| dc.description.abstract | In contemporary art, design, and architecture, generative, recombinatory or autopoetic aesthetics often come not
from a space of openended possibility, but of hope against specific perceived crises or catastrophes. In other words,
they start less with an Enlightenment tabula rasa than with a hypothetical terra nullius. By answering perceived
largescale ecological or humanitarian threats with systems, many contemporary generative projects share more in
common with the mechanisms of state security than with their utopian forebears in high modernism. This presentation
will read a number of infrastructurefocused art, media and design projects in light of apocalypse as a site of state
power construction and modern subject formation. In the nuclear age, the projection of cataclysmic end is a powerful
site for the construction and management of options. With the sensible, the rational, and the possible so tightly bound
to the framing of life's mere continuation as a question, media projects that enact alternatives in the face of death
deserve scrutiny for their own role in defining life. | |
