Nature/Art/Literary Criticism This project is an invitation to think differently. In these 100 Atmospheres a group of writers and artists trace some material-becomings of this planet. We think of these Atmospheres as notes towards a material ecology that might ATMOSPHERES be as transformative as that of the previous five hundred and wonder Studies in scale years. We have been told: “You cannot do this”. “You can’t write this book together, there are too many people involved”. And later we are asked: “How will you do it?” From paradigms of thought, spells, beliefs, thresholds, ATMOSPHERES action and affects, through mist and wind... Studies in scale and wonder THE MECO NETWORK Susan Ballard, Louise Boscacci, David Carlin, Anne Collett, Eva Hampel, Lucas Ihlein, Jo Law, Joshua Lobb, Jade Kennedy, Catherine McKinnon, Teodor Mitew, Jo Stirling, Kim Williams. “100 Atmospheres is an ambitious and unique collection. Driven by an experimental spirit, it beautifully articulates, in multiple voices, our current planetary concerns. The book’s vignettes, embracing a plethora of genres, styles and voices, challenge the reader in her intellectual assumptions and theoretical affinities. The theoretical-writerly ‘compost’ produced as a result of the authors’ joint efforts takes the form of a powerful narrative about the polysemic concept of the ‘atmosphere’ – which stands for breath, vapour, weather, climate, sensation, affect and relationality. Inviting the reader into their already crowded conversation, the book becomes a hospitable space for learning how to live with multiple voices, viewpoints and agencies.” Joanna Zylinska, GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON “This collection is simply wonderful. Truly. The text manages to be performative and pedagogic at once (it enacts its content through its form; it teaches). It invites extended contemplation (such gravity, the fate of the planet and more) and then tempts with moments of distraction and slivers of insight.” Greg Seigworth, MILLERSVILLE UNIVERSITY THE MECO NETWORK ATMOSPHERES Studies in scale and wonder Susan Ballard Louise Boscacci David Carlin Anne Collett Eva Hampel Lucas Ihlein Jo Law Joshua Lobb Jade Kennedy Catherine McKinnon Teodor Mitew Jo Stirling Kim Williams First edition published by Open Humanities Press 2019 Copyright © the authors 2019 This is an open access book, licensed under Creative Commons By Attribution Share Alike license. Under this license, authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy their work so long as the authors and source are cited and resulting derivative works are licensed under the same or similar license. No permission is required from the authors or the publisher. Statutory fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Read more about the license at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 Cover art, figures, and other media included with this book may be under different copyright restrictions. Please see the permissions associated with each image. Cover image Agnieszka Golda, Martin Johnson and Jo Law, Spinning World, 2018, installation detail, mixed media, Musuem of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney, Australia. Design and Illustration Jo Stirling. Typeset in Adobe InDesign using Fira Sans and Tinos. Print ISBN: 978-1-78542-063-4 PDF ISBN: 978-1-78542-064-1 ePub ISBN: 978-1-78542-065-8 To cite this book: Susan Ballard, Louise Boscacci, David Carlin, Anne Collett, Eva Hampel, Lucas Ihlein, Jo Law, Joshua Lobb, Jade Kennedy, Teodor Mitew, Catherine McKinnon, Jo Stirling, Kim Williams, [The MECO Network], 100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder, London: Open Humanities Press, 2019. OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS Freely available online at www.openhumanitiespress.org Open Humanities Press is an international, scholar-led, open access publishing collective whose mission is to make leading works of contemporary critical thought freely available worldwide. More at http://openhumanitiespress.org For many non-scientists, the images and language of climate change and accompanying ecological events present as enigmatic signs. They elicit profound anxieties even as they conjure new ways of seeing the world. Environmental events are thus pushing up to the surface what are fundamentally literary problematics of writing and reading. OHP's Seed Books address the impact of today’s new climate imaginaries. In fluid, permeable books funded by Sweden’s The Seed Box: A Mistra- Formas Environmental Humanities Collaboratory, we are exploring how today’s new visual and cognitive landscapes are engendering new collaborative textual practices in Humanities disciplines. Read more at https://theseedbox.se/ Contents 10 Acknowledgement of Country 11 Acknowledgements 15 Who is MECO? 16 List of Figures 19 Breath 20 Pivot 21 Encounter 22 Riversdale 24 Place 25 Pressures 26 Search engine 27 A glimpse 28 Water across road 31 From the plant to the planetary: a natural science Susan Ballard 51 In the middle of things 53 Change management 54 Frame 55 Labour laboratory 56 Marketplace 57 Metaphor 58 Ghost gum 59 Juju 61 Comparative hierophany at three object scale Teodor Mitew 83 Cyclone 84 Scale 85 Resonances 86 Far and near 89 Otherworldly 90 Joyful fuss 91 Collaboration 92 Breathe it in 95 Liminal atmospheres: ice and chalk Eva Hampel 119 Infinite 120 Particles 121 Intensities 123 Rush 124 Frost 125 Preservation 127 Erosion 128 Extinction 129 Home 131 Trinity Catherine McKinnon 143 Oxygen 144 Paradigm 145 Missing 146 Voice 147 Listen 148 Pause 151 Writing weather Jo Law 171 Survival zone 172 Complications 174 Reindeer 176 Time 177 Rain magic 180 Lost and found 181 Swarm 182 Bees 184 Interruptions (for Jen) 185 Observatory 186 Subject to change 187 Soil 189 Cascade 191 Rhythm and song 193 Ecologising affect and atmosphere in the Anthropocene: dear Rachel Louise Boscacci 217 Call and response 219 Aurora borealis 221 Aurora australis 222 Sphere 223 Sky-watching 224 Fog 227 Inclusion and exclusion 226 Expanse 227 On the river 228 River stones 231 A conversation Jade Kennedy 243 Flux 244 Space junk 245 Speculative 246 Status 247 Plastic 248 (De)generation 249 Habitat 252 Voyager 251 Coming to terms 253 Hodgepodge 254 Indeterminacy 255 Humid 256 Electric 259 A slow reading of Olive Senior’s Hurricane Story Anne Collett 279 Transcendence 280 Life and death 282 Virtual 283 Wind 284 Atomsphere 285 Spinning 289 In the air: whipbird/human/koel Joshua Lobb 299 Hemispheres 300 Wondering/wandering 301 Portals 302 Ghosts 303 Collective 304 Invisible 307 Road trip David Carlin 321 A gathering cloud 322 Repair 323 Care 324 Heterogeneous 325 Carbon base 327 Two places: working and walking with waterways Kim Williams and Lucas Ihlein 351 Compost 353 Blanket 354 Acknowledging Country ... 355 Practice 356 The conference of the birds 358 All mixed up 360 Notes 391 References 415 Notes on contributors Acknowledgement of Country A curious stranger enters. Acknowledgements are reservoirs, waterfalls, and rivers of gratitude and respect. They are the nourishing that feeds the making of a book by a kinship of people committed to a collective response to a call; a call and response that is multiple, plural, a dance of alterity as nimble and beautiful and unpredict- able as a murmuration of budgerigars over waterholes at dawn. There is a protocol to acknowledging this place, here. A perfect bend in the river; the warm sandstone of ancient escarpment; a hidden room in a sinking university building. Here. A place emergent from the entanglement of country, cultures, the kinship of co-thinking and co-writing, and a hundred wondrous journeys. A fallen tree, a ghost gum, a mossy rock in the park, or even this very page can be boundaries of crossing between modes of being. Acknowledgement is recipro- cal and presupposes a shared entanglement in maintaining all the ways in which this place, here, is unique. To collectively Acknowledge the living space of the text, to collectively approach all of those who have come before and will return after the time of this book, we sit here today with new understandings of the invitational aspect to protocol. We are sitting with respect, responsibility and reciprocity. We Acknowledge different skills and histories of belonging; and through the process of writing this book we Acknowledge the five fingers, rivers, braids, and atmospheres of Aboriginal Acknowledgement of Country—Country, Kinship, Culture, Journey and Connectedness. We Acknowledge Country. We come in, we invite you, the reader, into the intimacy of the entangled relationship that is this book. Here. 10 Acknowledgement of Country Acknowledgements Anne would like to thank all those who generated the first ideas for this project and gathered such a wonderful group of people together. Thank you for so warmly including me at Riversdale and in all the subsequent gathering, eating, drinking, walking, talk- ing, thinking. It is a joy to be part of this collective storying. Catherine would like to thank all co-writers for sharing this strange and wondrous journey (what an experience!) and also everyone engaged in the researching, editing (Naomi) and pro- ducing (Sigi, David) of this vibrantly braided book. Thanks to Gary Christian for thoughtful walks through fictional and nonfictional forests. Thanks to Jade for years-ago talks, Su for clearing the path, Joshua, Kim and David C, for apt editorial suggestions. Also, thank you to the 2017 AAWP conference panel ‘Stories from Strangeland’ and audience members, especially Robin Hemley, for concise comments on Trinity. David would like to thank Linda Mickleborough, Alice Nelson and colleagues at non/fictionLab at RMIT University for readerly and writerly counsel. Also, Nicole Walker for being an excellent fellow traveller and host. Eva would like to thank Ruby and Finn for their love and sup- port, and Joshua, Cath, Su, and all co-writers (I should mention all individually, but it would be a long list) for the pleasure of collaboration and cross-fertilisation. Jade too – though we have not met! Also Brogan and Mike, who were very present early on… and the Far North, for its inspiration and other-worldliness, and all that twilight.