Beyond The End Of The World
As sea levels rise, some worlds will come to an end, and others will emerge. Beyond the End of the World presages the fate of humanity in multiple timelines. In one room, the titular filmwork depicts a possible future in which water has overtaken infrastructure. The film takes place in a cavernous, abandoned, and flooded building where new forms of life are bubbling up from the aquatic realm. Mouldy surfaces suggest the next step of an evolutionary process: algae—the foundation of life on this planet—is thriving, hinting at unpredictable new paths of organic growth.
The film is set in a replica of the restroom of the secretariat for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The restroom is private, an intimate and luxurious space only accessible to powerful people. But it also functions as a small part—a single room within a complex, tentacular organization—of a global effort to curtail the effects of the climate crisis. Without offering answers or consolation, Beyond the End of the World imagines that 20th-century dreams of international cooperation have gone underwater, having succumbed to the more authoritative internationalism of the ocean, which doesn’t respect borders and has no need for discussion, consensus, or compromise.
In another room, SUPERFLEX presents a series of new sculptures related to the film, Power Toilet Death Masks. The sculptures are replicas of sanitary equipment from the UNFCCC bathroom, cast in unfired clay. Displayed in multiple, they are organized in patterns that have no immediately evident purpose, as if they were arranged for reasons that have now become obscure. The sculptures suggest a future—perhaps in an alternate timeline from the film—in which human infrastructure has been memorialized at the moment of its demise, and then replicated and put on display. Humans’ ingenious hygienic inventions have been given a second life in clay: a delicate, brittle material that will soon return to earth.
This exhibition is supported by the Linda Brandes Foundation. ICA San Diego Exhibition Support Provided by the City of San Diego, Buttgenbach Foundation, and the Tippett Foundation.
Additional support provided by Jack Kirkland, the Danish Arts Foundation and OMR.
