Environ/mental ecologies in new media art
Anne Sophie Witzke, Jonas Fritsch · 2021
This chapter focuses on The Bureau of Meteoranxiety, a new media artwork that explores the relationship between mental distress, environmental crisis, and the role that digital technologies play herein. Drawing on psychoanalyst and philosopher Felix Guattari’s tri-ecological thinking and his provocation that no changes in environmental ecology can be achieved without the heterogenization of both social and mental ecology, we show how The Bureau of Meteoranxiety investigates the limitations of an individualized, technologically based approach to environmental impacts on individuals and communities. As an alternative to this problematic approach, we argue that the artwork itself might inspire us to imagine new “environ/mental” ecologies and ways of being in the world.