Posthuman Sublime
All work was made through a process of 3D modeling, texturing, lighting, and animating in Blender. No assets or AI were used.
Fig 01. THEIR PROMISES ARE BROKEN, THE SPHERE IS INCOMPLETE. DESOLATE, ABANDONED, THOSE WHO SURVIVED ARE STRANDED OR CLOSE TO IT. THE MORNING CURSES OUR LIVES, EVERY SUNRISE WE BURN.
The sublime is a complex aesthetic phenomenon characterized by the profound sense of wonder or awe when encountering something vast, powerful, or beyond our ordinary perception of the world. This experience forces us to confront an entity or idea that transcends awareness of our individual existence and, instead, subjects the encounterer to an existential experience that exceeds the limitations of our physical realm.
However, the sublime existed simply as a human experience far before it was defined as an aesthetic category; the emotional reaction is inherently tied to a sudden, and visceral, confrontation with our finite human existence.
Fig 02. A NEW MIRAGE ECHOES ACROSS THE HEAVENS. THAT THING NEVER LEAVES MY SIGHT. MOCKING MY EXISTENCE. SITTING IDLY IGNORING MY PLEAS.
Our species has evolved into a parasitic, geophysical force that has modified and reformed our planet for capitalistic gain. In the process, we have become entangled with planetary forces that we cannot always control, or perceive. Our emerging awareness of this condition marks the transition into a new epoch, the Anthropocene. Dipesh Chakrabarty asserts that the Anthropocene requires a new subjectivity, in which our individual sensibility is replaced by a planetary subjectivity.
Implicit in Chakrabarty’s call for a new subjectivity is the hope that decentering the individual will enable a collective desire to slow the pace of unbridled planetary destruction.
Fig 03. THE APEX. UNOCCUPIED.
The connection between this new perception and the resulting action is fundamentally an aesthetic problem. According to Jacques Rancière, the aesthetic manifestation of the world establishes the parameters for possible actions. Therefore, the realization of potential new forms of existence necessitates an aesthetic reevaluation of the world and humanity’s positioning within it—referred to by Rancière as a “redistribution of the sensible.”
The sublime, recognized as the aesthetic category most closely associated with the sensation of existential threat, can be strategically leveraged to usher in a novel existential paradigm—a new planetary sensibility that is post-human. Achieving this objective requires a distinct form of the sublime appropriate for such a purpose.
Fig 04. I FOUND MYSELF DRIFTING, ALONE. I MIGHT DIE HERE, BODY ABANDONED INDEFINITELY. I’M INDIFFERENT TO THE THOUGHT.
Fig 05.
EAT THE THING MAN IS BEST AT PRODUCING, SYNTHETIC WASTE.
MOST PEOPLE I KNOW STARTED USING THE DIGESTIVE YEARS AGO. LET IT ATTACH ITSELF EVERY MEAL AND TAKE IT OFF WHEN YOU’RE DONE, IT ISN’T PART OF YOU.
A post-human sublime transforms the traditional focus from an individual vulnerability to a species-wide exposure. The call for a new sublime complements the reframing of anthropogenic subjectivity by establishing a necessary sense of collective dread as a precursor to establishing a postanthropocentric sensibility.
Fig 06. MECHANICAL FOSSILS. THE SEABED IS LITTERED WITH THE REMAINS OF WHAT ONCE SOARED AMONG THE STARS.
Fig 07. THESE BEHEMOTHS NOW LAY SILENT AND LIFELESS. BURIED BENEATH LAYERS OF SILT AND SEDIMENT, RESTING IN A MAUSOLEUM NO ONE WILL VISIT.
As a fundamentally speculative discipline, architecture is uniquely poised to envision and design new realities of humanity’s place within the world. Therefore, architecture possesses the capacity to not only redefine this position, but also to question the prevailing aesthetic framework through which the world is currently understood. The creation of new forms of representation that possesses the potential to evoke profound sublimity when portraying life within a post-human world is fundamental to the goal of creating a new planetary subjectivity. The Post-Human Sublime will therefore demonstrate new architectural representations capable of evoking this form of the sublime. It will do so through the techniques of failed form, relative scale, and compromised subjectivity.