Terminal: a miracle play with popular music from the end of the world

Terminal: A Miracle Play with Popular Music from the End of the World is a film and live performance project exploring the politics of post-apocalyptic fiction. A theatrical staging of a morality play for end times and future folk music, it recasts eschatology, as a foundational myth for a future society. Post-apocalyptic writing and cinema are grounded in an ethos of survivalism. Invoking Rousseau’s state of nature, or time before government, these fictions propose violent scenarios in which nuclear holocaust, environmental catastrophe and other disasters generate an individualistic politics of pure pragmatism, negating the possibility of democratic deliberation. Terminal narrates this familiar scenario, but at the same time questions its validity. The film, shot on black and white VHS at Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbarn in Cumbria, dramatises a series of conversations between future-historical archetypes about the needs and pressures of the situation in which they find themselves at the end of the world. The performers then gather to play worshipful songs about acid rain, radiation sickness and eating the dog, using a mix of conventional, obscure and makeshift instruments In the tradition of books such as Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker and Arthur M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Liebowitz, Terminal imagines artistic expression and new folk traditions for a world to come after the apocalypse. If, as Slavoj Žižek would have it, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to think of the end of capitalism, the project juxtaposes these two endpoints to test out how alternative scenarios might emerge from the collaborative practice of making theatre and music against a setting of social collapse.

Urban retrofitting: identifying disruptive and sustaining technologies using performative and foresight techniques

Cities, which are now inhabited by a majority of the world's population, are not only an important source of global environmental and resource depletion problems, but can also act as important centres of technological innovation and social learning in the continuing quest for a low carbon future. Planning and managing large-scale transitions in cities to deal with these pressures require an understanding of urban retrofitting at city scale. In this context performative techniques (such as backcasting and roadmapping) can provide valuable tools for helping cities develop a strategic view of the future. However, it is also important to identify ‘disruptive’ and ‘sustaining’ technologies which may contribute to city-based sustainability transitions. This paper presents research findings from the EPSRC Retrofit 2050 project, and explores the relationship between technology roadmaps and transition theory literature, highlighting the research gaps at urban/city level. The paper develops a research methodology to describe the development of three guiding visions for city-regional retrofit futures, and identifies key sustaining and disruptive technologies at city scale within these visions using foresight (horizon scanning) techniques. The implications of the research for city-based transition studies and related methodologies are discussed.

Anthropogenic natal environmental effects on life histories in a wild bird population

Recent work suggests that the environment experienced in early life can alter life histories in wild populations [1, 2, 3, 4 and 5], but our understanding of the processes involved remains limited [6 and 7]. Since anthropogenic environmental change is currently having a major impact on wild populations [8], this raises the possibility that life histories may be influenced by human activities that alter environmental conditions in early life. Whether this is the case and the processes involved remain unexplored in wild populations. Using 23 years of longitudinal data on the Mauritius kestrel (Falco punctatus), a tropical forest specialist, we found that females born in territories affected by anthropogenic habitat change shifted investment in reproduction to earlier in life at the expense of late life performance. They also had lower survival rates as young adults. This shift in life history strategy appears to be adaptive, because fitness was comparable to that of other females experiencing less anthropogenic modification in their natal environment. Our results suggest that human activities can leave a legacy on wild birds through natal environmental effects. Whether these legacies have a detrimental effect on populations will depend on life history responses and the extent to which these reduce individual fitness.

Agriculture and the life histories of Mauritius kestrels

Habitat modification for agriculture is one of the greatest current threats to global biodiversity. Studies show large-scale population declines and short-term demographic impacts, but knowledge of the long-term effects of agriculture on individuals remains poor. This thesis examines the short- and long-term impact of agriculture on a reintroduced population of the Mauritius kestrel Falco punctatus, a tropical forest-dwelling raptor endemic to the island of Mauritius, that also utilises agricultural habitats. This population is a particularly appropriate model system, because complete life history data exists for individuals over a 22-year period, alongside detailed habitat and climate data. Agriculture has a short-term detrimental effect on Mauritius kestrel breeding success by exacerbating the seasonal decline in fledgling production. This is partly driven by the habitat-specific composition of the prey community that kestrels exploit to feed their chicks. The fledglings from agricultural territories tend to recruit in agricultural territories. This is largely due to poor natal dispersal and fine-scale spatial autocorrelation in the habitat matrix. Breeders do not respond to agriculture in the breeding territory by dispersing, unless the pair bond is broken. Therefore, individuals originating in agricultural territories tend to recruit, and remain in, agricultural territories throughout their lives. In addition to this, females from agricultural natal territories have shorter lifespans, schedule their peak reproductive output earlier in life, and exhibit more rapid senescence than non-agricultural females. The combination of this long-term effect and the adult experience of agriculture imposed by life history and environmental constraints, leads to a lower mean lifetime reproductive rate compared to females originating in non-agricultural habitats. These results demonstrate that agriculture experienced in early life has a lifelong effect on individuals. The effects can persist in time and space, with potentially delayed effects on population dynamics. These findings are important for understanding species’ responses to agricultural expansion.

Geoffrey Hill and performative utterance

Utterance of a sentence in poetry can be performative, and explicitly so. The best-known of Geoffrey Hill’s critical essays denies this, but his own poetry demonstrates it. I clarify these claims and explain why they matter. What Hill denies illuminates anxieties about responsibility and commitment that poets and critics share with philosophers. What Hill demonstrates affords opportunities for mutual benefit between philosophy and criticism.