The title of the piece “Patchy Anthropocene (Buffalo Bayou)” is taken from Anna Tsing, Andrew Mathews, and Nils Bubandt’s concept of “patchy anthropocene,” described as “the uneven conditions of more-than-human livability in landscapes increasingly dominated by industrial forms.” To make this large-scale work I went on photo walks or on boat rides along Buffalo Bayou. I started in Katy, where the bayou begins, and followed the waterway east as it turned into the Houston Ship Channel. Originally dredged and widened to ship cotton, the Ship Channel is now dominated by petrochemical industries. Rather than show the entirety of the bayou, I zoom in and out on observations that point to “patchiness,” the uneven conditions of livability that were made possible or exacerbated by capitalism, industrialism, racism, and climate crisis.
