The Resurgence of New Humanity
“We cannot rid ourselves of fear
Through a desperate quest for safety,
But rather by going to the end,
Accepting the futility of
What we fear losing.”
Slavoj, Žižek In defense of lost causes
The exhibition ” The Resurgence of New Humanity” portrays a fictional, dystopian future of humankind. Addressing themes of posthumanism, genetic engineering, and the destruction of the natural world, this project questions the very limits of humanity. Society, facing problems of overpopulation, pollution, climate disasters, hunger, disease, and wars, arrives at the ultimate solution in the form of genetic crossbreeding of humans and animals. Under the pretext of introducing order and creating a more resilient organism, a new social segregation emerges, in which human-boars are the elite, humans-rats serve and protect them, and humans-cockroaches form a class reduced to bare life, owning nothing but their own bodies.
Appropriated biblical narratives, appearing in the painting, are placed within a posthumanist context. This has constructed a new biblical story about genetically modified posthuman kind, as well as about its Savior. In this posthumanist version of the “Book of Revelation,” angel-chimeras, human-chimeras, transgenic cyborgs, and robots emerge, while posthumanity continues to struggle with the same problems – diseases, hunger, war, and climate change.
After the angelic trumpets, a visitor is immersed in a “sacral” atmosphere, following the mise-en-scène through five large paintings, a video at the place of a sacred relic and a voice echoing through the space.
Exiled lovers, as subverters of the strictly established order, create an ecologically sustainable world based on equality. Their descendants represent the materialized resistance to social segregation. The “Epiphany” brings the birth of a posthumanist Messiah, offering hope to the fallen post-human species. Riots, violence, massacres, chaos, cannibalism, collapse of civilization, and ecological decline, draw a parallel to the day of God’s Wrath. However, this “Revelation” does not end in a nightmare. The posthumanist Messiah, or perhaps the biblical Noah, offers the remaining post-humanity the only possible salvation, that is transitioning into the digital sphere – the “cloud”. This Savior, who like Jesus advocates equality and love, leads transgenic post-mankind, which has lost its humanity, to the abolishment of all differences that led them to conflict. By regaining their human form, ascended and absorbed into the “cloud”, they become its integral part, united in peace and love. The transfer of consciousness gives birth to a new, computerized consciousness that has become Divine. It is artificially created “second nature”, “life 2.0” (Žižek, In defense of lost causes) that is God/Goddess/Holy Spirit, while simultaneously being the primordial consciousness that has always been there. The boundary collapses between nature and culture; living and non-living; human, animal, and machine; artificial intelligence and the divinity that is nature. Even the concept of time loses its linearity.
