Anthropogenic Hyperreason (concept)

 

Hannah Arendt begins her book The Human Condition by describing the first ever satellite’s flight 

in orbit around the Earth. According to Arendt, the satellite in particular and space programs in 

general illustrate one of the most fundamental traits of Western thinking: our experience of the 

human body and the Earth as factors which constrain life and thinking. 

 

”To consume: to destroy or expend by use, use up, as by decomposing or burning, to eat or drink 

up, devour...”– Dictionary.com. The depletion of the environment and our resources isn’t potentially 

the unintentional side effect of consumer culture, but rather its central goal. Consumerism manifests 

rebellion towards the laws of our planet, and finally towards the mortality of the body.

 

Over 1300 scientists have signed a consensus report, the core of which can be summarised as 

follows: ”Based on the best scientific information available, human quality of life will suffer 

substantial degradation by year 2050 if we continue on our current path”. My collaborator who is 

one of the writers, stated that the sentence means in practical terms that our civilisation will collapse 

within the next forty years.

 

Kasimir Malevitch's Black Square manifested itself for the first time in set design of futurist opera’s 

Victory Over the Sun The Black Square symbolised victory over the sun, which, according to the 

futurists, embodies earthly and royalist logic. The sun was to be replaced with human-made shapes, 

logic with illogic(hyper-reason), and language with transnational expressions which would be 

beyond language. 

 

In 1921 Malevich wrote to his comrade Osip Brink: “the earth’s surface is not organised. It is 

covered with seas, mountains. Some nature exists. I want to create instead of that nature, a 

Suprematist nature, build pursuant to laws of Suprematism.”

 

Today, a hundred years after the writing of the manifesto, 70% of the Earth’s ice-free area is altered 

by the human hand. When observed from the satellite images, Earth reminds a suprematist artwork. 

 

SECOND STRONGMAN (Victory Over The Sun)

Sun you bore the passions

And scorched them with flaming beam

We’ll yank a dusty coverlet over you

Lock you up in a concrete house!