Organized by the Cultural and Ecological Association SEPALE at META Spațiu in Timișoara, the exhibition The world keeps ending brings together nine artists: Josépha Blanchet, Mimi Ciora, Lorena Cocioni, Ilie Duță, Adrian Ganea, Uliana Gujuman, Cosmin Haiaș, Thea Lazar, Silvia Moldovan.
“When the apocalypse began, the world had already ended. It ended every day for a century or two. Another world, also about to end, was emerging in its place.”
Franny Choi
“Worlds end, and worlds begin again. But where does man fit in this scenario? It’s easy to imagine the world’s end and even more difficult to see beyond the imminent catastrophe we’re trying to postpone. Which version of the world could survive? The exhibition The World Keeps Ending brings together contemporary artists concerned with climate change and the imminence of extinction, who are already “living” the apocalypse through their own works, reflecting on the transition of the human condition into a new era, without presenting an oversaturation of fears or dystopian images, but rather focusing on redefining human existence in a sensitive and poetic way.
The exhibition The world keeps ending does not present the apocalypse as an end of the world, as a singular event in time that erases everything, but rather as a continuous process of transformation and redefinition of human interaction with the world. Through speculative philosophy, artists focus on the notion of “existing” in apocalyptic times and explore the complexity of the posthuman condition, imagining the “unknown” of the future.
Adopting the conceptual framework of actor-network theory, as the French philosopher Bruno Latour articulated, the exhibition generates a space where the boundaries between human and non-human, natural and artificial, dissolve into a liminal continuum of interconnection. According to Bruno Latour, humans and nature are connected in complex ways and do not exist as separate entities. For him, nature plays an essential role in shaping our social and cultural worlds, contrary to what is commonly believed. Offering an anti-anthropocentric and anti-speciesist conceptualization, the artists in the exhibition The world keeps ending generate new understandings of reality and the future.
The concept of the end of the world is present in all cultures and religions, but in our recent history, we have already practiced hope by surviving several endings (wars, natural disasters, epidemics and climate change). In the poem “The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On”, from which the title of the exhibition is inspired, Franny Choi connects personal, historical and global disasters, reiterating the constant presence of endings and beginnings in the human experience. As in the poem, the exhibition explores the world’s fragility and resilience, envisioning a future beyond current existential threats and reconfiguring the world’s cognitive map.
Reflecting on how ecological concerns are felt and addressed through art, the exhibition challenges us to reconsider our relationship with the natural world and to recognize the role of non-human actors.”
Marina Paladi, curator.
The exhibition can be visited from Tuesday to Saturday, between 12:00 and 18:00, until September 14.
