Rêver ou penser l’Anthropocène ? Usages de la ruine dans la non-fiction de l’extrême contemporain

This article explores how several 21st century narrative nonfiction and documentary artists resort to contemporary ruins to figure the Anthropocene. In order to deal with the relative invisibility and extreme complexity of the phenomenon, artists and writers often borrow from the ruins of other catastrophes. With an hallucinatory superimposition, they project contemporary ecological disaster onto existing ruins, and in doing so, they rely on the power of the atomic imaginary or the ideological void which follows economic crises. This “catachronism” (Srinivas Aravamudan, 2013) chosen by some contemporary artists and writers prevents us from understanding global warming, because it aestheticizes the Anthropocene as a mesmerizing post-apocalyptic time. What are the alternative uses of contemporary ruins for artists and writers who have decided to distance themselves from any melancholic fascination? Through a few examples (writers Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, William T. Volmann, Sylvain Tesson, but also French videoartist Pierre Huyghe), we will explore the tension which emerges between the aestheticization and the mobilization of ruins.