At the time, an estimated four million people, many of them children and students, were participating in climate strikes that unified more than 150 countries worldwide against environmental destruction. This movement coalesced around an emotional vocabulary of fear. “Our house is on fire, and I want you to panic,” 16-year-old climate strike figurehead Greta Thunberg told the 2019 World Economic Forum. Responding to this crisis psychology, the introduction to BLACK HOLE CATALOG posited: “We can scream ‘fire!’ and call for help, but we can’t evacuate when the burning house is planet Earth. We’re stuck inside, even when we’re out striking.” In the first quarter of 2020, the metaphor turned literal: amid COVID-19, to be politically and socially engaged was to #StayHome. 

Familiar infrastructure, design, and consumption do not provide solutions to new fears and discord, to our new inner selves and contaminated surroundings. Traditional images don’t adequately represent this world, the usual blueprints and drawings can’t outline it, and accepted aesthetic convention won’t enhance it.

SPEAKERS

Victoria Camblin

Editor, writer, and curator of public programming focusing on contemporary culture. Since 2018 she has served as executive editor of 032c, a Berlin-based multi-platform magazine, apparel brand, and think tank. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Texte zur Kunst, Pin-Up, and GQ, in addition to a number of exhibition catalogues and artists’ books

Nicholas Korody

Writer and designer. In 2019, he founded Interiors Agency, a research-based decorating practice that explores the contemporary interior at a range of scales, from the domestic to the planetary. His writing has been featured in numerous publications including 032c, e-flux, Harvard Design Magazine, Pin-Up, and Real Review. His visual work has been exhibited in various cultural institutions globally, such as the Swiss Institute in New York, the LUMA Westbau in Zürich, the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm