Complex Cornwall #5

Seminar with presentation on 'Facing Gaia in Truro Cathedral' by Matt Valler

In the autumn of 2023, Truro Cathedral was host to Gaia, a vast globe suspended in the nave showing the Earth’s surface in spectacular high-definition. The artist, Luke Jerram, said, “I hope visitors to Gaia get to see the Earth as if from space; an incredibly beautiful and precious place. An ecosystem we urgently need to look after – our only home. Halfway through the Earth’s sixth mass extinction, we urgently need to wake up, and change our behaviour. We need to quickly make the changes necessary, to prevent run away Climate Change.”

Yet the philosopher, Bruno Latour, in his book, Facing Gaia, makes the unusual argument that Gaia is, specifically and importantly, not a sphere. Remarkably, he makes this argument by insisting that Gaia must instead be understood as a zone of translation. This seminar explores Latour’s conception of Gaia through the specific example of Truro Cathedral. What might we gain in our response to climate and ecological catastrophes if we reject the seduction of the globe? And how might translational research provide alternative ways to imagine our life on Earth?

Matt Valler is a PhD student in Translation Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. His primary research interests concern the philosophy of translation, particularly in relation to new materialism, and the materiality of narrative time in the context of environmental and ecological crises. Matt’s PhD project is titled, ‘Taking the Measure of High Cross: translating the many worlds of Truro in the time of the Anthropocene.’ He also curates the Complex Cornwall seminar series for the Institute of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter.