A conversation about the role of humanity as a singular species and default protagonist; a film that depicts colonialism as the work of vampires.

The idea of the human as a stable entity is a relatively recent invention. Since the Enlightenment, the definition of humanity has relied on the exclusion of whatever has been deemed nonhuman: plants, animals, and inanimate objects, as well as, for instance, people who aren’t white or male, people who lack money or land, people who fail to exhibit reason and rationality. The category may have become more expansive and inclusive, but has continued to serve a minuscule number of individuals, who have established themselves as the default protagonists of historical and fictional narratives. Recently, though, the plot of these narratives—and any sense of natural, unending progress—has become untenable, and the interdependence of all species has become clear, as Elvia Wilk observes in her essay collection Death by Landscape (2022). Looking to utopian artworks, sci-fi novels, interspecies romances, horror movies, biological experiments, and role-playing games, Wilk seeks out forms of storytelling and modes of being for the age of ecological catastrophe and asks how the willful isolation of humanity might be undone through both imagination and action.

For Escape from Humanity, Wilk will be joined by Alexandra Kleeman, Adam Khalil, and Bayley Sweitzer for a discussion and screening. They’ll talk about how humanity might be redefined and reoriented without indulging in back-to-the-land fantasies, fetishizing indigenous lifeways, or trading brains for neural networks. Facilitating the conversation, Wilk will consider some of the (real and fictional) encounters between humans and nonhumans that she recounts in Death by Landscape. To Wilk, these are alternatives to the template of Western literature, which she describes as “the story of a person against the backdrop of the world.”

Kleeman will draw on her latest novel, Something New Under the Sun (2021), and a novel-in-progress that stages multiple “evolutionary experiments” involving isolated groups of people that are compelled to change how they live, from the production of food to the exchange of goods. In Something New Under the Sun, the relationship between humanity and the earth has broken down, causing some people to flee to eco-communes that reject consumerism and ritualistically mourn dying species, while others hoard water so as to avoid WAT-R, the suspicious branded liquid that hydrates Californians amid endless drought. Kleeman asks how to envision responsibility to the planet when all actions seem to be compromised, when humans seem to be an invasive species with an unsustainable lifestyle (and without the will or capacity to evolve).

After speaking with Wilk and Kleeman, Khalil and Sweitzer will introduce and screen their short film Nosferasta: First Bite (2021), which reimagines Western culture as a dehumanizing infection—and, as such, a product of interspecies incursions. Arriving in the so-called New World, the vampire Christopher Columbus savagely bites an enslaved African man who has been shipwrecked, transforming him into a bloodthirsty, supernatural creature. The unlikely duo goes on to spread the disease across the continent for five hundred years, until the vampire has an awakening, embraces Rastafarianism, and identifies the connection between colonization and bodily transformation. Nosferasta asks: “How can you decolonize what’s in your blood?” After the screening, Khalil and Sweitzer will take questions with Oba, the cowriter and star of the film. The evening will conclude with drinks to celebrate the publication of Death by Landscape.