(faltering to extinction)
By Vivian SmingWhat does it mean to no longer be able to speak, whether due to the disappearance of one’s language, or due to the erosion of public discourse in today’s atmosphere?
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Art Practical Editors
Lisa: All through history, self-anointed seers have predicted the end of the world, and they've always been wrong.Homer: But sweetheart, I have something they didn't have: a good feeling about this!
— “Thank God It's Doomsday,” The Simpsons (2005)
It’s 2019, and the world is ending.
The Doomsday Clock points two minutes to midnight. One million species are threatened with extinction. As the climate crisis escalates and the sixth mass extinction approaches, we are not only thinking through all the things that are coming to an end, but also business-as-usual behaviors being called to end. In the field of art, movements are growing throughout the world, calling for the end of putting artists on pedestals with disregard for their behaviors and actions; an end to receiving support from individuals who profit off the harm of others; and an end to institutional systems that exploit the labor of artists, educators, curators, and other arts workers alike. This fall, as fires burn in and around our homes in California, we have asked writers to contribute to ideas around different forms of ends to critically twist the doomsday narrative into one of possibility and futurity.
By Karen Cheung
