Studying the Anthropocene is like traveling across time, space, and species. Following the lead of geologists, we can search for past evidence of distinctively accelerated human impacts on the Earth; together with artists and writers, we can imagine future consequences of human actions and inactions. Flying with climate scientists, we can witness the physicochemical changes made on the layers of sphere encircling the Earth; visiting towns and cities with geographers and anthropologists, we can sense the power of capitalism and the inequality of environmental changes wrought on the regions and peoples of the world. Working with biologists and ecologists, we can discover the human footprint on the evolutionary process; sitting with philosophers and historians, we can discuss the changing meaning of species in time and space.

At the end of the journey, we cannot but ask ourselves a question: who are we?  Then comes the rude awakening. We are no longer human beings we used to know. Our bodies are consortia of multiple species, chemicals, and devices, just as our societies are assemblages of multiple ethnicities, materials, and machines. The old distinction between natural history and human history has been collapsed. We cannot separate ourselves from nature as much as we cannot pluck ourselves from culture. We are a hybrid. We are part of Natureculture. So is the Earth.

The Center for Anthropocene Studies at KAIST seeks to respond to this call for radical rethinking about us and the Earth, initiated by the scientists’ proposal in 2000 to use the term “Anthropocene,” meaning “human epoch,” for the current geological time. The Center will serve as a place to investigate material and societal evidence of the Anthropocene and explore its multiple meanings from the transdisciplinary perspective. But the Center’s main mission is more than deepening scholarly debates: it aims to find ways to share, disseminate, and live with the desperate, urgent message embedded in this new word. Therefore, the Center’s activities include not only research but education and engagement in the form of public lectures, museum displays, policy issue papers, and participatory events. We want to reshape us and the Earth together. Hence reshaping Natureculture.

The Center does not believe there is a quick, ready-made technical solution to the existential problems we and the Earth are facing now. Therefore, reshaping Natureculture is meant to be a process, which can be a very slow one, and an activism, which may require reflexivity about us as much as other conditions. By emphasizing human actions, the Center does not intend to give an impression of elevating “Anthropos” over other species and machines; instead, it seeks to remedy anthropogenic problems not simply by passing the troubled ball from one energy source to another or from one region to another or from one generation another, but by confronting the hybridity of human being as Natureculture. For this reason, the Center places “Robotocene” on a par with “Anthropocene.” (This does not mean that the Anthropocene will be replaced by the Robotocene, as some scholars contend.) The Center also hopes to contribute to the study of the Anthropocene by providing a non-Western perspective. To be sure, this is not meant to add one more local, one more indigenous, one more peculiar voice to the Eurocentric narrative; rather, the Center pays attention to the significance of the sociopolitical institutions in perpetuating the anthropogenic problems. “Capitalocene” is thus employed to stress this point.

Welcome to the Anthropocene, and let’s reshape Natureculture.