“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Jameson’s famous quip, suggesting that the capitalist horizon had become co-terminus with our human imaginary, has turned into a bad joke. The end of the world is now our horizon, and we are hurtling towards it, seemingly with capitalism in the driver’s seat. Climate change, resource depletion, out-of-control biotech, ever more intrusive surveillance and behavioural systems, massive inequality, democratic implosions, geopolitical volatility: a “polycrisis”.

For some it is a joyful apocalypse, the welcome extinction of a system – even a species - that has wreaked havoc on humans and non-humans alike. Modernity needs assisted dying. Worlds have ended before, why not ours? We can then become one entity amongst all other more-than-human entities. On the other side, techno-solutionists want to hand the keys of the future to “artificial intelligence”, melding the physical, biological and digital worlds into a new better-than-human system, leaving the redundant pre-digital past in its wake.

For those without either privilege or illusion, the prospect of apocalypse is much less attractive.

As Achille Mbembe put it recently, if we don’t want the Earth to become our universal tombstone, then the “whole of humanity” must engage in a massive effort of repair and regeneration. Only concerted human action can stop the on-going destruction of the planet. Repair and regeneration mean politics. Max Weber’s “long boring through hard boards”, Haraway’s “keeping with the trouble”, or Adam Tooze’s managing the day-to-day polycrisis, always in media res, in the middle of things, with no guarantee as to the outcome. However, such politics of repair and regeneration also needs an imaginary: a shared sense of a possible future, a “dramaturgy” of achieving a more human world ‘in-common”. Not Apocalypse but Götterdämmerung.

In this seminar we explore where art and culture might stand in relation to the end of the world and what we might expect from it. What kind of shared imaginary can art help create? What kind of dramatological orientation can it give us towards a future culture in common?

Sebastian Olma from Avans University, The Netherlands and Justin O’Connor, University of South Australia will speak at this public lecture event. Light refreshments will be served.

SPEAKERS:

Sebastian Olma, Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries at the Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology at Avans University of Applied Science, the Netherlands, will talk about the possible role of contemporary art in generating an aesthetics of the future. What kind of aesthetic practice can help us today to imagine a future “in-common” which is the only future possible. He will be joined by Professor Justin O’Connor, UniSA, who will speak of the need for a radical rethinking of the idea of art and cultural policy in an age in which a liveable, dignified future seems to recede every day.

For more information on Justin, visit https://justin-oconnor.com

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Banner image is from the Metropolitan Opera's production of Götterdämmerung by Richard Wagner. Photo: Marty Sohl /Met Opera.

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