Before the Deluge
An interactive and transoceanic odyssey set against the backdrop of the climate crisis.
We awake on an island in the middle of an endless sea. This mythopoetic island – stuck between and beyond time and space – is where all deluges birth and come to die. We follow the journey of a player who wanders the island in search of new wisdom, mysterious relics, and an escape. Who – or what – can save them from themselves?
Before the Deluge traces historical and cultural perspectives from transoceanic mythologies to investigate the climate futures ahead of us, exploring which sources of knowledge we draw from in preparation for climate disaster. Flood myths, found in diverse cultures across the globe symbolising renewal and purification, intertwine with dystopian tales that depict the consequences of environmental devastation, the end of the world. Yet, the world has ended many times already. As a witness to these tragedies, we encounter the siren as an ancient shapeshifting guardian. Their merged histories lay bare the xenophobic, racist and misogynistic beliefs Western society projects throughout the passing of time.
The research project Before the Deluge is developed as part of the Uroboros Fellowship 2024: More-than-Human Co-creation that is oriented toward art and design researchers thinking and practising with more-than-human ecologies.
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Erik Peters
Erik Peters (he/they) is an interdisciplinary artist and artistic researcher engaging with the worldbuilding potentialities seeded in the act of storytelling, uncovering how speculative fiction can germinate new universes of being through collaborative formats of making, researching and staging. They weave pathways between the possible worlds persistency emerging from a world in planetary crisis. Their collaborative practice is situated in an interdependent web of ecologies and technologies, human and non-human beings. Together, they create immersive scenarios about possible futures; imaginative worlds staged as spatial and interactive installations, workshops, performances and audiovisual works. These speculative artefacts are created with technologies and materials such as machine learning, game engine tools, ceramics, 3d printing and 3d scanning methods.
Erik is the Uroboros 2024 Fellow and will show his fellowship work as part of the Feral Nest program.