Beyond the World's End

In Beyond the World's End T. J. Demos explores cultural practices that provide radical propositions for living in a world beset by environmental and political crises. Rethinking relationships between aesthetics and an expanded political ecology that foregrounds just futurity, Demos examines how contemporary artists are diversely addressing urgent themes, including John Akomfrah's cinematic entanglements of racial capitalism with current environmental threats, the visual politics of climate refugees in work by Forensic Architecture and Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman, and moving images of Afrofuturist climate justice in projects by Arthur Jafa and Martine Syms. Demos considers video and mixed-media art that responds to resource extraction in works by Angela Melitopoulos, Allora & Calzadilla, and Ursula Biemann, as well as the multispecies ecologies of Terike Haapoja and Public Studio. Throughout Demos contends that contemporary intersections of aesthetics and politics, as exemplified in the Standing Rock #NoDAPL campaign and the Zad's autonomous zone in France, are creating the imaginaries that will be crucial to building a socially just and flourishing future.

“T. J. Demos has for some time charted intertwining artistic and activist responses to environmental catastrophe, and here he is at his best. This book is powerful and necessary.”, “Beyond the World's End rethinks the complex relationship between political ecology and artistic practice. Written in the clear, provocative prose for which T. J. Demos is already widely admired, this important book operates within the framework of environmental and, by extension, climate justice and provides a glimmer of hope in the midst of the current catastrophe.”, "Amply illustrated and well indexed, the book blends nature-culture binaries and lays out the possibilities for lives beyond the world’s end. This pithy, well-researched volume includes an introduction, seven chapters, and notes, and it will interest students of Afrofuturism, art history, ecofeminism, ecology, social justice, visual culture, and myriad related subjects. Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, professionals."  , “Demos...offer[s] a wealth of information on environmentalist artists and ecocritical thinkers who may not be presented to art audiences elsewhere. [His] venturesome examples of art historical ecocriticism model methodologies of engagement that challenge scholars to apply their own talents and imaginations toward new practices of art history for our time.”, “Demos’ main contribution to the fields of ecology, art history, and geo-politics is the tangible methods he offers against catastrophism. . . . In Beyondthe World’s End, Demos has produced not only a timely teaching tool, but also a touchstone for the ongoing writings and makings of the not-yet.”

T. J. Demos is Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture and Director of the Center for Creative Ecologies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of several books, including The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary during Global Crisis, also published by Duke University Press, and Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today.