to the Anthropocene age, where humans have transmogrified the planet, its oceans and atmosphere, caused mass extinctions and wholesale contamination that will remain for millennia. Beyond the politicians and scientists, the way forward remains in the hands of writers, artists, and designers taking inspiration from wild earth in a movement called Geo-Fauvism.
A gold rush that accelerated with the onset of the 2008 global recession compounds the woes of the Amazon basin, laying waste to Peruvian rain forest and spilling tons of toxic mercury into the air and water.
“The Great Invisible,” the winning documentary at the South By Southwest film festival, tracks how everyone from wealthy oilmen to impoverished fishermen were affected in the Deepwater Horizon aftermath, the Transocean-owned, BP-operated oil drilling rig, that exploded 50 miles off the Louisiana coast on April 20, 2010.
The Kallawaya cosmovision is based upon thousands of years of experiential knowledge about their environment and shared among many other communities across the High Andes. At the center of the cosmovision is the notion that humanity must live in harmony with the environment. Illness is the result of a spiritual dissonance caused by some sort disconnect between a person and his or her environment. One of the main tenets of the Kallawaya cosmovision is an ethic of reciprocity that is applied equally to people, communities, and the environment.
President Evo Morales signed into law in 2017 that stripped protection from the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory, known as TIPNIS for its Spanish initials, opening it to highway construction and other development.
The Hopi curse of Koyaanisqatsi marks the total disintegration of the life of harmony and balance. The subject of a 1982 tone poem of modern day environmental devastation by Godfrey Reggio, also shown in the mythological destruction of the ancient Hopi city of Pivanhonkyapi.