As announced back in September, The Knowledge has been adapted for the theatre. The book (‘Handbuch für den Neustart der Welt’ in the German translation) has been dramatised by Jessica Glause, and premiered at the Volks theatre in Munich on Friday. Details of performances here. The photos of the production look incredible, with impressive props and very imaginative costumes and set design.
Want to read more about the behind-the-scenes fundamentals of how our modern world works, and how you could reboot civilisation if you ever needed to...? Check out The Knowledge - available now in paperback, Kindle and audiobook.
The Knowledge is being performed as a play! Theatric dramatisation rights were requested earlier this year by a German production company, and the book will be adapted and directed by Jessica Glause. «Handbuch für den Neustart der Welt» will have a run of ten performances from November in the Volkstheater in Munich. The play will explore on stage how civilisation could be restarted after doomsday, and the challenges that would pose. Read the announcement in Die Welt, the German national newspaper, here or in English using Google Translate.
UPDATE: The play has now premiered! See here for ticket details and photos.
Want to read more about the behind-the-scenes fundamentals of how our modern world works, and how you could reboot civilisation if you ever needed to...? Check out The Knowledge - available now in paperback, Kindle and audiobook.
Artist Sean Mort has produced a humorous take on How the World Ends, along with the rest of the Solar System when the Sun goes rogue… The design is available as a screen print, 24×8 inches, from his website
Want to read more about the behind-the-scenes fundamentals of how our modern world works, and how you could reboot civilisation if you ever needed to...? Check out The Knowledge - available now in paperback, Kindle and audiobook.
Last September I found myself gazing at the sunset over the London skyline. I was on the roof of Peckham’s multi-storey car park. There’s a multiplex cinema at the front, and the top three floors are home to a summer pop-up bar and sculpture show. The thought struck me that my next diorama project should be a ruin – a post apocalyptic diorama – and why not choose the very building I’m standing on…? My art practice employs architectural model-making to create photographic narratives and the idea of an overgrown but recognisable (at least to the people of Peckham) future ruin appealed. So here is my large-scale diorama of a post-apocalyptic Peckam…
Guest post by Nick Cobb
Want to read more about the behind-the-scenes fundamentals of how our modern world works, and how you could reboot civilisation if you ever needed to...? Check out The Knowledge - available now in paperback, Kindle and audiobook.
There is an alluring, dark aesthetic in pictures of ruins and urban decay, as we’ve explored in the ruin photography post. But there is something especially thrilling about contemplating views of well-known landmarks or even entire modern cityscapes in an advanced state of degradation and ruin, and it is this particular appetite that post-apocalyptic art often caters to.
Indeed, that’s one of the subtle but important differences between disaster movies and post-apocalyptic films. The money shots in a catastrophe movie are always the gleeful demolition of famous buildings monuments – indulging in the frisson of destruction. But in a narrative set after a civilisation-toppling catastrophe you need the recognisable features still visible in the background to provide viewers with context to the scene. The goal of the visuals is to deliver an uncomfortable feeling from the incongruity of the familiar landmark and the new world order around it. This means that in apocalyptic films the familiar landmarks are the first to be destroyed; but in post-apocalptic movies they are all that remains. (With perhaps Planet of the Apes being the pinnacle example of this: only the hand of the statue endures).
Want to read more about the behind-the-scenes fundamentals of how our modern world works, and how you could reboot civilisation if you ever needed to...? Check out The Knowledge - available now in paperback, Kindle and audiobook.
As Chapter 2 of The Knowledge explores, once our technological civilisation collapses, the machinery and buildings we leave behind will begin inexorably to corrode and decay and nature will seize its opportunity to reclaim our urban areas. The huge body of ruin photography and images of derelict and abandoned places today offers us a glimpse of what this post-apocalyptic future will look like for the survivors.
If you appreciate this alluring beauty of ruins and decaying urban spaces, an aesthetic appeal that has been edgily dubbed ‘ruin lust’, there are a number of good recent publications you also might like. Try Andrew Moore’s photographs in Detroit Disassembled, Forbidden Places and Forbidden Places 2 by Sylvain Margaine, and RomanyWG’s Beauty in Decay. The Atlas Obscura website is well-worth an explore, and of course, also see the post on this website on post-apocalyptic art.
Want to read more about the behind-the-scenes fundamentals of how our modern world works, and how you could reboot civilisation if you ever needed to...? Check out The Knowledge - available now in paperback, Kindle and audiobook.