Terra Incognita: Beckett’s Anthropo(s)cene in Contemporary Art

Terra Incognita: Ecologies of the Anthropocene in Beckett and Contemporary Art

This chapter focuses on how contemporary moving image art, photography, sculpture, and installation respond to the condition of the Anthropocene evident in aspects of Beckett’s theatre. Counterpointing Beckett’s most liminal of plays, Embers (1959), with his most minimal, Breath (1969), and framed by readings of Endgame (1957) and Happy Days (1961) the chapter considers how works by artists Adam Sébire, Justin Guariglia, Roni Horn and Barbara Knezevic articulate the condition of the Anthropocene in ways that draw on Beckett’s engagement with environments and his concerns with the difficulty of perception. These artists examine aspects of scale and materiality to find new forms through which our changing environments can be made manifest. Their work examines the limits of human interpolation of the environment, responding, in key ways, to the condition of the Anthropocene.