T. J. DEMOS BEYOND THE WORLD’S ARTS OF AT THE LIVING END CROSSING BEYOND THE WORLD’S END DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS DURHAM AND LONDON 2020 T. J. DEMOS BEYOND THE WORLD’S ARTS OF AT THE LIVING END CROSSING © 2020 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper ∞ Designed by Aimee C. Harrison Typeset in Fengardo Neue and Quadraat Pro by Westchester Publishing Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Demos, T. J., author. Title: Beyond the world’s end : arts of living at the crossing / T. J. Demos. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2019047895 (print) | lccn 2019047896 (ebook) isbn 9781478008668 (hardcover) isbn 9781478009573 (paperback) isbn 9781478012252 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Ecol ogy in art. | Human ecol ogy in art. | Social justice in art. | Art and society. | Art— Political aspects. Classification: lcc n8217.e28 d45 2020 (print) | lcc n8217.e28 (ebook) | ddc 700.1/03— dc23 lc rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2019047895 lc ebook rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2019047896 Cover art: Arthur Jafa. Still from Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death, 2016. Photographed at Store Studios, 2017. Photo by Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy of the photographer, the artist, and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/Rome. CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vii INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The World’s End, Feeding the Ghost: and Beyond John Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea 1 23 CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE Blackout: The Necro- The Visual Politics of politics of Extraction Climate Refugees 43 68 CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE Gaming the Environment: Animal Cosmo- On the Media Ecology politics: The Art of of Public Studio Gustafsson&Haapoja 96 116 CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN To Save a World: Geoengineering, The Great Transition: Conflictual Futurisms, and The Arts and Radical the Unthinkable System Change 137 163 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS NOTES 195 199 INDEX 249 ILLUSTRATIONS 1.1 John Akomfrah, Vertigo Sea, 2015 (still), ​24 1.2 John Akomfrah, Vertigo Sea, 2015 (still), ​25 1.3 John Akomfrah, The Unfinished Conversation, 2012 (still), ​29 1.4 John Akomfrah, Vertigo Sea, 2015 (still), ​30 1.5 John Akomfrah, Peripeteia, 2012 (still), 31 1.6 John Akomfrah, Vertigo Sea, 2015 (still), 36 2.1 Angela Melitopoulos, Crossings, 2017 (installation, documenta 14), 45 2.2 Jesus Barraza & Melanie Cervantes, Solidarity with Standing Rock, 2016, 49 2.3 Angela Melitopoulos, Crossings, 2017 (still), 53 2.4 Ursula Biemann, Deep Weather, 2013 (still), 54 2.5 Ursula Biemann & Paulo Tavares, Forest Law, 2014 (installation), 55 2.6 Ursula Biemann, Deep Weather, 2013 (still), 57 2.7 Allora & Calzadilla, Blackout, 2017 (installation), 61 2.8 Allora & Calzadilla, Blackout, 2017 (installation with performers), 63 2.9 Allora & Calzadilla, The Night We Became People Again, 2017 (still), 65 3.1 Guillaume Collanges / Collectif Argos, Thudi (Laamu Atoll), Maldives, January 2007, ​71 3.2 Laurent Weyl / Collectif Argos, Funafuti atoll, Fongafale island, February 2006, ​71 3.3 John Stanmeyer, photo graph of Syrian refugees, September 2014, ​73 3.4 John Stanmeyer, photo graph of the Nizip 1 camp, September 2014, ​73 3.5 Josh Haner, aerial view of Isle de Jean Charles, 2016, ​75 3.6 Josh Haner, Isle de Jean Charles, 2016, ​75 3.7 Ai Weiwei, posing as Syrian refugee toddler Alan Kurdi, 2016, 83 3.8 Ai Weiwei, Human Flow, 2017 (still), ​86 3.9 Ai Weiwei, Human Flow, 2017 (still showing Mosul, Iraq, October 2016), 87 3.10 Audrey Quinn & Jackie Roche, Syria’s Climate Conflict, 2014 (comic), 88 3.11 Forensic Oceanography (Charles Heller & Lorenzo Pezzani), “Liquid Traces: The Left- to- Die Boat Case,” 2012 (still), 91 3.12 Teddy Cruz & Fonna Forman, “Cross- Border Commons,” 2018 (still), 93 4.1 Public Studio, What We Lose in Metrics, 2016 (installation), ​98 4.2 Public Studio, What We Lose in Metrics, 2016 (still from Narrowing the Sky), 102 4.3 Public Studio, What We Lose in Metrics, 2016 (still from I Have Been Her Kind), 105 4.4 Harun Farocki, Parallel I– IV, 2012 (still), ​108 4.5 Harun Farocki, Serious Games I– V, 2009–2010 (installation), ​108 4.6 Public Studio, Zero Hour, 2015 (installation), ​112 4.7 Terri- Lynn Williams- Davidson, Cedar Sister, Ts’uu K’waayga, 2016 (photo graph), ​114 5.1 Gustafsson&Haapoja, The Trial, 2014 (per for mance), ​117 5.2 Compass, The Monsanto Hearings— Testimony of Zea Mays, 2012 (per for mance drawing), ​121 5.3a & 5.3b Terike Haapoja, The Party of Others, 2011 (installation), ​128 5.4 Gustafsson&Haapoja, The Museum of the History of Cattle, 2013 (installation), ​131 5.5 Gustafsson&Haapoja, The Museum of the History of Cattle, 2013, ​132 6.1 Arthur Jafa, Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death (still), 2016, ​138 6.2 “An Ecomodernist Manifesto,” 2015, ​143 6.3 Santiago Álvarez, Now!, 1965, ​145 6.4 Arthur Jafa, Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death (still), 2016, ​150 6.5 Planetary Resources, “The Space Economy,” 2012, ​153 6.6 Geoengineering Monitor map showing Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), Arizona 2019, ​155 6.7 Arthur Jafa, Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death (still), 2016, ​158 6.8 Ways & Means / kcet, The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto (still featuring artist Martine Syms), 2015, ​160 7.1 Dylan Miner, No Pipelines on Indigenous Land, 2016, ​168 7.2 Not an Alternative, Koch Is Off the Board, 2016, ​169 7.3 Cannupa Hanska Luger, Mirror Shield Proj ect, Oceti Sakowin camp, Standing Rock, North Dakota, 2016 (drone operation/or ga ni za tion by Rory Wakemup), ​176 7.4 Liberate Tate, The Gift, 2012 (per for mance at Tate Modern), ​181 7.5 “Against the Airport & Its World,” blockade on the Zad, 2016, ​185 7.6 A tractor parked during a zad protest, fall 2012, ​187 7.7 A tree relief is carved into the asphalt in the zad community, Notre- Dame- des- Landes, France, ca. 2015, ​189 viii Illustrations INTRODUCTION THE WORLD’S END, AND BEYOND e are entering the endgame— the terminal point of democracy, of Wliberalism, of capitalism, of a cool planet, of the Anthropocene, of the world as we know it. Catastrophic environmental breakdown, global pandemic, neo co lo nial extractivism, algorithmic governance, disaster and racial capitalism, antimigration pop u lism, and endless war comprise some of the forces structuring this conjuncture. Given this socioecological crisis— informed by past colonial genocides, ongoing corporate ecocides, and trans- atlantic slavery— how do we conceptualize the aftermath? What of the many worlds that have already ended? Equally urgent, how do we represent the radical potentiality of the not-yet? How do we cultivate and bring into being emancipated futures? Addressing this urgent, multifarious, and world- historical subject, this book centers interlinked sociopo liti cal, economic, and environmental crises— a copious and rousing intersection capable of motivating and engaging interdisciplinary, comparative research and civic attention alike. Doing so, it focuses specifically on models of aesthetic practice where life is being reinvented in ways that not only critically iden- tify the manifold prob lems that threaten existence as we know it; they also offer diverse approaches to a hopeful futurity, where hope joins speculative imagination to the material practice of living other wise, capable of carrying us beyond the end of the world. While the world of the world’s end is multiply configured, just as its sup- posed end has been variously conceived and historically encountered in many ways, the aftermath has less frequently been addressed.1 The task remains to investigate not simply the structural causes and violent effects of the end times, including what its symptomatic if superficial imaginary looks like, whether zombie apocalypse, alien invasion, planetary collision, or Hobbes- ian war of all against all—which Hollywood is so good at envisioning, even while it consistently fails to ponder any kind of emancipatory life beyond the current death spiral of advanced capital. But more, where are the forms of life, the creative visions and stories of substance, that will aid us in moving beyond the vari ous terminal points, past, pre sent, and future? Where are the rift zones between destructive and wholly unjust if not quite outmoded ways of organ izing existence— within petrocapitalism, colonialism, anthropocen- trism, sexism, and white supremacy— and alternative practices, narratives, and visions founded on social justice and radical multispecies flourishing, glimpsing decolonized futures of environmental sustainability? Seeking answers to these questions, this book explores a range of ar- tistic and cultural practices that, for me, provide compelling and radical propositions and actionable modelings worth considering at length, even while it acknowledges the provisional and necessarily incomplete purview of its investigation and the fact that there is always more to consider. Ex- tending over seven interlinked chapters, my inquiry addresses the visionary video proj ects of John Akomfrah (in par tic u lar Vertigo Sea) and Arthur Jafa (Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death), each of which, but in dif­fer ent sin- gular ways, expansively reconceives what climate means, drawing the term into inextricable relation with sociocultural ecologies of racial capitalism, slavery and its legacy, as well as current migration politics and mass species extinction narratives. Both experiment with the visuality of world- ending disasters in racial and more- than- human terms, conjoining biopolitics to geopower. In chapter 1, I consider Akomfrah’s in relation to the sea’s in- dustrialization and militarization, threatening its sublime nonhuman alter- ity, as well as its Black liquidity, graveyard of slavery’s wake, and present migration’s mass grave. Jafa’s comes up in chapter 6, discussed in terms of solar apocalypse, Afrofuturism 2.0, and the monstrosity of racialized vio- lence, all posed against the dangerous white futurisms of geoengineering 2 Introduction and the neoliberal Anthropocene.