Daily Anthropocene in Rio Novo

We sometimes forget that at the centre of this newly found era we apparently live in, the so-called Anthropocene, lies the name of a species, anthropos, who happened to have introduced the geological novelty (kainòs) we are all talking about. We paradoxically forget this to the point that – beyond the multispecies entanglements and kinships that we scholars seem to love evoking at spritz-o-clock – the figure of this creature gently disappears in the backwaters. Quite literally so, when we are talking about Venice. But the ordinary catastrophe which we are living in instead demands that we bring him back on stage, where his daily activities shape the world we frantically cohabit. I tried to observe his habits in a far from metaphorically middle-of- the-road situation, from an anonymous bridge – San Pantalon – in one of the world’s less anonymous cities. Here’s what I saw in twentyfour hours.