Environment & Animals

The Socialist Anthropocene

What has been the historical relation between socialism and the environment? How did socialist states in the second part of the twentieth century make use of the resources of the natural world? Was their impact broadly destructive, centered on extraction and mastery? To put it more bluntly, did socialism destroy nature? And what can be learnt about that history by drawing on the resources of the visual arts?

Those are the questions guiding SAVA, the Socialist Anthopocene in the Visual Arts, an ambitious research project based at the Institute of Advanced Studies at University College London. SAVA is an interdisciplinary project that brings together artists and academics in a range of fields including environmental history, the history of science, anthropology and the history of art to rethink historical and conceptual understandings of the relationship between socialism and the natural world. In this episode Maja and Reuben Fowkes, the founders and directors of the SAVA research team, talk about the issues raised by the project.

An aerial image of a reservoir with clouds reflected in the water, with trees and fields and industrial buildings in the distance — The Missing Mountain, a work realized for the SAVA project by SAVA fellows Anca Arnold and Arnold Estefan. Image courtesy the artists and Reuben Fowkes.

Maja Fowkes

Dr. Maja Fowkes is Principal Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies and Associate Professor (Teaching) at UCL History of Art. Her research centres on artistic engagements with climate and ecological crisis in contemporary art and the environmental art history of the twentieth century. She is co-author of the Thames & Hudson World of Art series publications on Art and Climate Change (2022) and Central and Eastern European Art Since 1945 (2020), as well as the author of The Green Bloc: Neo-avant-garde Art and Ecology under Socialism (2015). In addition to publishing widely, she curates contemporary art exhibitions, including ‘Potential Agrarianisms’ at Kunsthalle Bratislava (2021), and co-hosts the UCL podcast Left to be Desired. She is Principal Investigator for the Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA), a Horizon Europe / UKRI research project at UCL Institute of Advanced Studies.

Reuben Fowkes

Dr Reuben Fowkes is Research Fellow in Environmental Art History at the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies and Associate Lecturer (Teaching) in the Department of History of Art. His research centres on artistic engagements with ecological issues in contemporary art and under socialism. He is co-author of the Thames & Hudson World of Art series publications on Art and Climate Change (2022) and Central and Eastern European Art Since 1945 (2020), and in addition to publishing widely, curates research exhibitions of contemporary art. He is on the editorial board of the journal Third Text and co-hosts the UCL podcast Left to be Desired. His current work on the Socialist Anthropocene entails investigating the environmental art history of the wider socialist world in the twentieth century, from Castro’s Cuba to Soviet Central Asia.

Marybeth Hamilton

Marybeth Hamilton is an editor of History Workshop Journal and Coordinating Editor of History Workshop. She is the author of In Search of the Blues and When I’m Bad, I’m Better: Mae West, Sex, and American Entertainment, and she has written and presented several features for BBC Radio. She is currently writing a cultural history of Valerie Solanas’s 1968 shooting of Andy Warhol.

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