Jonathon Keats & Robert Folger

Our civilization faces unprecedented challenges – climate crisis, social inequality, technological disruption, and political instability converging into an existential polycrisis. How can we navigate this multidimensional threat? This conversation between Jonathon Keats and Robert Folger explores apocalyptic studies as a key to understanding the present and embraces visionary art to design desirable future pathways.

Jonathon Keats is an artist, writer and experimental philosopher. His conceptually-driven transdisciplinary projects explore all aspects of society, adapting methods from the sciences and the humanities. He has exhibited and lectured worldwide, from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to Stanford University to the Triennale di Milano, and from SXSW to CERN to UNESCO. He is the author of six books among them You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future (Oxford University Press).

Robert Folger, Professor at Heidelberg University and researcher at the Käte Hamburger Center for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies, examines cultural narratives of collapse and their significance for our understanding of current crises. His interdisciplinary research illuminates how societies have historically dealt with existential threats and what lessons we can draw for today’s challenges.

Moderation: Julian Reid, Political theorist and philosopher, and fellow at CAPAS, University of Heidelberg

Language: English

In cooperation with the Käte Hamburger Center for Apocalyptic and Postapocalyptic Studies at Heidelberg University