About Mirages and Stolen Stones, 2020
By Natàlia Trejbalovà
Full HD, sound, colour, 18 min 50 sec.

“The initial idea for the film About Mirages and Stolen Stones… arose from my interest in speculative narrations and popular conspiracy theories, in particular, ‘The Flat Earth Theory’. Despite the possibility to access extremely effective visualization tools, such as Google Earth, now available to a growing number of people, the belief that the Earth is flat has returned, finding many new followers. I believe that the renewed success of this speculation denotes the spread of an extreme relativism regarding the reliability of explanatory models that concerns the functioning of the world. Meanwhile, the hierarchies of knowledge, including the social distinction between experts and non-experts, appear increasingly blurred.” - Natàlia Trejbalovà

Natália Trejbalová lives and works in Milan. She studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna and later, in Milan; cinema and video at Scuola di Nuove Tecnologie dell’Arte di Brera. Trejbalová has held recent solo exhibitions at Case Chiuse HQ, Milan (IT, 2020); 35M2, Prague (CZ, 2020). Her work has been presented within significant group surveys including Spazio Maiocchi, Milan (IT, 2020); Fondazione Pini, Milan (IT, 2019); Gossamer Fog, London (UK, 2019); Enclave, London (UK, 2018); XVI Quadriennale di Roma (IT, 2016); Livenel Performing Arts Festival (performance); Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur (CH, 2015).

Lecture: X-Risk. How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction
By Thomas Moynihan

From forecasts of disastrous climate change to AI superintelligences, our species is increasingly concerned with the prospects of its own extinction. With humanity's future on this planet seeming more insecure by the day, in the 21st century, existential risk has become the object of a growing field of scientific inquiry. But, as Thomas Moynihan shows in X-Risk, this preoccupation is not exclusive to the post-atomic age of global warming and synthetic biology. Our growing concern with human extinction itself has a history.

Tracing this untold story, Moynihan revisits the pioneers who first contemplated the possibility of human extinction and stages the historical drama of this momentous discovery. In recollecting how we first came to care for our extinction, Moynihan reveals how today's attempts to measure and mitigate existential threats are the continuation of a project initiated over two centuries ago, which concerns the very vocation of the human as a rational, responsible, and future-oriented being.

Thomas Moynihan is a UK-based writer. He is a visiting research associate in history at St Benet’s College, Oxford University and has worked with Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute. His research looks at the historical development of ideas surrounding human extinction, existential risk, and the long-term potential of our species. Through his writings, he aims to tell the story of how –across the ages ­­– people have woken up to the vastness of humanity’s potential in step with learning about its sheer fragility.