This talk will outline the conditions of the term 'Anthropocene' and its historical and spatial roots, thereby complicating questions of nature. Through practice based in art and research, it will illustrate these propositions from an environmental justice and bottom-up eco-critical perspective, thus reimagining notions of nature's futures and planetary sustainability.

Ravi Agarwal is founder director of Toxics Link (www.toxicslink.org), an environmental NGO working on areas of chemical safety, toxics and waste, for over two decades. He is also an established artist, writer and curator working with photographs-video- installation and public art. He has been in important exhibitions including the Yinchuan Biennial (2018), Kochi Muzaris Biennial (2016), Sharjah Biennial (2013), Indian Highway (2009) and Documenta XI (2002). He latest curation is New Natures- A terrible beauty is born, Mumbai 2022.  He has edited books (The Crisis of Climate Change, Routledge, 2021; Embrace Our Rivers – Kerber, 2017), journals (Marg- Art and Ecology issue – April 2020, IIC journal Spring 2020), and publishes regularly on art and sustainability (Alien Waters in The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change, 2021). Ravi received the IFCS -WHO Special Recognition Award (2008), and the Ashoka fellowship (1998). He holds degrees in communications engineer and MBA.