Luca Rossini

Ok, so the story now moves from Interstellar to something more post-apocalyptic, like The Walking Dead, Mad Max, 12 Monkeys. I’m talking about the inevitable collapse of the whole civilization. We fear it because it already happened. Here in my city, actually. One of the longest and more powerful
civilization ever, the Roman, collapsed together with its empire in an unbelievable short time after the government had to surrender to the Barbarians. People back then found themselves trapped in what we call now the Middle Ages, so it’s not that crazy to envies something similar to happen again. Due to the atmospheric catastrophe, people will be forced to live in closed environments. In order to survive we’ll have to create some sort of communities, so people will be forced to look for and gather inside large closed environments, like airports, underground or multilevel parking, malls, industrial complexes, and so on. Let’s say we don’t all die in a few months, but that we find a way to feed, maybe to grow food, or to hunt, or to scavenge. These communities will quite quickly lose their culture, we saw that happening before, and move into a new one. They will start building their new homes and streets and villages inside the “underground” environments they gathered in at the beginning. With no engines and no. electricity, they will have to rely on more basic tools to do the job, and presumably this will lead to the same architectural solutions we had before industrialization or even renaissance. The new underground towns will most likely look like the early Middle Ages towns. Things like rail tracks will still be useful to slide efficiently goods from one place to another, especially since a lot of industrial areas have their hangar connected with these. So far it has all been about history repeating itself. But there’s a big difference from the fall of the Roman Empire. This time it is our very planet we screwed. We might survive the effects for a while, but not forever. Resources might keep on reducing while the overall catastrophe might drive the
planet towards a new equilibrium, maybe one in which our life isn’t possible anymore. Earth will be like one of those “extraterrestrial” planet we see in movies, that look lively and nice, but where we can survive only by wearing suits that keep us from what’s really out there.

Anthropocene refers to the current geological era in the way it will be clearly distinguishable from the previous ones to a future observer, because of human impact on the planet (due to the way we transformed landscapes, atmosphere, and waters, and due to the artificial materials we created, like
plastic). More generically, however, Anthropocene refers to what will be left of us. Us as in humans of this current culture. In the near-to-far future we either evolve into something different (culturally, primarily) and so will the planet, or just disappear. In both cases, what we’ve done and what we’re
doing will leave a permanent mark on Earth, a mark that has been called Anthropocene. I’m really into these kind of things, partially because of me, I guess, but also because of the historical moment. We’re all facing some sort of fading of that same culture that put us in this situation, and trying to figure out what will be next has become an impossible, when not frightening, task. I won’t go into any political dissertation, this isn’t the place, and I’m not the person. But I think we all share this feeling about the future, and I wanted to use photography and compositing to get a peek into it.

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Nolan’s movie “Interstellar”, but looking at the box office stats I guess the most of you will be. Now, the movie is very honest in presenting the two major issues with human interplanetary migration: any planet we might try to land to is just too far, and the human population is just too heavy to be pulled out of Earth. If we really screw up this planet, there won’t really be a “clean exit”. The best we can try, in order not to disappear as a species, is to transfer embryos (much lighter). Like we were a mere tree, we might be lucky enough to spread other genes on other fertile lands, but we won’t be able to leave our ground.

So, I try to imagine, what if this day isn’t too far away. What if the next war eventually starts the kind of unforgiving and long-lasting atmospheric catastrophe we’ve been fearing since the day we figured out what may have happened to the dinosaurs. Let’s say we’ll be so heroic to be able to put the last

resources and brains to work a way to ship out embryos, maybe with a little human crew to sail them to a good land. But that will be it. No ways out for all the others, all of us.

Ok, so the story now moves from Interstellar to something more post-apocalyptic, like The Walking Dead, Mad Max, 12 Monkeys. I’m talking about the inevitable collapse of the whole civilization. We fear it because it already happened. Here in my city, actually. One of the longest and more powerful
civilization ever, the Roman, collapsed together with its empire in an unbelievable short time after the government had to surrender to the Barbarians. People back then found themselves trapped in what we call now the Middle Ages, so it’s not that crazy to envies something similar to happen again. Due to the atmospheric catastrophe, people will be forced to live in closed environments. In order to survive we’ll have to create some sort of communities, so people will be forced to look for and gather inside large closed environments, like airports, underground or multilevel parking, malls, industrial complexes, and so on. Let’s say we don’t all die in a few months, but that we find a way to feed, maybe to grow food, or to hunt, or to scavenge. These communities will quite quickly lose their culture, we saw that happening before, and move into a new one. They will start building their new homes and streets and villages inside the “underground” environments they gathered in at the beginning. With no engines and no electricity, they will have to rely on more basic tools to do the job, and presumably this will lead to the same architectural solutions we had before industrialization or even renaissance. The new underground towns will most likely look like the early Middle Ages towns. Things like rail tracks will still be useful to slide efficiently goods from one place to another, especially since a lot of industrial areas have their hangar connected with these.

So far it has all been about history repeating itself. But there’s a big difference from the fall of the Roman Empire. This time it is our very planet we screwed. We might survive the effects for a while, but not forever. Resources might keep on reducing while the overall catastrophe might drive the
planet towards a new equilibrium, maybe one in which our life isn’t possible anymore. Earth will be like one of those “extraterrestrial” planet we see in movies, that look lively and nice, but where we can survive only by wearing suits that keep us from what’s really out there.

So, humans eventually die. There’s nobody left. So nature starts taking back what was “ours”. The underground towns go into natural erosion, while plants start to grow everywhere around. Like what happened with the ruins of those South-South-Eastern empires. And so, just like that, Anthropocene
stops being an “ongoing thing” and becomes officially an era. That same day, a new era begins.

Now, let’s keep our story going. There are no people anymore on Earth, but remember the embryos? Their ship might have found the promised land, after all. The little human crew on board might have been that good to land on it, start the colonization process, activate the growth of a bunch of embryos, parented the offspring, taught the new humans (not earthlings anymore, though) how to keep up the process, how to use the technologies, how to create new ones. In the best possible scenario, the offspring comes all from smart-people-embryos, so we’ll have a superior society growing up, no stupid hateful voters anymore, and the land is sweet and fecund.

This culture will grow with the myth of “Motherland Earth” and, eventually, will want to try to get back there to have a look around. In the meantime it has finally evolved into a new, technological society, where all people are born as the first landers, that is, perfect and in capsules. In such a society there won’t be any place for males anymore, with all our impossible-to-cope-with-smartly issues due to testosterone. With no need to impress males or to offspring children, women will change too. Breasts might tend to disappear, their bodies will get more androgynous, and nudity will have no malice.

This new, female, superior culture will need quite some time before being able to travel through space again. In particular, the access to energy will dictate the whole timeline. But, eventually it will get to that. This culture exists because of space travelling and colonization, and they will most probably be its major driving forces as long as it exists. They will start by visiting, and maybe colonizing, the close-by planets, but sooner or later they will head towards Earth. It will be an intensely emotional voyage for them. Not knowing what they’ll find, in particular if their “fathers” are still inhabiting the planet, won’t be an easy feeling to cope with. The women in the space ship won’t have ever seen a male, and the only thing they know about people on Earth is that they share worse genes and that they screwed their planet and their future. They will know that human culture on Earth has collapsed because, was it otherwise, other earthlings would have contacted them or answered to their attempts to communicate over the years.

They won’t find us, however, because we’ll be extinct by then. They’ll find Earth, in its new climate and atmospheric conditions which will force the landers to keep their helmets on all the time, and they’ll find the ruins of what had been before their offspring left the planet, and the ruins of what
had been of us afterwards. They’ll look around, and they’ll see the Anthropocene.

Will they attempt to bring back Earth conditions to favor human life, so to colonize it back? Or will they leave it be, considering it what it has become, a giant cemetery of the first millennia of human civilization?

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