Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Actually, let’s start the end. The end times that is. The APOCALYPSE. It is an ancient notion, at least 2000 years old, one inextricably linked to the human body.

Dietmar Kamper 

 Between Simulation and Negentropy: The Fate of the Individual Looking Back on the End of the World 

"Finite history" with catastrophic beginning and catastrophic end is linked with the greatest fear harbored by the individual and that it draws its obviousness from the birth and death of the individual human being's threatened course of life. It is almost as if we are anthropomorphizing the planet itself.  The only certainty that we have as humans is that we will die, so why would this not be true for the planet itself? 

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It is almost as if we are anthropomorphizing the planet itself. The only certainty that we have as humans is that we will die, so why would this not be true for the planet itself?

As with any science fiction, the focus isn’t actually on the imagined future, but an interpretation of the present. The post-apocalypse is the inverse of today’s society. It is the negative (-) relative to today’s positive (+). isolation compared to constant contact. The last man vs. overpopulation. All the time in the world vs. time measured in milliseconds.

My thesis show, titled "All the Time in the World," contained sculptures, videos, and a wall drawing exploring these notions of the Post Apocalypse.  This piece, titled "The End Times Were a Pretty Bad Time" hints towards the context of the Post Apocalypse by referring back in time to the 'end times.'  

This video, titled "I Really do Wanna Dance with Somebody" introduces the character living in the Post Apocalypse and the assumed creator of the objects.  In the video he addresses the camera in the first person and begins to make an alteration to his pack by adding a flag.  Once completed, the swaying of the flag reminds him of dancing which leads him to dancing with it while singing "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" by Whitney Houston.  This moment of exuberance is followed by a depressing return to reality.

The sculpture titled "Archaemedis Screwed" re-imagines an ancient irrigation device to left water and deposit it in a trough of charcoal with the intention of filtering the water.  However, the inefficiency of the filtering process coupled with the closed loop nature of the piece results in an entropy that defeats the goal of water filtration.  

The voice of the character can be heard in the sculpture "Can Anybody Hear Me?"  His voice, shouting things like "Can anybody hear me?" and "Where did everybody go?" softly emanate from the improvised loudspeaker.

The pack featured in the videos was also present in the gallery.  It contained all of his provisions, including improvised tools like a looking glass, a compass, and a trap the he learned to make from Wiley E. Coyote.   

"Walking into and Staring at the Sunset" is a video that loomed large on the back wall of the gallery, setting the stage for the rest of the show.  The video shows the character replicating the dramatic cinematic gesture of walking into the sunset only to run back to retrieve the camera after a few minutes. The fairly short loop of this video (3 minutes) essentially caused the sunset to freeze above the horizon, disrupting time and notions of an ending.

Going along with notions of time, I’ve utilized several different time scales that are relevant to the work. While they are certainly not mutually exclusive, separating them allows us to analyze them and the way they operate.

Jean Baudrillard

The Anorexic Ruins 

So many messages and signals have been produced and transmitted that they will never find the time to acquire any meaning. 

 Or, as I like to say, a picture is no longer worth a thousand words. At best it is worth a thumbs up or a thumbs down. This is digital time, which we are all familiar with today. Digital time is embodied by our instantaneous communication, immediate access to knowledge, and total media saturation.  A picture is no longer worth a thousand words, at best it gets a thumbs up or a thumbs down.  All of this power is at our fingertips, but it offers little intimacy or depth, only the cold glass surface of the touch screen.

But that’s all gone after the apocalypse. 

Then we are left with “Human Time.”  This is the natural way that we experience the world.  We wake up, take a leak, and eat some food.  Good moods give way to bad moods and back to good moods.  While we are all subject to this bodily experience of time, it is nearly impossible to separate it from the various social constructs in place that structure our lives.  But that isn’t really a problem for this guy, living in the post-apocalypse.  He is free from all social constraints. 

Dietmar Kamper

Between Simulation and Negentropy

For some time the center of anthropological reflection has no longer been the “animal endowed with reason” or “the rational animal”, as the human being was traditionally viewed, but rather on a “self-reflective machine with imagination”.  Instead of the line between humans and animals, it is the transition to machines that seems to have become the main problem recently.

Then there is what I call “Material Time.” Material time has to do with the material legacy our society is building.  Objects, even ones intended for a one-time use, have a lifespan of thousands of years.  Everything from plastic forks and Styrofoam cups to radioactive waste, we are making garbage that will last much longer than whole of human civilization until now.  On the order of magnitudes.   

  

Jean Baudrillard

The Anorexic Ruins

...this merciless short circuit manifests both overproduction and the exhaustion of potential energies at the same time.  It is no longer a matter of crisis but of disaster, a catastrophe in slow motion. 

 

Finally, there is geologic time. This dwarfs even the material time. While we have the capability to destroy the current systems of life on earth, the planet will regardless survive as an object. Mountains turn into plains, boulders into dust. This has been a concept that humans have been confronting forever. It is nearly impossible for us to reconcile these last two timescales to that of our own experience, so we create stories to make sense of the world. Like the stories of the Apocalypse.

 

Don DeLillo

Point Omega

It's all about time, dimwit time, inferior time, people checking watches and other devices, other reminders. This is time draining out of our lives. Cities were built to measure time, to remove time from nature. There's an endless counting down, he said. When you strip away surfaces, when you see into it, what's left is terror. This is the thing that literature was meant to cure. The epic poem, the bedtime story.

It is nearly impossible for us to reconcile these last two timescales to that of our own experience, so we create stories to make sense of the world. Like the stories of the Apocalypse.

These days, though, we get our bedtime stories from Hollywood, which loves the Post-Apocalyptic genre.

One consistent trope of the genre is the male protagonist, often presented as the “Lone Man.” Obviously, this narrative of the lone man is not a new one. Post-apocalyptic films borrow heavily from Western films, with similar structures harking back at least to Medieval times with the Knights errant. Here are some examples of this character from films.

In the Hollywood versions, the last man is never actually alone. He always has a companion

that relies on him for survival. My version of this character, however, is very alone.

Gunter Gebauer

The Place of Beginning and End Caves and their Systems of Symbols

The adoption of a settled life was a step forward, but in the development of the human race it was also a breach that has led to irreversible amnesia concerning our origins and that has left an uncontrolled source of longing.

One way to put it is that when I see a mountain I always want to climb to the top, but rarely do. I don’t bother because I know that once I get there, I will have to turn around, come back down the same way, and go home. There is no opportunity for real exploration.

Rather than people and technology, he is now surrounded by the ghosts of his former life. Our material legacy, these plastic objects that have outlived civilization, are now his building blocks. He has to re-purpose, reinterpret, and reinvent the apparent trash in order to survive. He must recreate tools, remembering what he has learned. So he makes a compass. And a looking glass. And a trap that Wile E. Coyote taught him how to make.

This re-purposing of materials provides him agency to survive and thrive as much as is possible. He has no strategy, no grand plan, only tactics to survive and search for a connection.

Michel de Certeau

The Practice of Everyday Life 

It takes advantage of "opportunities" and depends on them, being without any base where it could stockpile its winnings, build up its own position, and plan raids.  What it wins it cannot keep.  This nowhere gives tactic mobility, to be sure, but a mobility that must accept the chance offerings of the moment, and seize on the wing of the possibilities that offer themselves at any given moment.

Jean Baudrillard

The Anorexic Ruins 

  Human rights, dissidence, antiracism, the antinuclear movement, and the environment are gentle ideologies.  They are easy, post coitum historicum, after the orgy; ideology for an agreeable generation – the children of crisis, who are acquainted with neither hard ideologies nor radical philosophies.  They are the ideology of a neoromantic and politically neosentimental generation that is rediscovering love, selflessness, togetherness, international compassion, and the individual tremolo.  Effusion, solidarity, cosmopolitan emotivity and multimedia pathos: they are all feeble values long ago tried out...

WHAT A JERK, RIGHT?! His dismissal of a generation, establishment of confrontation between generations, and a focus on failure are all counter productive. Rather than learning from him, I’d rather learn from my character. He shows that our abilities are limited when we try to work alone, so we must build a community. And while he isn’t putting forward an alternative to capitalism, he is showing us that we can find spaces within the system to assert our own agency. Rather than being slaves to what we want, we can focus on what we need. These are the lessons that I hope we can all take away from our time here.