The Planetary Institute

‘The Planetary Institute’ is a fictional entity that critically engages with the irreversible loss of landscapes on the edge of cities as a result of climate shifts. 
 
The work perceives estuary habitats along the Thames as site of sensorial multispecies encounter through the meeting of objects, water as a life force and an exploration of imaginal landscapes. To capture transient geographies and foster engagement with nature, The Planetary Institute curates an archive of found objects, recorded soundscapes, still and moving imagery and creative writing.
 
Using psychogeography as method, the project invites participants to engage with the estuary and co-create this archive using their mobile phones. The data captured is communally stored on a locative DIY infrastructure along the Thames designed to survive off-grid in an environment altered by climate change. Following Rodchenko’s notion of thinking of objects as ‘comrades’, a MAZI Toolkit becomes the interface for the exploration of liminal spaces where water and the city meet.
 
The Planetary Institute encourages a subjective experience of the Thames estuary to create relationships between the intangible, unconscious and temporal. This highly personal experience intertwines human and elemental voices to evoke and attune a post-anthropocentric understanding of the world. 

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