ABSTRACT

As a geochronological denouement, the Anthropocene marks the figural moment in geologic time when human activity, via nuclear radiation, inscribed itself into sediment across the planet. This chapter offers an artist’s account of process for Intime, an interdisciplinary artwork investigating how to perform geochronology in the Anthropocene along North Atlantic foreshores. Intime is geopoetics writ large—a visual and proprioceptive performance poem inscribing “O” onto foreshores at low tide. As sites prone to the geologic acts of deposition, erosion, and intrusion, foreshores provide an impermanent surface on which to interrogate the deep time, hidden knowledges, and climate breakdown affiliated with the Anthropocene’s inaugural narrative.

This chapter situates Intime with an interdisciplinary practice-as-research methodology integral to geopoetics praxis, interweaving research from performance studies, geology, cultural geography, and archaeology. Detailing foreshore performances enacted in Denmark, Norway, Scotland, and Sweden between 2015 and 2018, this chapter argues for interdependence and circulation as necessary components defining geopoetics. The account expounds the importance of both interdisciplinary scholarship and artistic practice-as-research methodology in the exploration of geopoetics as transformative action.