Beyond the World's End

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.

“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.” - Julia Bryan-Wilson, author of (Fray: Art and Textile Politics) “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.” - Alexander Alberro, Barnard College "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."- J. Decker (Choice) “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.” - Suzaan Boettger (Art Bulletin) “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.” - Kate Keohane (Art History) “Beyond the World’s End is a text of impressive scope and depth, whose thematic urgency needs no introduction. . . . If, as in Fredric Jameson’s famous adage, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is the end of capitalism, Demos charts a path here for imagining both, and a different world that can be brought into being in what lies beyond these ends.” - Matthias Kispert (Moving Image Review & Art Journal)

• List of Illustrations  viiIntroduction. The World's End, and Beyond  11. Feeding the Ghost: John Akomfrah's Vertigo Sea  232. Blackout: The Necropolitics of Extraction  433. The Visual Politics of Climate Refugees  684. Gaming the Environment: On the Media Ecology of Public Studio  965. Animal Cosmopolitics: The Art of Gustafsson&Haapoga  1166. To Save a World: Geoengineering, Conflictual Futurisms, and the Unthinkable  1377. The Great Transition: The Arts and Radical System Change  163Acknowledgments  195Notes  199Index  249