ABSTRACT
Dominant modes of visualising the environmental crisis known as the Anthropocene often resort to detached aerial perspectives of a ravaged Earth or infographs that compact and render complex datasets legible. Focusing on Adelita Husni-Bey’s The Reading/La Seduta (2017), a workshop and film, I question the pedagogical assumption that large-scale visualisations lead to taking action. I examine Husni-Bey’s use of tarot as a magical method for engaging a group of teenagers on the uneven impact of extractive capitalism. Tarot is based on dialogical approaches and urges an attention to complex and conflicting scales. For the participants, this is useful for understanding the uneven geographies and temporalities of environmental crisis. The Reading is instructive for recalibrating visuals strategies in – and against – the universalising tendencies of the Anthropocene. The work exemplifies an intimate form of activism that privileges embodied and partial perspectives while cultivating a social infrastructure that is attentive to shared vulnerabilities.
