Ogrody – pomniki antropocenu

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyse the metaphor of the garden as a metaphor which allows one to give an account of the conditions of the Earth subject to human actions and –more importantly –to sketch a utopian project of going beyond the Anthropocene. A new understanding of the garden modifies the traditional view of it as a paradise, where a harmony between humans and nature reigns. Today, gardens are often approached as places of cooperation, negotiation as well as of tensions and conflicts among human beings and other-than-human beings, that is as places where numerous relationships create a human and other-than-human community. The analyses will start with an interpretation of Alan Sonfist’s Time Landscape (1978–), a public park in Manhattan that was conceived of as a reconstruction of the local precolonial landscape and at the same time as its monument. Sonfist’s work is a good illustration of how the metaphor of the garden is nowadays interpreted and –I contend –it may be also seen as a monument of the Anthropocene.