Description
Book SynopsisIn
Beyond the World''s End T. J. Demos explores cultural practices that provide radical propositions for living in a world beset by environmental and political crises. Rethinking relationships between aesthetics and an expanded political ecology that foregrounds just futurity, Demos examines how contemporary artists are diversely addressing urgent themes, including John Akomfrah''s cinematic entanglements of racial capitalism with current environmental threats, the visual politics of climate refugees in work by Forensic Architecture and Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman, and moving images of Afrofuturist climate justice in projects by Arthur Jafa and Martine Syms. Demos considers video and mixed-media art that responds to resource extraction in works by Angela Melitopoulos, Allora & Calzadilla, and Ursula Biemann, as well as the multispecies ecologies of Terike Haapoja and Public Studio. Throughout Demos contends that contemporary intersections of aesthetics and politics, as exemplifi
Trade Review“T. J. Demos has for some time charted intertwining artistic and activist responses to environmental catastrophe, and here he is at his best. This book is powerful and necessary.” -- Julia Bryan-Wilson, author of * Fray: Art and Textile Politics *
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Beyond the World's End rethinks the complex relationship between political ecology and artistic practice. Written in the clear, provocative prose for which T. J. Demos is already widely admired, this important book operates within the framework of environmental and, by extension, climate justice and provides a glimmer of hope in the midst of the current catastrophe.” -- Alexander Alberro, Barnard College
"Amply illustrated and well indexed, the book blends nature-culture binaries and lays out the possibilities for lives beyond the world’s end. This pithy, well-researched volume includes an introduction, seven chapters, and notes, and it will interest students of Afrofuturism, art history, ecofeminism, ecology, social justice, visual culture, and myriad related subjects. Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, professionals."
-- J. Decker * Choice *
“Demos...offer[s] a wealth of information on environmentalist artists and ecocritical thinkers who may not be presented to art audiences elsewhere. [His] venturesome examples of art historical ecocriticism model methodologies of engagement that challenge scholars to apply their own talents and imaginations toward new practices of art history for our time.” -- Suzaan Boettger * Art Bulletin *
“Demos’ main contribution to the fields of ecology, art history, and geo-politics is the tangible methods he offers against catastrophism. . . . In
Beyondthe World’s End, Demos has produced not only a timely teaching tool, but also a touchstone for the ongoing writings and makings of the not-yet.” -- Kate Keohane * Art History *
“
Beyond the World’s End is a text of impressive scope and depth, whose thematic urgency needs no introduction. . . . If, as in Fredric Jameson’s famous adage, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is the end of capitalism, Demos charts a path here for imagining both, and a different world that can be brought into being in what lies beyond these ends.” -- Matthias Kispert * Moving Image Review & Art Journal *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations vii
Introduction. The World's End, and Beyond 1
1. Feeding the Ghost: John Akomfrah's
Vertigo Sea 23
2. Blackout: The Necropolitics of Extraction 43
3. The Visual Politics of Climate Refugees 68
4. Gaming the Environment: On the Media Ecology of Public Studio 96
5. Animal Cosmopolitics: The Art of Gustafsson&Haapoga 116
6. To Save a World: Geoengineering, Conflictual Futurisms, and the Unthinkable 137
7. The Great Transition: The Arts and Radical System Change 163
Acknowledgments 195
Notes 199
Index 249
