Collage by Adeline Chum, Jules Kleitman, Aditi Mangesh Shetye

With lead speculators Aristilde Kirby and Frank Morales

What might it feel like to live in New York City after fossil fuels?

Fossil energy, like coal, oil and gas will end eventually. Coal rolling and the renewed celebration of excessive fossil fuel consumption have been merely “petromelancholic” rebound effects… This was the backdrop for Alexander Klose and Chris Woebken’s ongoing research project on the histories and afterlives of petromodernity.

How do we want to live in a post-fossil future? How and with whom will we develop new kinships after the social bonds connected to the resource economy and the exuberant promises of our ‘Western Way of Life’ are untied? Will we actively delve into a world of living materials and microbiological entanglements? Will we get beyond racism and patriarchy? Will we cease to privately own land? 

Through narrative techniques and design futures methods a series of bespoke design interventions and immersive installations transformed 1014 into a hyper-reality testing environment. Using guided speculative role play and co-created moments of immersion, participants were encouraged to experiment with new values and beliefs that might emerge in a post-petro world. The scenarios and installations were developed in collaboration with an architecture course at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, led by participatory futures practitioner Chris Woebken in partnership with cultural researcher Alexander Klose. 

The idea of precognition: Being neither driven by big corporations nor by governments, the precognition process takes up the project of working with and on futures in an explicitly non-technocratic, experimental way. It avoids statistics-based "scientific" methodologies. Instead, it relies on collectively crafted visions and material-based artifacts and embodied roleplay. An archeology of the fossil presence: surveying infrastructures, collecting images and narratives that at the same time manifest all kinds of afterlives and hint to possible escape routes. 

Aristilde Kirby (she/they, b. 1991) is a poet, like the play of the ripples on the water. Daisy & Catherine², her latest chapbook, is out in November via Auric Press. Past works include Daisy & Catherine (Belladonna, 2017) & Sonnet Infinitesimal / Material Girl (Black Warrior Review & Best American Experimental Writing 2020). She has a Master of Fine Arts degree in Writing from Bard College. You can just call her Aris, like Paris without the P. 

Frank Morales is a legendary New York City housing activist, a radical Episcopalian priest who has been squatting in the South Bronx and on the Lower East Side since 1978. Morales was the housing organizer for Picture the Homeless, a homeless-led grassroots group that developed a multipronged program of direct action to secure housing for homeless people, alongside groups like Miami’s Take Back the Land.Morales currently co-leads Organizing for Occupation, a group of New York City residents from the activist, academic, religious, homeless, arts, and progressive legal communities who have come together to respond to the housing crisis. The group believes that safe and affordable housing is a human right and that, given the failure of government and the private sector to address the crisis, it is up to those who are most directly affected by it to secure that right through nonviolent direct action. The group intends to create housing through the occupation of vacant spaces and to protect people’s right to remain in existing housing through community-based anti-eviction campaigns.

Installations by: 

Tashania Akemah, Adeline Chum, Ethan Davis, Jules Kleitman, Yingjie Liu, Brianna Love, Gloria Mah, Camille Newton, Aditi Mangesh Shetye, Kaeli Streeter, Carmen Yu.

Film by:  

Christoph Girardet 

This project is produced in collaboration between: 

Alexander Klose is a cultural researcher, Office for Precarious Concepts and Undisciplinary Research, Berlin, Germany and member of the research collective Beauty of Oil, Berlin/Vienna.

Chris Woebken, experimental designer, co-founder of the participatory futures practice the Extrapolation Factory, Adjunct Assistant Prof. at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Commissioned by 1014, New York City, Goethe Institute New York City and Popup Goethe Institute Houston.

COVID 19 precautions

In line with CDC guidance and New York City policies, guests need to show proof of full vaccination and wear a mask while being indoors. We will provide hand sanitizer at the entrance of the building.