Urbanautica

EXTINCTION. THE WORLD WITHOUT US

by Steve Bisson

The return to nature is, therefore, an appeal to the sacred in its most primordial acceptance. Perhaps the time has come to put aside our miserable individualist doctrine to rediscover the strength of community, to free a mentality according to the well-being of the collectivity.

© Catalog 'Extinction. The World Without Us', Urbanautica Institute

Urbanautica Institute has dedicated the first thematic research call to a question that emerges with overwhelming urgency. It is not only environmental issues that are increasingly worrying us. There is much more. There is an awareness that technological progress is dragging behind a distressing threat. It stems from our inability to control the effects of our own actions. Nuclear power, the manipulation and patenting of viruses and bacteria, food genetics, agrochemistry, the plastic revolution, the study of new materials to simplify and make our existence more comfortable and economical, which then translates into epidemiological studies (I think of the history of asbestos, or more recent of the PFAS - well told in the film 'Dark Waters' -, and the many other ingenious chemical formulas that fuel sanitation storytelling). Our ability to invent is extraordinary, it has no equal in any other animal species, it is the evolutionary compensation for our instinctual deficiencies. However, history shows us how this has produced devastating effects on human health, and on the environment. Effects in some cases fatal or irreversible (such as the extinction of several species already). And who knows the global climate...

© Madeline Cass from the series 'How lonely, to be a marsh'

© Michele Vittori from the series 'Walking'

© Thomas Gauthier from the series 'Seules les ètoiles resteront'

© Cristian Ordóñez from the series 'We are constantly on trial'

© Giovanni Presutti from the series 'Hello Dolly'

We have received many projects. About seventy have been published in our online archive. They are available on the 'Extinction. The World Without Us'. We shortlisted 30 projects and we made a catalog out of them. A free digital version is available online. A physical print on demand book is purchasable from here (Due to the medical emergency in Italy following the Corona Virus there will be delays in the production of the catalog 'Extinction. The World Without Us' by Urbanautica. For those who have already ordered it, shipping will start from April 15th, 2020. Given the long wait, we have extended the possibility of ordering a copy until March 31st, 2020). Altogether these works help us to draw a map of issues, questions, perspectives, interpretations. Would we keep believing that we can exist above or outside of nature? This is a possibility which however is increasingly translating into a threat to our survival. It is up to us to decide whether we want to reconsider our position on this planet.

© Pietro Motisi from the series 'Sicilia Fantasma'

© Gaëtan Chevrier from the series 'Originally'

© Rosie Barnes from the series 'A Peculiar and Dangerous Convenience'

© Davide Galandini from the series 'Vinewood'

© Adam Reynolds from the series 'No Lone Zone'

Few months ago when I was writing an introduction to this catalog of visual incursions on the issue of extinction, Australia was on fire. The images of burnt skies, of inhabitants fleeing their homes, of charred animals and other apocalyptic scenes fill our eyes. The general reaction is one of despair, indignation, and protest together. However, in the undergrowth of our thoughts, there is a sense of helplessness that reminds us that we are only spectators of history. Today I am in quarantine in a small province of Italy. An epidemic called Coronavirus has severely affected my country as well as 104 other nations. Thousands of people died according to statistics by World Health Organization. The origin of this virus is not yet confirmed, although even in the scientific community there are those who claim that it is a laboratory-produced virus, or that it may have been mistakenly freed from a laboratory accident. Paradoxically, in Wuhan, China, in the city most affected by the epidemic, there is one of the most advanced Biosafety Level 4 Laboratory built recently to study the world's most dangerous pathogens.

© Hans Wilschut from the series 'The World In One Place'

© Francesco Merlini from the series 'The Flood'

© Georg Katstaller from the series ''84'

© Charles Bouchaïb from the series 'La Pennétrie'

© Leslie Hakim-Dowek from the series 'Twilight Island'

The catalog 'Extinction' starts with an introductory quote by the philosopher Günther Anders that leads us to consider the gravity of the human situation at a time when our blatant subordination to progress is increasingly consciously felt. As if the human race was left with nothing but chasing the consequences of its actions. Constant attempts to remedy man-made damage and catastrophes appear increasingly pitiful and clumsy; like emptying water from a sinking ship with a bucket. This “Promethean shame” undermines the Enlightenment creed that had opened the windows on a rosy and promising future. An ascent to widespread well-being pushed by the triumph of reason, on emancipation from a mediocre past, on the dare to know, on the split between culture and nature. Unfortunately for us, all that remains are the ashes of this age-old illusion, of this macabre utopia by now vanished.

© Alessio Pellicoro from the series 'The other Red Desert, a place of 'Microworlds''

© Daniel Kariko from the series 'Suburban Symbiosis: Silent Extinction'

© Sébastien Arrighi from the series 'Shivers'

© Shanna Merola from the series 'We All Live Downwind'

© Gian Marco Sanna from the series 'Malagrotta'

The Laudes Creaturarum, the old praise of the creatures has given way to the choir of voracious bulldozers, to rush hour traffic, to speed at any cost, to the dust of factories and to the chasms of mines, to urban alienation and real estate bulimia, to glossaries filled with chemical poisons, psychotropic drugs, paramedical devilries, and pseudo foods, to the totalitarianism of obsolescence, and to the apotheosis of relativism. A scenario seasoned by senseless and elated haste that makes people enslaved by “chronophagic” means and techniques, insatiable devourers of time and existence.

In this escape forward that has paradoxically expropriated us of the future and therefore of a role in history, what we have left is the so-called “free time” which translates mostly into nihilistic consumerism. A “pastime” that does not respond to the satisfaction of needs but to the support of an unstoppable and self- referential capitalist mode of production.

Now in this climate of uncertainty and uncanny, the threat of extinction is launched, and it does not concern the species but the residue of humanity that lies in beings. In this desert of meaning, which expands disturbingly, those who will survive the distressing haste, or the “The Sickness Unto Death” as Kierkegaard de ned it, will dispute the few natural oases where to find comfort, redemption, salvation from the bleeding of time. The return to nature is, therefore, an appeal to the sacred in its most primordial acceptance. Perhaps the time has come to put aside our miserable individualist doctrine to rediscover the strength of community, to free a mentality according to the well-being of the collectivity.

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LINKS
Urbanautica Institute Books
Online Archive 'Extinction. The World Without Us'
Free digital version of the catalog

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