Artwork contributed to publication 'Dark Mountain' (issue 21)

• Main Author: Carter, Justin
• Other Authors: Hunt, Nick, Lawson, Andrea, Robertson, Eric, Osbiston, Ava
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Dark Mountain Project 2022
• Subjects: Antarctic; Dark Mountain; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://radar.gsa.ac.uk/8219/; https://radar.gsa.ac.uk/8219/1/Justin%20Carter_1.pdf; https://radar.gsa.ac.uk/8219/2/Justin%20Carter_2.pdf; https://dark-mountain.net/product/dark-mountain-issue-21/

Artwork contributed to publication 'Dark Mountain' (issue 21) "Our twenty-first issue revolves around the theme of confluence. The image of watersmeet, of two streams merging into one, has long had sacred connotations, as shown by the votive offerings left at the point where rivers meet. This book goes beyond watery metaphor to explore confluence in its complexity: both life-affirming and death-bringing, nourishing and troubling, creative and destructive. Increasingly, the times we live in feel like a confluence of catastrophes: climate, ecological, political, cultural and existential. ‘Collapse’, as poet Sophie Strand notes, ‘is when things that shouldn’t be connected merge.’ The climate disaster unfolding around us is itself a convergence between the breakdown of ancient organic matter and modern industrial ambition, technology, greed and carelessness, a calamitous meeting of worlds. In the white noise of this chaotic merging, as disparate channels flow into each other and catastrophes impend, do we try to find solid ground, to hold fast in the roiling current that threatens to carry us away? Do we attempt to dam the tide? Or do we look to the words of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus – panta rhea, ‘everything flows’ – as we try to navigate down the unknown river? From modern-day lycanthropy tales – inter-species minglings between human and animal – to the melting, freezing waters of the Antarctic Convergence; from intergenerational trauma to the disastrous coming-together of nuclear meltdown; from the collapsing ‘Doomsday Glacier’ to swirling microbial ecosystems deep within the human body; the contributions of the 60 writers and artists in this book join to make new patterns in this meeting of the waters. Dark Mountain: Issue 21 is a collaboration with saltfront, the environmental humanities journal founded in Salt Lake City, Utah by Eric Robertson and Michael McLane. Inspired by Dark Mountain’s early work, saltfront is dedicated to a radically new type of ecological storytelling, with a focus on human ...