Acceleration Lake

When we imagine environmental crisis we see devasted landscapes, urban overdevelopment, massive industrial plants, mountains of waste, and overpopulation. We rarely imagine a well-kept conservation area with an undisturbed lake surrounded by a boardwalk and a recreated historical Wendat or Attawandaron village. Yet this scene represents the Anthropocene—the geological epoch marked by human impact that succeeds the Holocene (the previous epoch which spans the past twelve thousand years). Crawford Lake, a tiny body of water in a small conservation area in the heavily industrialized region close to Toronto, has been designated as a potential "golden spike" that marks the moment of global human impact on Earth. The very deep lake on the Niagara Escarpment stores layers of undisturbed sediment that track the climate over thousands of years. This historical environmental record shows us that climate change has accelerated dramatically through the unfettered expansion of industrialization, consumerism, population, and profit. Climate researchers have found layers that contain corn pollen, evidence of the Indigenous settlement and cultivation of food crops, in addition to other layers that contain carbon from steel mills close by, nitrogen from fertilizer use, and chemicals from acid rain. They have also found the radioactive plutonium which was spread globally due to nuclear weapons testing during the 1950s. The planetary memory embedded in this lake bears witness to how humans have accelerated the pace of environmental change. Through this bucolic vista, provided by the lake, we take pleasure in the slow beauty of trees, water, and the changing seasons. As tourists, we seek relaxation and enlightenment from serene scenes that frame a view of how it was before colonization while also marking the unrelenting process of a human-made environmental crisis. Acceleration Lake is a work-in-progress project that documents a rare site that portrays the contradictory ways we experience the Anthropocene.

We are spoken by language. We are reproducers of words we did not invent, and we compose them into speeches to relate to the world. We use them to describe what surrounds us, ourselves, to explain, motivate, and discuss. Our thoughts, our mind, expand through our dictionary. Words are used in the present and thus reflect contemporaneity, which is why most people are unaware of the etymology of words or their distant meanings. Periodically, new words are introduced into our memory; some slip away, while others settle based on our interests and cultural horizons. Some enter common parlance through the window and begin their independent life, regardless of their original definition. "Anthropocene" is one of these. Introduced in the scientific community, it has made its way into the vocabulary to encompass the impact of human activities on the planet, embodying human supremacy even on a geological level.

Since this concept has not only been introduced but is also in use, we can also decide to translate it into images, which is precisely what Patricio Dávila does in his work Acceleration Lake. Photography, therefore, plays an informative, communicative, and potentially educational role. For instance, we learn that "Crawford Lake has been chosen as the global ground zero of the Anthropocene." Why? I found a clear explanation in a geoscience blog: "Crawford Lake has a very unique ecosystem. The different levels of water in Crawford Lake do not mix together. The lake is very deep and not very wide, so the top layers of the water do not mix with the bottom layers. Lakes like this are called meromictic. Although in most meromictic lakes the bottom layer of water is oxygen-depleted, in Crawford Lake, the whole water column is oxygenated, making it especially unique. The layers of water at the bottom of the lake are virtually undisturbed by currents. The lack of sea life in the deep of the lake also ensures that the sediments are not disturbed from burrowing organisms." This allows us to detect, in nearly 10,000 years of sediments, impacts that stretch to the present day. Therefore, this small, remote lake in Canada has been elected as the "Golden Spike" of this new human-driven epoch. The term "Golden Spike" is used to indicate the Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) or internationally agreed-upon reference point on a stratigraphic section which defines the lower boundary of a stage on the geologic time scale. To summarize, the first age of the Anthropocene could be named the "Crawfordian," after the lake.

Let’s now turn to the photographs, which depict rather bucolic and recreational scenes that could be seen on the shores of any lake located in a nature reserve. We see an example of the "naked ape" wandering in search of aesthetic/sensory enjoyment among trees and various elements of nature, through well-designed paths and walkways that stage control and dominance over the environment but mask a guilty conscience buried in the sediments of acid rain and nuclear tests. Should our species ever eclipse, this lake will preserve data of a frantic and suicidal entropic race.

Patricio Dávila’s project is thus comparable to an environmental education project. Properly supported by data, infographics, and historical and geographical (and more) background materials, it could serve as a prototype for investigation and understanding of the Anthropocene. In some way, analyzing the territorial, social, and conservation policies of the lake can provide useful insights for those interested in these themes, especially in understanding them. So, we return to words and language, and to their potential usefulness when combined with images and photographic documentation in shifting attention, or even just curiosity, to questioning the world, i.e., making sense of our very existence in the world.