A World Without Us Revisited
Due to the rapid spread of the coronavirus, the streets of the world were empty for a long time and we experienced the vulnerability of humans in a globalized world. In recent months the pandemic has shown us the powerful workings of the natural world, thereby only proving the urgency for change and the importance of knowledge of our planet’s ecosystem and all the organisms living on it.
In the exhibition A World Without Us, which was on show at IMPAKT in 2018, various artists reflected on the idea of a world without people, caused by the destructive way in which we treat our environment. In the non-fiction book The World Without Us (2007), American journalist Alan Weisman describes what would happen to the planet if people suddenly disappear; which traces of human civilization would soon be lost, how cities and houses would perish, what materials and structures would survive the longest, and how different non-human organisms would develop after the disappearance of humanity.
We asked the artists who took part in the exhibition in 2018 to rethink the exhibition theme, taking into account their current knowledge and their own experience of the world during this pandemic. This resulted in a new web project: A World Without Us Revisited. The artists in this project offer visions of the contemporary world and our own position in it and how nature and technology relate to each other in various ways. Scroll through A World Without Us Revisited and discover photos with simulated flying birds, video works, a VR app, an “underwater” soundwork and remote-controlled robots that you can control from home.