The core assumption behind Planetary Dreaming is that we live in the age of The Anthropocene, the era in the history of the Earth in which human activity has become a force on equal footing with volcanic eruptions, meteoric impacts, and the movement of tectonic plates.

There are different ideas about when the Anthropocene begins: when we became agrarian and started ‘designing’ nature by cultivating the land and domesticating animals instead of hunting and gathering? Or when industrialism gathered momentum and we started burning fossil fuels? Some claim that the Anthropocene begins with development of nuclear weapons and humanity’s capacity to destroy the planet.

No matter what definition we subscribe to, the concept of the Anthropocene offers a room for discussion and imagination that allows for multiple perspectives to come together in a common cause: the resolution of the global environmental crisis in which we find ourselves.

The concept currently serves as a flashpoint we can use to discuss the damage wrought by humanity’s megalomaniac thrashing through the world. But we believe it can also be a point of departure for our future-facing work, since it highlights the unavoidable fact that, for better or worse, humans are capable of shaping our future.