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This Master’s thesis aims to point out the crucial role contemporary artistic practices play in mediating and combatting ecological crises and refers to After ALife Ahead by Pierre Huyghe from 2017 as a case study. The work can be interpreted as a post- apocalyptic scenario challenging the anthropocentric worldview through the deconstruction of binary oppositions such as nature and culture, human and non- human, and life and non-life. Deconstructing these binary oppositions also means to re-think the role of contemporary art in the entanglement thereof. In this thesis, I argue that we need to re-evaluate age-old notions of nature, artificiality, hybridity, and life to establish new ethical values that are inclusive and appropriate for our contemporary issues of ecological disasters, exhaustion of resources, and ethical dealings with artificial life. In order to do so, I trace back to concepts from the environmental sciences, philosophy, and science fiction narratives while providing a relational analysis of After ALife Ahead. Since ecological problems affect us all, we need to practice relational and recursive thinking to fully understand the interconnectedness of human and non-human agents on the planet. Built on asynchronous chapters focusing on topics like site-specificity, ruins, or bio- power, this thesis can be read transversally to encourage intertwined interpretations of our role in recent natural disasters. Finally, I propose how post-apocalyptic thinking as demonstrated in After ALife Ahead can be appropriated to take action on an individual level.
