From forecasts of disastrous climate change to prophecies of evil AI superintelligences and the impending perils of genome editing, our species is increasingly concerned with the prospects of its own extinction. Less and less does the end of humanity’s future on this planet seem an area of lurid fantasy or remote speculation.  But how did this come about? When did our obsession about the end start? And what does tracing back this history teach us about our current predicament?

Part of an ongoing collaboration with Dutch platform DeDependance,  we invited Thomas Moynihan to speak about his book X-RISK: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction alongside Dutch philosopher Lisa Doeland, author of Apocalypsofie.

This event was part of a collaboration iwth Architecture Institute Rotterdam (AIR) and was part of Rotterdam Architecture Month. 

For this event, I curated and moderated the discussion in collaboration with DeDependance.