After the Big Waves come, what will we get up to? Some fascinating Cli-Fi stories from artists

Some fascinating, tantalising artwork around at the moment, trying to see our anthropocene world from all angles - humans, insects, the planet - to help us sharpen our responses to climate catastrophe. The stuff we like is evocative and ambiguous, not propagandist or hectoring.

For example, look at these curious artworks from Neo-Metabolism - who present themselves parodically as some kind of business consultancy from the future:

Neo-Metabolism is a group practice for Identity Development. As we move through radical transformations at planetary scale, Neo-Metabolism provides essential services in narrative, strategy, design and organisational development, to nurture the collective personas of the future. The new replaces the old, the sooner the better.

Not quite sure what problems they are going to solve… But we are tantalised by their “stream” of content. At the top of the blog are gifs from two projects - two cli-fi (climate science fiction) exercises called Since the Plastic Surge, and All the Qings Spoke. They are both describing activities happening after some environmental “event”. For example, from the first exercise:

The Anthropocene, the geological age in which humans acted as the main determinant of the environment, exerting geological agency, had lasted until 101 sun turns ago.

Its ending was marked by the Big Waves, and with them the realization that certain forces undeniably exceeded the agency of humans.

It awakened a newfound humility, and a new generation that practised material sobriety and inter-species care.

Agency was now generally perceived to be a matter of interdependence. Theories on the vibrancy and vitality of matter, as well as more ancient notions of animism, had aided the process of sense-making.

It was now more commonly accepted that, as the shamans always knew, everything is connected, and that, for example, all creatures with bones, owe their ability to move to the multi-species process of mineralization.

Above is a piece called Venice Walking Tour, which takes the flooding of the ancient city in 2019 as an excuse for a combined rave-and-poetry slam on the soundtrack. Other walks - collected here - include Hamburg’s red-light district, the Joshua Tree and Stuttgart Airport

Neo-Metabolism have also helped to build Sensitives Stream, which tries to evoke the inner worlds of river insects, using some effective elements - text, video, audio, all navigable by scrolling (see the gif above, and go to their “dive” stream on the web).