THIS IS THE END. Again. The Enlightenment, the American experiment, the postwar order—depending who you ask, any or all of these momentous constructs, and so many more, have collapsed in recent memory, some fading into history (which also ended a while back, only to begin again), others giving rise to grotesque new iterations of themselves, continuous with their former incarnations yet qualitatively distinct. Meanwhile, we exist within a larger terminal stage, an ending that is not a mere dividing line between past and future but an epoch in its own right: the ongoing climate apocalypse.
As Covid-19 throws the violence and injustice of one way of life into horrifically stark relief, it also forces us to envision new ways of seeing, knowing, acting, and resisting, new modes of living between one eschaton and another. Artforum asked twenty artists, writers, and collectives—HANNAH BAER, THE CINEMA WORKER SOLIDARITY FUND (THOMAS BEARD, ED HALTER, NELLIE KILLIAN, and SIERRA PETTENGILL), WAI CHEE DIMOCK, BRIAN ENO, HEIKE GEISSLER, LAUREN HALSEY, CAROLINE A. JONES, JOHN KELSEY, EILEEN MYLES, YOKO ONO, PAUL B. PRECIADO, CHARLES RAY, RIDYKEULOUS, PETER SAVILLE, STUART SCHRADER, ALEXANDRO SEGADE, LUC TUYMANS, FRANCESCO VEZZOLI, MOLLY WARNOCK, and ANDREA ZITTEL—to contribute essays and projects reflecting on the pandemic and the worlds it may make and unmake.