Today, we are experiencing climate change.

Relaying humanity’s eternal obsession with the Apocalypse and the end of time, all sorts of prophecies and theories are coming to light, from the most heartening to the most devastating.

It is tempting to express these visions, as if to conjure the torment ahead. “The gift of Death is that all we have left to do is die”, said Nietzsche. And, as Beauty seems inseparable from the Universe, a certain harmony falls into place, and new landscapes appear. It has come to pass and the survivors contemplate the new Creation in the hope of a fertile dawn…

What could be entitled An Aesthetic of the Coming Catastrophe is in fact a timeworn tale.

Cataclysms have shaped our history and geography in a ballet of slow or rapid mutation, causing the extinction of some species, triggering the generation of others. This is why vestiges of destruction, erosion, and disappearance often appear here as witnesses of time immemorial… to offer them a second life, in sum.

Michel Kirch