This series reviews two crucial unknowns regarding the future of civilization in the West: a) Has the extinction of human life ceased to be a fantasy and become a plausible reality? and b) What ideological frameworks emerge after the advent of artificial intelligence?

A talk by Franco "Bifo" Berardi, preceded by the following works by Max de Esteban:

Les mouches (2020) 7'

All quotidian events, meaningless and banal, hide a tragedy. The video opens with the words of Marguerite Duras: “…Je vais parler de rien. De rien.” But in the enclosed universe of the video frame, the presence of death becomes hypnotic and unbearable. The drawing power of consumption continues to be irresistible even in the face of self-annihilation.

White Noise (2020) 7'

A sound piece/video, in which a voice recites a poem extracted from Ovid’s Metamorphosis in Latin. Woodlands and hills burn, rivers boil, the Earth’s entire surface bursts apart. In this extreme circumstance, Earth speaks to Jupiterian capitalism and warns: “Look around: Both poles are steaming! If fire melts them, your own temples shall collapse!”. White Noise was the result of a collaboration with Jorge Núñez, Walter Benn Michaels, Mónica Miró, Ellen Gould, Arnaud Bayle, Jeffrey Swartz, Gaetane Aguado and Xylo Zico.

Franco “Bifo” Berardi is a thinker, activist and professor of the social history of media at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. He was the founder of A/traverso and Radio Alice in Bologna, was a leading figure in the Italian political movement Autonomia and worked with Félix Guattari in the field of schizoanalysis. His recent theoretical work has focused on the relationship between psychopathology, information technology and capitalism. He contributed to magazines such as Semiotexte (New York), Chimères (Paris), Metropoli (Rome) and eFlux (New York), and his books include The Soul at Work, After the Future, The Uprising, Futurability and And: Phenomenology of the End. His latest work was The Third Unconscious (2022).

Max de Esteban is an artist whose work reflects on the relationship between the human condition, technology and the capitalist regime in the 21st century. His projects have been exhibited in museums and institutions such as Jeu de Paume, Deutsche Technikmuseum, Virreina Centre de la Imatge, CGAC and Palais de Tokyo, and he has participated in the Yokohama Triennial (2020), the Cairo Biennial (2019), the 13th Havana Biennial (2019), the 16th Fotofest Biennial (2016) and the Darmstadt Triennale (2014). He holds a PhD from the Ramon Lull University, an MBA from Stanford University and a degree in Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.