Here I present insights of Anna Tsing et al. (2017), biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer (2020), and Latin American decolonial thinker Arturo Escobar (2018). Their work has supported my understanding of ecosystemic thinking in a damaged planet.
In the book Arts of living on a damaged planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, Anna Tsing together with Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt (2017) compile a series of articles that situate in the Anthropocene. Their aim is to nurture our curiosity towards the stories told by ruins, ghosts and monsters of the Anthropocene to then find ways to limit the destruction of life. Anthropocene as a concept has been widely contested for homogenizing humanity as one, to respond to this, they add that “our use of the term “Anthropocene” does not imagine a homo-geneous human race. We write in dialogue with those who remind readers of unequal relations among humans, industrial ecologies, and human insignificance in the web of life” (Tsing et al, 2017, p.G3). They recognise how inequality, racism and different forms of oppression affects humans differently in our damaged planet.
Lastly, Arturo Escobar (2018), in his book Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, explores the concept of ontological design. He argues that “ontological design stems from a seem-ingly simple observation: that in designing tools (objects, structures, policies, expert systems, discourses, even narratives) we are creating ways of being” (Escobar, 2018, p.2). He argues that the current dominant ontological design is an ontology of devastation, where we are “faced with the realities of a world transformed by a changing cli- mate, humans are confronted with the irrefutable need to confront the design disaster that development is” (Escobar, 2018, p.6). His work is relevant when talking about the role of Song as a design tool to transform narratives and create ways of being that challenge dominant western values, and invite other worlds to come.