Anthropocene Desire Lines: A Coal Story

In this experimental visual essay, we follow an imaginary lump of coal across space and time from its Gondwanan beginnings, through its extraction from the Talcher Coalfields in Odisha in India, combustion in a thermal power plant in Ennore in Tamil Nadu, and into the future through its multitude of postcombustion afterlives. We track how flows of earthly matter that begin in subterranean strata, and, mobilized by ideas of power, growth and national pride, result in indifference towards the molecular colonization of bodies, soils, waters and airs they produce.