Apocalyptic Visions: How do these Artists and Designers face the impending future of the Climate Crisis and other Global Disasters?

Has the state of the world started to make you fear the worst for our planet? Between climate change, the threat of economic collapse, social unrest and political turmoil, we are reaching a breaking point. As different nations and groups seek to find solutions, we ask: How have artists and designers confronted these sources of disaster and tragedy? 

Weather

Catastrophic and extreme weather events have increased within the past years and are only predicted to intensify. Apocalyptic visions of a meteorologically turbulent future have artists creating and performing potential realities of a weather-related downfall. 

Weather tower by Amelia Marzec 2015-2017 ©Amelia Marzec

Amelia Marzec’s Weather Center for the Apocalypse sets out to predict the probability of our apocalyptic demise. As our meteorologist, Marzec reports not only on the potential of extreme weather conditions and patterns, but also on the social and cultural predictions of an impending apocalypse. Marzec uses astrology, religion, meteorology, almanacs, and news reports as data points for her interpretation of the apocalyptic forecast. 

Bureau of Meteoranxiety by Olivia Tartaglia and Alex Tate 2018 © Olivia Tartaglia and Alex Tate

Are you overwhelmed by these forecasts of doom? Well, look no further. Alex Tate and Olivia Tartaglia’s Bureau of Meteoranxiety (BoMa) is here to provide bureaucratic assistance and services for your symptoms of climate change fear. Deriving the term Meteoranxiety from Glen Albrecht’s ecophilosophical works, Tate and Tartaglia’s BoMa provides a technologically driven public bureau to aid in dealing “pre-traumatic stress” from climate change. Combining virtual reality, simulations, and an AI counsellor named Gail (developed by Howard Melbyczuk), BoMa initiates a conversation about how people can manage their growing meteoranxiety-related symptoms. 

Disease

We have strived to create a sterile world, one of readily available (although not always affordable or socio-economically accessible) antibiotics. As an even greater consequence to our medical advancements, humanity now faces the impending threat of antibiotic resistance and new disease-causing epidemics. Anna Dumitriu’s The Antibiotic Resistance Quilt stitches together the microorganisms that have evolved and adapted, despite our best measures to eradicate them. Within the fabric of a quilt, Dumitriu has placed traces of drug-resistant bacteria including E. coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Enterococcus faecalis, Enterobacter cloacae, Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Gonorrhoea) and MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus). All microbes were grown on the silk over time to give its colorful appearance. 

The Antibiotic Resistance Quilt by Anna Dumitriu 2017 © Anna Dumitriu

While some of the pieces have a dotted pattern where antibiotic patches have been applied and succeeded in preventing the growth of the bacteria, others have been completely over-run by the bacteria. In addition to these more haunting patches documenting the failures of our current antibiotics, Dumitriu has also included patches impregnated with E.coli that have been genetically modified to remove the antibiotic resistance from its genome. The final quilt was sterilized to hang in the Science Gallery Dublin who commissioned the work for their exhibition In Case of Emergency (2017).

Declining Biodiversity

The depletion of the natural world has become a startling prospect, with the looming threat of extinction for animal and plant life, as well as the human race.  As a result, many artists and designers have begun to ask both what is at stake if the planet’s biodiversity continues to decline and what we have already lost? 

The Ephemeral Marvel Perfume Store by Catherine Sarah Young 2014 © Studio Catherine Sarah Young

Catherine Sarah Young’s The Ephemeral Marvel’s Perfume Store (abbreviated to “TEMPS” for short, referencing the French word for time) presents a futuristic perfume line of smells that may soon disappear from our daily lives. The various fragrances are smells that stand to be lost with the catastrophic impacts of global warming. From coffee to our coast lines, Young’s olfactory artwork asks the audience to inhale and remember our relationship with these sensorial features of our planet. Lastly, Young asks if we could stand to live without these odours being a part of our world?

Video Still from The Substitute by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg 2019 © Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg has created many works reflecting on apocalyptic visions of our declining biodiversity. The Substitute is one that is especially chilling. On the 20 March in 2018, the last male northern White Rhinoceros was declared dead, which left its subspecies at a natural end and a potential beginning for biotechnological interventions. Ginsberg’s The Substitute explores what she identifies as a paradox, “our preoccupation with creating new life forms, while neglecting existing ones”.  In her piece, Ginsberg has resurrected the Northern White Rhino in the form of a digital projection and artificial agent that learns from its virtual world. With an increasing likelihood of other species extinctions, it is possible that these species will be resurrected into digital forms. Ginsberg’s work initiates a dialogue for us to discuss if these digital substitutes are better than the real organisms. 

Rising Sea Levels

The tide is getting higher, and we need to find new ways to keep holding on. Rising sea levels are a pressing issue that have put coastlines and islands around the world in urgent danger. 

AMPHIBIO by Jun Kamei 2018 © Mikito Tateisi

Jun Kamei’s AMPHIBIO speculates on our watery future by envisioning a product that may be integrated into many people’s daily lives. AMPHIBIO is a piece of 3D printed wearable tech and garment that functions as a gill for those who need to adapt to an amphibious lifestyle. Patent pending, AMPHIBIO replenishes oxygen and dissipates carbon dioxide using a specialized material that is 3D printed into beautiful wearable garments. As the sea levels rise, will more people don these fashionable garments to live an amphibious life between land and water?

Raft of the Medusa Performance Still by Pony Express 2018 © Sam Roberts

Pony Express has long been vocal about the need for re-articulating our relationship with our nonhuman others, as best seen with their wildly popular production of Ecosexual Bathhouse (2016-2018). In their equally enthralling production entitled Raft of the Medusa, the creative duo Loren Kronemyer and Ian Sinclair have envisioned a future where the ocean has completely overtaken the formerly expansive stretches of land. While inspired by the well-known French Romantic painting of the same name, Raft of the Medusa explores how humanity needs to adapt to a life surrounded by water and invites the audience to participate in the adventure along the way. The work is site specific to Port Adelaide, Australia as commissioned by Vitalstatistix’s long-term climate change program called Climate Century, but it speaks to a larger call for us to rethink how we will live with the ocean as it begins to engulf our former home on land.  

Repatriate by Latai Taumpoepeau 2015 © Latai Taumpoepeau

Punake, body-centered performance artist, Latai Taumoepeau knows better than anyone the impact of rising sea levels. While her birthplace resides on the land of the Eora Nation in Sydney, Australia, her homeland of Island Kingdom of Tonga is drowning in ocean as sea levels continue to rise.

As Taumpoepeau dances a collective vocabulary learnt from a number of pacific island nations in a shower-sized Perspex tank, the tank begins to fill with water, and the yellow floatation devices encircling her limbs and upper body impact her movements. Taumpoepeau’s performance ends as she is eventually submerged in the rising waters and ‘drowns’. Repatriate is not a vision of our apocalyptic future but one of the current reality for the Kingdom of Tonga as well as many other island nations. While people become displaced as the result of rising sea levels, their cultures and knowledge are too under threat of drowning and being lost to the sea. 

From the perils of turbulent weather patterns to our rising sea levels, these creative visions on the fate of our future ask us to confront our actions of today. Whether it’s the loss of our environment’s biodiversity or the cultures of island nations that are sinking into the tide, there is a great urgency to act now before it is too late. What can we do to ward off the oncoming apocalypse? What will our future look like?