Update Abort: When You Realise That Earth Is Not Just Another System

What happens when the planet is approached as a system that can be optimised and updated? How secure are proposed fixes for the functioning and well-being of Earth’s ecosystems? Around the globe, infrastructures of different scales already monitor oceans and forests with the aim to predict and mitigate change. However, this green panopticon and the promises of green tech do not suffice. While techno-optimists argue that more radical planetary-scale interventions are needed to solve the problem of carbon storage and global warming, populists dangerously emphasize that the problem is overpopulation. What might be needed the most nowadays is to reflect on the distance that the privileged world maintains from the planet. This talk addresses the problematics of metaphors based on technomorphism and constructed separations, raising questions regarding the notions of time, well-being and restoration, and presents examples from the field of art that embrace conviviality, degrowth and low-tech as possible responses.