“In the context of philosophy, the central question today is whether thought is always determined within the framework of the human point of view. What other alternatives lay open to us? One approach is to cease searching for some imaginary locus of the non-human “out there” in the world, and to refuse the well-worn dichotomy between self and world, subject and object. This is, of course, much easier said than done. In addition to the interpretive frameworks of the mythological (classical-Greek), the theological (Medieval-Christian), and the existential (modern-European), would it be possible to shift our framework to something we can only call cosmological? Could such a cosmological view be understood not simply as the view from inter-stellar space, but as the view of the world-without-us, the Planetary view?

Scientists estimate that approximate ninety percent of the cells in the human body belong to non-human organisms (bacteria, fungi, and a whole bestiary of other organisms). Why shouldn’t this also be the case for human thought as well? In a sense, this book is an exploration of this idea – that thought is not human. In a sense, the world-without-us is not to be found in a “great beyond” that is exterior to the World (the world-for-us) or the Earth (the world-in-itself); rather, it is in the very fissures, lapses, or lacunae in the World and the Earth. The Planet (the world-without-us) is, in the words of darkness mysticism, the “dark intelligible abyss” that is paradoxically manifest as the World and the Earth.”

- Excerpted from “In the Dust of this Planet” by Eugene Thacker

This exhibition follows the group show “घर: An Ecological Speculation Within the Web of Life”, which was presented earlier this spring at Khoj Institute in New Delhi as part of its curatorial program for emerging curators from South Asia. This project, by reflecting more deeply on the idea of “Earth as a Habitable Planet,” seeks to rethink it not only from the perspective of the human subject but also through the lens of the “Inhuman” and the “Without-the-Human Horizon”. Inspired by Speculative Realism and its critical engagement with the concept of “correlation” within contemporary continental philosophy, the project aims to open a new window for audiences toward “The Great Outside”—an exterior that exists autonomously and independently, free from any relation, whether with the human or the nonhuman.

- Erfan Ghiasi