It's the End of the World As We Know It (and i feel fine)

It's the End of the World As We Know It (and i feel fine)

In the year A.D. 1126, the winter was so cold and severe that birds froze to death in mid-air. This was followed by such a famine that livestock and people died and birds killed each other in the air. —The Augsburg Book of Miraculous Signs, ca. 1552

As I write, it is the beginning of a new year, a new semester, and (god help us) a new(-ish?) political administration in the U.S. Events both hopeful—such as the Gaza cease-fire—are at their tentative starts, and events truly awful—such as the administration's mass deportation policies—are at their bull(y)ish launching positions. I am caught somewhere between wanting to meaningfully engage with the world and wanting to find a nice solitary cave from which to sit out the rest of the century. I don't see a practical way to do both.

In times of paradigm shifts that generate significant anxiety, I look at what is happening around me to signal some portent or evidences of things to come. Mundane-level: I teach full-time at a state university. Enrollments are down in my department, majors are half of what they normally are and two foundation-level classes were canceled due to being under-enrolled. Is this the beginning of a downward slide, or is this a new normal? Macro-level: I live in a wildfire-prone place with annual winds that have names. Will I be experiencing apocalyptic weather events like what just happened in the Palisades or Eaton fires in Los Angeles? What happens if insurers refuse to protect homes in the state or city that I live? Does a city's capacity to rise from its ashes depend on the city, its people, its insurability?

A fact that I learned today: the phrase "May you live in interesting times," has been said over and over again to be a Chinese curse, but its origins as such are just white men saying that it was a Chinese curse, and other white men piling on thereafter, referring to the original mis-attribution as fact. Something about the west outsourcing the apocalypse to the Chinese feels very on brand for 2025.

The Augsburg Book of Miracles is a tome that I became aware of through the work of photographer Tanya Marcuse, who has been using the recently re-discovered illuminated manuscript as a talisman of inspiration for a current body of work. The book speaks of (and illustrates) blood spilling forth from the sky, multiple accounts of three suns—or three moons—rising or setting, births or captures of strange and fantastic creatures, screaming stars, fiery arrows and crosses falling from the sky, a "thickening" of the sun, several "manifestations" visible in the sky, four hundred flying dragons over the present day Czech Republic, and more. Looking at the illustrations today, I was reminded that there are more ways for art to represent the times in which we live than the obvious ones, and Marcuse's recognition of that borders on the presciently paranormal.

Paradigm shifts speak to the definitive end of something. But what are we at the end of? The end of something that will destroy us? Or save us?

Over the academic winter break, I learned that my graduate alma mater program, the Master of Fine Arts in Photography at Columbia College of Chicago, was being shuttered. A flurry of furious feelings and thoughts ensued—disenfranchisement and futility were the strongest. The program was one of the best in the country, and considered a crown jewel of the institution. There is a Museum of Contemporary Photography in the same building, for god's sake. How could it be ending?

Me, a lifetime ago. Also pictured to greater or lesser degrees: Kelli Lemoi, Jay Wolke, Bob Thall, Paul D'Amato, Dawoud Bey.
Me, Michael Weinstein and Megadeth.

I was among the first cohort that Dawoud Bey taught, and I count myself extraordinarily lucky to have been a student when the stupendous intellect in the body of Michael Weinstein taught there (while he was on a teaching sabbatical from Purdue—life goals!). I had a dynamic and dizzily varied group of peers: Brian Ulrich, Jason Lazarus, Tom Jones, Bryan Steiff and Daniel Ramos are a few that I still keep up with and whose ideas, personhood and drive inspired and intimidated me in the best of ways. I still remember moments from workshops, critiques and 1:1 conversations that I had with colleague friends, professors, and critics. I hear Paul D'Amato's voice in my head sometimes, telling me that after grad school all of those voices I am used to hearing will fade away until the only one I hear is my own. I traded, bought, sold and traded again my first real cameras at Central Camera. After purchasing "the poor man's Leica"—a Konica Hexar Rangefinder (which I regret later selling to this day)—the salesman treated me out to lunch. He had two double-vodka martinis. I'd like to think it was because of the commission on the sale, but something told me that two-martini lunches were a norm for Manny.

With a profession in higher ed, I have been glumly monitoring the closure of programs, schools and entire institutions over the past five years. When the Philadelphia College of Art closed last spring—giving faculty and students a princely one week's notice—the air around whatever idea I'd had of a lifetime in this vocation became uncertain and chilly. What does it mean when college administrators and boards of trustees decide that your discipline has no redeeming (or monetizing) value? When mentors in the program have been conferred Macarthur "genius" grants, when multiple faculty and alums have Guggenheims and coveted teaching positions at highly esteemed institutions, publications and holdings in major collections—when all of the outer trappings of success are attained but that still is not enough to justify the existence of a program that produces such breadth of talent, what can that mean? What can that not but mean?

I had a good long pity party for myself.

Then a counter-point moment. What of those folks that go into fields of study that are concrete, that are value-added, timely, important and affect the lives of everyday people every day—what of those people that study something like, say, climate science—only to find their research and fact-based projections mocked and politicized, for culture and corporate capitalism to move in exactly the opposite direction of everything science has taught them to teach others? What is it like to be gaslit by an entire epoch of time, to be the inconvenient Jiminy Cricket voice of our age?

Delegitimization is a part of our zeitgeist.

I'm no more special than a scientist. Art is no less delegitimized than anything else in life. And if everything real is delegitimized, then everything, everything, everything is by fiat, legitimate.

What do I tell students that ask what the purpose of studying art is?

I say: the purpose of studying, looking at and making art is to have a more meaningful life. No one cares what you study in undergrad. Unless you're pre-law or pre-med, no one will ever ask you what your major was. What your G.P.A. was. After graduation you will have jobs where every single day you will watch the clock. Where you calculate what portion of your life force you give away every day for a bi-weekly paycheck. You will need to have the ability to seek, find and make meaning in your life outside of your work life. Art teaches you how to do that.

And so tomorrow begins a new 16-week stretch of teaching young people how to find that meaning, and find meaning in that meaning, even if it feels like the world is coming to an end.

Stacy J. Platt

Stacy J. Platt

I write, teach and try to make sense of life through art.
colorado springs, colorado