Unexpected encounters

This publication takes the speculative moment from the first wave of Russian cosmism that took place from the 1880-1910s as a starting point to rethink our co-existence and future. Cosmic thinking is directly relevant to the stories of progress and disaster we tell ourselves on a daily basis.0From the rise of the environmental movement in the late 20th century to the present, there is a growing debate about how to create global solutions to global problems. Specifically, it has become clear that any solution that works on a global scale must navigate - even dispute - the pitfalls of so-called globalization and the exploitative capitalism that underpins it. We need a way of thinking outside and beyond our present reality and its pseudo-rationalist technnotopic limits.0For the cosmists, the scope of any solution is first planetary and then cosmic. Their thinking uses a register of cosmic time that encompasses millions of years back and forth and deals with what will happen if we transcend the category of humanity itself. Cosmism thus opens our present to unexpected encounters between past and future. It is in this clash of elements that the new can reveal itself.0The different perspectives and values??of the cosmic tradition depend on the periods in which they were produced. But the common cosmic stance against a number of enlightenment values??and the cosmic ambition to overcome the societal status quo today resonate with anyone who wants to move beyond the present moment of a future without a future.0The publication accompanies the exhibition 'Cosmic Existence'. The works in the exhibition are closely linked to science fiction and other related speculative artistic projects that try to think in radically alternative paradigms and extended modes of action.00Exhibition: Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark (14.09-28.10.2019).