ABSTRACT
Energy regimes drive modern art and its history, although none of us were educated to perceive that epistemic surround. Recently, contemporary artists and scholars have begun to argue that forcings in the atmosphere can be met by forcings in aesthetic theory and activist imagination. The assertion of an anthropogenic image-bind begins with a tautology: in modernity at least, it is the ever-more-finely sensing human to whom the human-made image is addressed, and whose sensitivities it aims to enlarge and expand. The chapter aims to trace contemporary attempts to confront the anthropogenic image bind, while being honest about the impact and potential of these attempts. Schmidt allows me to address the anthropogenic image as a regime we are immersed. The promising trends, as the anthropogenic image-bind is pried open at its seams, allowing alternative thought-forms and life-forms to begin the philosophical work of symbiontics.
