In the Spotlight Stephen Barber

I’m an art historian, and since 2018 I’ve been developing a research project on urban wastelands and their representations across art and film. I was intrigued by how often these sites are described as ‘apocalyptic cityscapes’ or ‘apocalyptic wastelands’. Has the city itself become ‘apocalyptic’, or else the figures—human and non-human—inhabiting it? Or both? I organised a conference at the Berlin University of the Arts, supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, to open discussions on these themes. I then pursued further research on a fellowship at the Hamburg Institute of Advanced Study. So when CAPAS announced its new fellowship openings, I thought it would be an ideal environment in which to complete my project on ‘apocalyptic urban wastelands’. 

What does the apocalypse and/or post-apocalypse mean for you? 

From an art historical perspective, I’ve long engaged with the imageries and imaginings of apocalypse in art movements such as 1920s-30s French Surrealism, as well as 1960s Japanese art, photography and dance. I was especially intrigued by two journeys which the Surrealist artist Antonin Artaud made in 1936-37, first to Mexico and then to a remote island off the western coast of Ireland. Before leaving Paris, Artaud published an apocalyptic manifesto and seemed convinced he would witness the apocalypse on that island. I translated his letters from that journey in a book titled Artaud 1937 Apocalypse. Artists’ approaches to the apocalyptic or postapocalyptic range from extravagant, delusional, hallucinatory, prophetic, to detailed and tangible. 

Personally, I grew up in the 1980s—a now-vanished era characterized by fear of an imminent USA/USSR nuclear apocalypse, which must have marked many children’s experiences worldwide in that era (perhaps still haunting them today), and formed a dynamic of apocalypse very different to the current preoccupations with global warming, pandemics, digital-media/data turmoil, and other global threats.

What is your fellowship trying to achieve, which questions is it addressing, and with which methods?

I’m aiming to complete my book on imaginaries of apocalyptic cityscapes in art and film by the end of my fellowship, set for publication in English and German by the Swiss arts publisher Diaphanes. Besides exploring art and film imaginaries of apocalyptic wastelands, the book includes several case-studies of on-site topographical explorations of wastelands in a range across the globe. It speculates on how contemporary cities have been transformed by digital culture in ways that introduce a sense of acute fragility or volatility that has been perceived as ‘apocalyptic’ by numerous theorists, artists and activists, such as Joanna Zylinska, T.J. Demos and Matthew Gandy. This project’s methods are transdisciplinary, combining art history, urban topography and the analysis of contemporary theoretical perspectives on the apocalypse, particularly in the context of digital media’s impact.

How does the fellowship project build on or connect to your previous career or biography? 

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed working at research centres in Japan, the USA, Germany and France as well as at the visual cultures centre in London where I’m based. Being part of a research centre, and understanding its dynamics and demands, is something I was already familiar with. At the same time, it was clear from my initial engagement with CAPAS that it was going to be a very special and distinctive experience, in part through the originality and openness of its preoccupations and also through the illuminating and unforeseen perspectives of the other fellows. 

What do you hope to take with you from the project and its results?

I hope the book will present readers with new insights into apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic themes, perhaps exposing them to ideas and material they haven’t encountered before. It connects diverse areas and disciplines and embraces the exploratory, activist-driven approaches that characterize recent work on apocalyptic themes, often through experimental and provocative expressions.

What are the aspects you are looking forward to at CAPAS?

CAPAS brings together a community of researchers and artists from many disciplines, all focused on the compelling questions, mysteries and illuminations of the apocalyptic. Unlike institutes of advanced study, Käte Hamburger centers generate a concentrated focus on a specific topic rather than an environment in which everyone is working on different areas or ‘knowledge-silos’ with diffused approaches. So, being at CAPAS requires a deep sense of openness to unfamiliar perspectives, since, once reflected upon, they will certainly eventually connect to your own research…

To get some practical advice: What would be the three things you would definitely need in a post-apocalyptic world? 

I’m very curious about the question whether archives and databases, or human knowledge and memory, can survive in a post-apocalyptic world. It really depends to some extent on whether things like wifi and digital devices will still operate in that world! And I have a suspicion they may well not… Perhaps people will still be able to watch celluloid film reels by handcranking old projectors in abandoned cinemas, in which case they can watch apocalyptically insightful films such as Joanna Zylinska’s Exit Man, Chris Marker’s La Jetée, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker.

What are some of your favourite pop culture references to the/an (post)apocalypse?

Perhaps the droningly apocalyptic records of Nico—originally the singer in Andy Warhol’s Velvet Underground (and I guess there’s nothing more pop culture than Warhol)—that were produced by John Cale, such as The End.

Stephen Barber is Professor in Art History and the Co-Director of the Visual and Material Culture Centre at Kingston University’s School of Art since 2012. His research focusses on urban cultures and their intersection with art and moving-image forms.