Press kit: The World Without Us

As a result of the Enlightenment, science extended the traditional Western conception of space and time into the realms of sheer infinity. The universe became older, larger and colder. This coincided with a sense of unease that mankind was no longer at the centre of the universe, no longer rooted in a world view that was capable of wresting ultimate meaning from history. The threat of an apocalypse gave way to a geological continuity of disasters and changes.

There is a dawning awareness of an uncanny, sublime indifference towards the human scale in a universe that is neither empty nor animate, but rather undead.

The exhibition brings together artistic positions that draw on concepts such as “deep time” – time periods spanning billions of years, in which human existence is little more than a fleeting moment – and “cosmic horror”, a feeling caught between fascination and terror when faced with non-human existence that is inconceivable to our notions of time and space.