MAIN&FRANK

Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet

9 Aug 2026

Core thesis

An anthology organised around two figures. Ghosts: the traces past damage leaves in a landscape, which keep acting on the present. Monsters: the entangled multispecies relationships (symbioses, contaminations, dependencies) we live inside whether we acknowledge them or not. Living well on a damaged planet means learning to notice both.

What it unlocks in practice

Site reading. It trains the eye to see a lot as layered with other lives and prior harms rather than as a blank plane with a north arrow. What was cleared here, what soil chemistry did that leave, which species moved in afterwards, and who are the nonhuman clients of this project? Pairs directly with the Dark Ecology notes: Morton gives the philosophy of entanglement, Tsing and colleagues give the field practice of attending to it.

Watch out for

It is an academic anthology and uneven; some essays are gold, others are dense for little return. Read it for the ghosts/monsters framing and the standout essays rather than cover to cover.

Project relevance

Lia's Butterfly House (designing for nonhuman clients directly), Green School BiRD Lab (multispecies entanglement as curriculum), and site analysis on every project with a damage history.

Buy on Bookshop.org

[All reading]