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Timothy Morton & Hans Ulrich Obrist

Keywords: climate change, crisis, disaster issue, ecology, extinction marathon,
geoengineering, Hans Ulrich Obrist, hyperobjects, Nature, object-oriented ontology,
philosophy, queer theory, Serpentine Gallery, speculative realism, Timothy Morton
Tim Morton in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist
An epic interview with philosopher Timothy Morton.

Timothy Morton & Hans Ulrich Obrist

The following conversation was held on the occasion of the Serpentine Galleries
Extinction Marathon: Visions of the Future

Alan Friedman / avertedimagination.com

Hans Ulrich Obrist: To begin with the beginning, I wanted to ask you to tell us how it all
started, if you had an epiphany or a revelation. How did you come to philosophy or how

did philosophy come to you?

Timothy Morton1: [Laughter] It came to me actually. Well I trained as an English Literature
guy, and I trained in the era of Historicism, and Historicism meant, you know, youve got to
go to the library and look for lots of books in the archive. And then about maybe five years
later I started thinking, Well what kinds of books do I want to read actually? and that made
me go a bit more philosophical. And Id always been very attuned to literary theory; one of
my strong points was reading that and understanding that, and literary theory is really just a
very small, narrow bandwidth of continental philosophy, yes? And then Id been wanting to
write this book about ecology, something about it, since the late eighties, and I just couldnt
find a good way to write what I wanted to write. And eventually, after about, I dont know,
tentwelve years of thinking it through I found a way of doing it, and so I started doing that
and it turns out to be quite philosophical, but I didnt really think of myself that way. Funnily
enough it was Gary Snyder, you know? Yes, I used to have his job, he left University of
California and I took his job sorry Gary! And then he read one of these books that Id just
done and he said, You know what? This is a philosophy book, and I was like, Oh, alright,
you know? So Im in a fortunate position actually because I didnt train as a philosopher, so
when people put me on stage and theyre all like, Oh, do something philosophical in front of
us, Im not really that inhibited from doing something, and its sort of like the generosity of
other people, they see me that way, and thats good too because I dont have a lot of ego
caught up in that.
HUO: Now in relation to that, I was also interested in the surrounding philosophical context,
because your work has been often seen in Europe in connection with object oriented ontology
or speculative realism, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about this. And how
do you feel that object oriented ontology in particular is urgent for the world we live in
today?
TM: Oh sure, yes. Well, it all started with Immanuel Kant who I believe is the first really
modern philosopher, who is actually coincident with the beginning of the Anthropocene, he
did all of his stuff in the late eighteenth century, and the thing about him is that he basically
says that there are things but you cant access them directly. And what object-oriented
ontology is saying is that. There are things, you cant access them directly. Its just that
theres a kind of anthropocentric copyright control on who gets to access, right? And it turns
out to be us lot. And once you get rid of the copyright control and once you get rid of Kants
nervous restriction on what access means; access for him is mathematizing philosophy, like
everything is just extension and so if I know things mathematically I know them
extensionally, right? If you take that away and, you know, a raindrop touching me, Im also
accessing it. Im having a feeling about it, thats also accessing it. So if you take that away
and you take the anthropocentric block, inhibition, away, what you get is that everything in
the universe gets to access everything else, and the way that everything accesses everything
is such that nothing is ever exhausted, everything is always completely sparkling with some
kind of unfathomable, vivid, bristly reality, you know? And ultimately thats funny, its like
its a comedy, its not a tragedy, its not horrific. There are these other speculative realists
who are quite interested in sort of, Ah!, Home Alone face kind of, the horror sort of stuff,
and I think no, thats actually not right, the tragedy thing is actually deeply caught up in the
ecological problem thing, and fundamentally reality is an anarchy, so we better get used to
having some kind of sense that theres no top level way of proceeding. And that actually at
bottom everything is playful, like everything is a toy, including political systems, political
systems are also toys, and economic systems are also toys. So lets have lots and lots of toys.
And I think one of the problems weve been in, and its a problem weve been in for twelve
thousand years, is a problem of thinking that theres this kind of one size fits all toy that isnt
a toy anymore, its reality. And its this kind of agricultural, logistical approach to agriculture
where theres this mentality or philosophy kind of hard-wired into it. Existing is always
better than any quality of existing, and existing means not contradicting yourself. So lets get
rid of all the weeds and the pests, lets label those as bad things, and lets have Nature is
over there and human society goes over there, and moo cows are there, and dont look at the
cats because theyre distracting us from this thin, rigid boundary, and lets police it, and lets
have a really thin one-year-wide temporality window, or five years if youre a Soviet, right?
You know, capitalism, feudalism, communism, whatever, its all based on this model of
agriculture that developed in the Fertile Crescent and also in Latin America and Asia around
that time, and weve been inside it and so have all the other life forms. And very successfully
and efficiently, based on the philosophy thats hard-wired in there, we have managed to cause
the sixth mass extinction event, and if we dont want to carry that on we might be interested
in developing something that doesnt do that, and that means having, first of all, lots and lots
of different ways, lots and lots of different political systems, theres no one umbrella way,
and it means really accepting a different philosophical view according to which, things arent
just lumps of [makes a sound to indicate something nameless and indefinable] waiting for me
to decide what they are because Im a human, goo goo gjoob, Im the Walrus, I can turn
anything into anything, everything is a urinal, if I sign itthats the art theory version, right

if I sign it with my signature its art, right? Everything is just plastic waiting for me to
manipulate. And we need to have a different view which is this view that things are
intrinsically what they are from their own side, they dont need us, and theyre kind of alive
because theyre sparkling with appearance in some kind of trixie kind of I dont know
what to say, trixie sort of way.

Alan Friedman / avertedimagination.com

HUO: Now obviously for the Extinction Marathon and you already mentioned the sixth
extinction your two books that you initially mentioned are particularly relevant, they are
Ecology Without Nature and The Ecological Thought, which have in a way infused the
contemporary philosophical current with a very strong ecological viewpoint. Of course also
your concept of hyperobjects philosophy and ecology also are part of that. So I was
wondering if you can tell us a little bit about how you arrived at those positions and how
ecology played such an important role along the way?
TM: Oh sure. Well ecology is very simple, it means the interconnection of all life forms, and
indeed the interconnection of all those life forms with non life, and you know, where do you
draw the line? And where do you stop? Do you stop at the edge of the biosphere, because
you need the magnetic shield around Earth and then you need the sun obviously, which then
implies the solar system which implies the galaxy, you cant really stop when you start
thinking about it. So its not a complete holistic thing, unlike what a lot of people think
ecology is, it means thinking something that is boundless, yes? Everythings related but its
boundless, theres no centre and theres no edge. So theres no centre, theres no edge, and
theres no one dominant top level, or theres no one fundamental bottom level, and theres no
middle level. And so I started thinking, What does that mean? And in part it means that in a
way theres weirdly less of everything than you thought; its kind of like if you start to look
after the bunny rabbits it means that youre not looking after the bunny rabbit parasites.
Interconnection implies that you can never it right, you can never get ecological ethics and
politics right. And it also means that you become aware of these entities, entities that are not
human, some of them we made, some of them we just encounter through our scientific
instruments. And you can think them but you cant see them, you cant touch them, and these
are the hyperobjects. And one of them of course is the biosphere. You can see bunnies, you
can see Hans Ulrich, but you cant see the biosphere. Nevertheless its real and it has some
kind of downward causality on bunnies and Hans Ulrich. So you can think it but you cant
see or touch it, it lasts for a very long time, its massively bigger than you in space time
terms, it out-scales you, and this is what Im calling a hyperobject. And there are all these

other hyperobjects, like global warming, you know, its not just data, its a thing, its a very
high dimensional thing that you cant see as a limited 3-D human being, you need Some of
the most powerful computers on Earth can just about model it in real time. So you cant
really see it, you cant really touch it, but its real and you can sort of feel it in the weather
but it isnt the weather, you know? And whether you like it or not, so whatever Rush
Limbaugh says about it, his head cares about global warming, doesnt it? Because he puts on
the sunscreen probably so he doesnt get the skin cancer because he knows the sun And so
no matter what you think about it, its there. And pollution, radiation, like nuclear radiation,
the plutonium half-life is 24.1 thousand years, and what do we do now that we realize were
inside and we are part of these things? Like human species actually, if you want to think the
human species, in a non-racist, non-speciesist way, like, Oh look, theres a species and I can
distinguish it from that one, you have to think of the species as a hyperobject, and you are it
but you arent, right? And its really uncanny. Like you start the engine of your car, and I
personally, I have no motivation there to destroy Earth, nor am I doing so because
statistically me starting that engine is meaningless, but when you scale it up to mean billions
of car ignitions billions of times in billions of cars across the whole earth, thats exactly
whats happening, its kind of like being in one of those movies when you realize, Oh my
God, Im an android, you know, like, Im a zombie. I thought I had free will but on this
other level Im just this zombie blindly executing this algorithm. So thats whats uncanny
about it, and so ecological awareness, maybe the beginning of it, is a feeling of weirdness
and uncanny, although I dont think we should stay there at all because I think it gets a bit
voyeuristic and violent, sort of misogynistic, if you stay there.

Alan Friedman / avertedimagination.com

HUO: Now the hyperobject, as you told us, is something a concept or event that
manifests itself in such a distributive way that we cant apprehend it. I was interested in
knowing a little bit more because Michel Serres told me in our recent interview about his
idea of the quasiobject, so I was curious if there is any link between the hyperobject and the
quasiobject; and also if you would consider extinction to be a hyperobject?
TM: Well, first of all perhaps I should say the most important thing: Im not the object
police, so my job isnt to say, Yes, that is an object, you know, like, This is an object, and
that, and that isnt. I cant do that, but I dont want to dodge the question, thats not what Im
trying to do, its just that Im the person who says, How things exist is like this, rather than,
This is what exists. Nevertheless, Im interested in how Serres and also [Bruno] Latour.

Latours got this idea of quasi objects as well. And it seems like people are trying to think
beings that arent as cookie-cutter as they used to be. Like we gave up on ontology a while
ago because we thought it was medieval and rude and wrong, but all of a sudden the new
ecological conditions demand that we think what it is for things to exist. And so I would say
that Serres idea and Latours idea and my idea are really just speaking to the fact that all of a
sudden things dont seem to be what they used to be. Its not your grandfathers kind of
object, well its not my grandfathers kind of object. And its much weirder; I see these things
as basically looped, theyre weird, weird comes from this, it comes from this Icelandic word
ortt [?sp] which means twisted in a loop, we wont talk about that right now. So extinction,
well I think species is a hyperobject, I think intuitively extinction is the disappearance of
those species, and what makes that like a hyperobject is that I cant directly see it. I can see
the bear that I take to be the last bear of the species dying, but I cant see the species death,
right? And I think since extinction is a term that applies to species Im going to say no,
maybe extinction is not a hyperobject, but extinction is a feature of what makes a species into
an object, which is fragility. Every entity in order to exist has to be able to die, and that
means that every entity contains some kind of weak spot, some kind of place where Some
kind of other appearance could insert itself. I take appearance to be the way the causality
liveswow, theres a huge thunderstorm about to happen, everythings gone really dark,
talking of hyperobjectsand I take that to mean that species are not these solid, hard things
that the Greeks, like Aristotle, thought they were, they are also fragile, theyre finite. We
think of these things as really big, and if you were a Marxist youd be like, Oh Professor
Morton, youre making a really universalistic generalization there, shame on you, youre
kind of doing a Pink Floyd when youre saying there are these things called species, well
yes, but Im not really making a generalization, Im saying that there are these huge entities
and you cant see them or touch them, and theyre not infinite, theyre huge.

Alan Friedman / avertedimagination.com

HUO: Now just to finish on the topic of extinction: Gustav Metzger for many years has
encouraged us to do a Marathon on extinction because he says that with climate change
nobody really wakes up and we need to talk about extinction in order to have a real call for
action. I just wanted your reaction to the theme of extinction for the Marathon and to the idea
of an Extinction Marathon.
TM: Yes. Well a marathon is something you do when somethings Youre losing. Sorry,
Im going to get upset. Last week it was revealed that 50% of animals, fish and you and stuff,

actually have gone extinct. I thought it was going to be 32%, its actually 50%. And I think
its really OK to be upset about it, and its OK to go into that and try and find some kind of
exit route inside the upset, and maybe the Marathon sort of speaks to that, doesnt it?
Because marathons are run out of desperation; you know, youve got the soldier desperately
trying to convey something, has to run 26 miles putting his life at risk, and its painful, you
have bare feet, you have to run over these rocks, and maybe your sandals have got shredded,
and so on and so on, and its very risky, and it also means that you are also an animal, youre
running, which is what human beings do. Human beings, funnily enough, as a species, well
what are we good at? Its not actually thinking that makes us distinct, its sweating and
running, those are the two things that actually are quite distinct, quite unique in a way, about
humans as a high primate. And the thing about extinction right now is that so many more life
forms have just become extinct than we thought, so this Marathon couldnt be happening at a
more important time. And its exhausting, and it goes on and on and on, marathons; this thing
that were in called ecology, it just goes on and on, right? I dont see an end to this
awareness, you cant switch it off. And now that we have it were thinking on 100 year, 1,000
year, 10,000 year, 100,000 year time scales, and thats really freaky, theres no one top time
scale anymore. So were really disoriented and we have to keep running, and its like that
first marathon guy, you know. And we cant just be sitting in our chair going, Hmm, I
wonder what this means, were completely caught in it, no matter whether were thinking or
moving or acting or whatever. And I personally think that philosophy should be able to cry
and laugh, because otherwise why on earth would you do it?
HUO: Such a wonderful statement. Now I was interested also in you actually mentioning
Blade Runner and Frankenstein, which obviously brings us to the question of the posthuman.
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the future because obviously the
Extinction Marathon raises also the question of the future and if you think that were
working towards a posthuman world. Do you think that the evolution of technology interacts
with queer ecological positions? So just hearing more about visions of the future would be
great.

Alan Friedman / avertedimagination.com

TM: Sure. Thats where it all gets a bit funny, doesnt it? Because we think we know what
that is and were very good at imagining it; being modern human is about imagining all kinds
of futures, isnt it? And Id like to say before I start that those kinds of imaginable, plannable,
predictable futures are predicated on what you could call the future future, the strange
future future, you know, like this irreducibly future future. This is my friend Jacques Derrida.
I cant let go of deconstruction. Theres a future future that you cant determine, that you
cant predict, and so part of the struggle to colonize the future with thoughts and hypothetical
technologies and so on is a kind of violence to that future. Im not saying, Lets just do
nothing, Im saying, Obviously do everything you can, except Professor Tim is going to
say, Please dont geoengineer the heck out of Earth, because if thats what technology
means thats kind of just modernity 2.0 which is this agricultural meme, 7.0, a total
destruction mode, and its like doubling down on the kind of mentality that got us in the first
place which is the tragic heros attempt to escape from the web of fate, right? Thats the kind
of self-transcending, you know, I can be bigger than myself because Im modern, rah rah
rah, and I can pull myself up by my own bootstraps, and I can achieve escape velocity from
Earth, and the kind of modern philosophy, like, I am now talking to you from a partition
outside of reality, everything is one, and that kind of stuff. Or, There is nothing, thats the
most popular one, isnt it? Number one in the charts, Nihilism. And so Im pretty freaked
about doing that, lets not do that, OK, because thats just doing the modern thing again, only
once more with feeling. And so I think technology, what does it really mean? Technology,
like engineers make toys, dont they, before they become products? Before the corporation
decides, Oh, that toys the toy thats going to make the money so lets make that toy into a
product, they make prototypes. And artists do paintings and probably they dont think, This
is the definitive one. If theyre like me writing books they probably think, Oh thank God,
thats not the perfect one, there is no perfect one, and I just have to keep going. And so art
objects are toys and poems are toys and songs are toys and interpretations are toys. And
philosophical views are toys; we talk about making toy worlds all the time. So I think instead
of saying what to make, I think I should be saying, Lets have the mentality of making toys,
little toys, playful toys, that arent going to be Theres no one toy to rule them all, you just
cant have that. And so lets make a world of toys, because actually ontologically we are in a
realm called the realm of toys I believe. I think thats what happens when you have enough
ecological awareness, you realize that youre in a world that is necessarily incomplete. And
what do toys do, actual toys? They connect humans and non-humans, right? So Im playing
with this Barbie doll and I can pull her head off and stick Darth Vaders head on and enjoy
that, and invite my friend, and oh look, the cats playing with it. And so thats what toys do,

and they always connect Not totally, you cant connect every single being, and that speaks
to something about ecological ethics, such that interdependence means you cant save all of it
all at once, theres a kind of sad but also funny, hilarious, ridiculous, sad quality to that where
you cannot save every single thing all in one go, and the feeling of that is actually the feeling
of compassion, which has some kind of joy and laughter in it rather than this, Oh vey, lets
put a Band-Aid on everything, kind of approach. So that would be my sense, lets make toys
because we cant predict the future, and if we have the mentality of making toys on every
level, toy political systems, toy Like Im getting together with the engineers here and
weve got this thing called The Design (Coach), and me and a couple of other philosophers
were like, Lets tell you something to make for, like, 300 years from now. Because theyre
all bound by corporation temporality so theyre really happy to do things, like, Lets make
an object that might be helpful 10,000 years into the future, right? Thats a kind of
ecological technology toy making thing.
HUO: Now from toys, because thats very, very interesting as it also evokes the question of
the toolbox the idea that one could actually provide toolboxes. Is the analogy of toys
somehow connected to the toolbox?
TM: Sure, whats on your mind there?

Olafur Eliasson, IceWatch

HUO: I was just wondering because it was Foucault who talked about the idea of philosophy
being a toolbox. He said I would like my books to be a kind of tool-box which others can
rummage through to find a tool which they can use however they wish in their own area I
would like the little volume that I want to write on disciplinary systems to be useful to an
educator, a warden, a magistrate, a conscientious objector. I dont write for an audience, I
write for users, not readers. I was just wondering if when you think about toys, if we can
connect the toy analogy to the toolbox analogy.
TM: Yes. Sure, yes. As I get older I find that Im actually kind of an early seventies French
feminist funnily enough, and I find that I am like one of those people like [Jean-Franois]
Lyotard or [Luce] Irigaray for whom totalization is the big enemy, only unlike Lyotard its
not just epistemological. And I think maybe Foucault is a little bit coming from a kind of
epistemological place, like, Ontology is a thing that might be part of the evil empire of
epistemic dispositifs that control us, you know? And so saying what things are might be
tantamount to something oppressive. But I think ultimately we are in a reality and we have to
talk about it, and its kind of like a war, like its a magic war, with magicians and witches,
and were all involved in this higher level sort of war about the nature of reality actually and
how to care for it, all of us, not just philosophers: artists, people, cats, dogs, cities. And so
yes, I think in a way its like the toolbox, although I suspect the toolbox is more an
epistemological toolbox than an ontological toolbox; Im actually saying, Get this piece of
plastic and connect it to this piece of leather, and then make this other thing that looks a bit

like Kermit the Frog and then join that together with some group over here, and then lets
form this solidarity with these other life forms, and that kind of business. Where theres less
of an emphasis on getting the attitude right, you know? I think thats maybe a hang over from
the kind of postmodern Not Foucault in particular, but just the general vibe of how its
worked, even in the last 200 years, not just in postmodernism, the whole approach of art, like
If we just get the attitude right then everything will work, If I just paint these cubes
everything will come out alright, you know, If I just think everything is a urinal everything
will be good, you know? But everything isnt a urinal. Everything is, like, a frog or a glass
of milk or a saucepan or a TV or a staircase or Hans Ulrich, right? So you cant just keep on
tweaking your concept, you cant say, If I open the refrigerator correctly I will see the light
in the best possible way, its like by the time you get there the fridge already melted all the
ice cream. And its the same with the Earth, its like by the time you get the attitude right of
why to save it and what it is, its already gone, so were in this position where theres a kind
of immediacy where were making these things, but that doesnt mean, Just do it, in this
kind of anti-intellectual, Proto-fascist way, its more like as you make these toys youre more
like, Wow, this is not my beautiful toy, this is not my beautiful biosphere.

Olafur Eliasson, IceWatch

HUO: I have some final questions about queer ecology. I wanted to ask you one thing
about because you mentioned Lyotard, and its actually not so much to do with
extinction but something else were working on at the moment, this research together with
Daniel Birnbaum on Lyotards unrealized exhibition. Because Lyotard at a certain moment
did an exhibition called Les Immatriaux, and it took place in the Centre Georges Pompidou.

I dont know if you saw that show, it was in the eighties?

TM: I didnt, but you know, I am very attracted to the kinds of work that was going on at the
Centre Georges Pompidou in the eighties.
HUO: Yes, and he basically devoted instead of writing a book a year or more of his
work to do this exhibition, and it was all about the loss of the subject. So it was about
deconstruction, dematerialization, and the beginning of the internet: basically about
immateriality and going away from the body. And its very interesting because Philip Parreno
the artist who also adores your writing towards the end of his time at school, had a
lecture. Lyotard visited that small group of artists and had a conversation with them, and
Lyotard revealed there that actually he wanted to do an exhibition which somehow was
almost the opposite of Les Immatriaux; he wanted to do an exhibition called Resistance
where he would look into this idea of the inexhaustible, into this idea of what resistance
could be. But in a way almost like the other way around: so its not that one would have the
subject at the beginning and then the non-subject, but it would sort of be the opposite. And in
a way I always thought that that idea of resistance seemed very interesting, of course not only
politically also he wanted to connect it to the electrical circuit. It was all part of that idea of
transcending the book, no? Deleuze had the same interest they wanted to transcend the
book and go into exhibitions. I wanted to ask you two things: first of all, what resonates with
you in that notion of resistance or resistances? Yes, lets stick to that first: what resonates for
you in this notion of resistances?

Olafur Eliasson, IceWatch

TM: Sure, resistances. Well I associate it a little bit with Foucaults idea that the more
resistance you have the more power; its like an electrical circuit where the resistor actually
ramps up the power of that circuit. And so when I think of resistance I think of wanting to
have a category for acting and making things that isnt quite resistance and is more like, like I
say, play, which I know is another Lyotard concept. And then I wonder Remind me, this is
the phase of Lyotard where he becomes this weird humanist, is that why hes using this term
resistance? He wants to resist the onslaught of a certain kind of technology, like in The
Inhuman book?
HUO: Yes, it could almost be like his return to Heidegger thats the thing we are not sure
because at the same time its also the book where Lyotard wrote his book Discourse,
Figure where in a way there is this irreducible visual dimension which is obviously the base
for language, but at the same time there is no fusion, there is a permanent conflict between
discourse and figure. And that book has just been translated, I think. Its quite interesting. Its
one of his last, quite mysterious books. So it goes hand in hand with this and with that sort of
mysterious, almost inexplicable return to Heidegger, I suppose.
TM: Well I think that where my mind first goes with it is the question of the problem with
Heidegger actually, there are a lot of problems with Heidegger. And maybe one of the

problems is, although of course my view is kind of like upside-down Heidegger a little bit,
one of the problems is that hes still writing within a kind of agrilogisticalIm calling it
agrilogisticalframe, thats this 1012,000 year frame, which has kind of set what social
reality is and therefore what ecology is, and therefore what extinction means for the last 10
12,000 years. And I think that that kind of resistance isnt quite the right way of proceeding I
dont think. When I hear that I hear maybe the kind of primitivistic side of things, and its
funny because I could be misheard as saying, Lets just Like John Zerzan, kind of radical
ecoanarchy violence, Lets bomb everything back to 12,000 BC, everyone with glasses is
now suspect, all prosthetic devices must be burned, because the problem is loops and were
all self-reflexive and up ourselves with our narcissistic loops and thats bad. And then theres
the other way of getting it wrong which is kind of like, Well of course Im actually
advocating that we go back to a state of peaceful coexistence with life forms in a noncoercive manner where we didnt impose this agricultural thing on the rest of Earth, that
would be absurd, and its kind of like what happens in theory class where youre supposed to
say, Well of course Im not a biological essentialist, that would be beyond the pale, you
know, youre supposed to make this pre-theoretical statement as a kind of condition of
getting through the door and not looking like an idiot. You have to say, Well of course I
dont believe that there are leaves and prime ministers and ducks and whatever, theyre all
just effects of something else, the discursive formation, transcendental subject, la langue, I
dont know what, (geiss, dasein), you know, Will, will to power, human economic
relations, you know, Of course they are ducks, but theyre not ducks ducks because Im
the decider. So I think that both of those are wrong. I think what it is more than resistance
for me is knowing, knowing something thats already there, knowing in a loop actually; in
some spiritual traditions its called gnosis, in Buddhism its jhna, which is wisdom, self
existing gnosis, or as one of my friend says, Thought having sex with itself, which is
actually relating to itself as another being, so that in my intellect even there is evidence that
Im not alone, and when you think that through it means weve never actually departed from
something that we laugh at or put on a pedestal as animism. Weve only just found ways of
dealing with a fundamental ontological anxiety about what counts as real by ignoring it or
covering it over or otherwise violently distorting it, because it involves violence to do that.
And this is not just a philosophical project were talking about, this is like an agricultural,
social project to transcend the hunter gatherer mode. And the story of the last 12,000 years
could be summed up very briefly, you know, like, In order to avoid global warming, we
created worse global warming, thats the geological time summation of what we did. In
order to cope with the anxiety about where our next meal was coming from, which was
sitting on top of the ontological anxiety, like, Is that really a bunny rabbit or is it actually a
demon? Or maybe its left leg is like a dimensional gate into some other universe? and, Oh
its really hassling me, like paranoia as a default condition of thinking, to cover that over
never really fully works and results in violence, and results in autoimmune disorders of the
intellect which are philosophical paradoxes but also depression actually, and autoimmune
disorders of life forms, namely this kind of self destroying, self cancelling thing that weve
gotten ourselves into. So Im not sure resistance, Im not sure about resisting the modern, Im
not sure that like [Theodor W.] Adorno, like, Where have all the latches gone? All these
windows are all smooth in Los Angeles, thats fascist, you know, like Im not sure that
latches is make it better, you know? I think in the end noticing that youre never totally sure
about that bunny rabbit is kind of what makes itwowthat.
[Loud thunder in the background]
HUO: Was that the storm?
TM: Yes, the reason Ive gone slightly dark on the video, as youll see, is that theres a
fantastic Its one of these Houston storms where For some reason it always comes just
above my house.
HUO: Its incredible that were having this conversation about extinction and there is an
apocalyptic storm!
TM: [Laughter] Yes, they always sound like that, like, This is the end, you know?
HUO: Now a few last questions about queer ecology. You very often have actually
mentioned, in texts and also talks, this idea of bringing together, of an alignment, of queer
theory and ecology, and I was wondering because Im always very interested when such
amazing ideas are born, and with scientists one can very often locate when Benot
Mandelbrot once told me the day he discovered, on a slightly blurry, not clean blackboard,
the first time fractals. So I was wondering if you can tell us about when this path-breaking
epiphany came to you: to bring together these two things, queer theory and ecology? How
did that happen?

Alan Friedman / avertedimagination.com

TM: Well Hans Ulrich, it all happened when I think it actually did happen in 2007, or
maybe 2005ish, the early 2000s when I was beginning to think things through. I think theres
even a reference to it in Ecology Without Nature so it must have happened somewhere in the
early 2000s. And it was just a thing that was beginning to occur to me in terms of I dont
really believe in nature, I believe in ecology; I think nature is actually a human construct, I
think thats whats wrong with it. Its not like I dont believe in coral, I do believe in coral
which is why I dont believe in nature. And I think that not only is nature a human
philosophical construct, an aesthetic construct, its also a social construct that is one of the
reasons for this violence, is this concept nature actually. And so I think that ecology must
necessarily be without nature. And nature is usually taken to mean things being exactly what
they are, right? And so eventually over time I realized the deep ontological reason why I
dont accept nature is because things are always exactly what they arent. Theres always this
gap between what they are and how they appear, and the gap is such that you cant locate it
anywhere in the entities, on the entity or in the entity, its just kind of there like a twist in a
Mbius strip, its everywhere, its ortt. Its a twist, its what ortt means, you know, some kind
of fairy magic twist to everything. And I think that since theres no nature theres no such
thing as natural, and so that means that the way I think about ecology has this affinity with
queer theory, and I think that maybe a little bit unlike most strands of queer theory I actually
am an essentialist, thats the thing, Im a big bad naughty essentialist, but Im saying the way
things are is intrinsically queer. In other words there are baseballs, but theyre not solidly
baseball-ish all the way through. Its like a frog doesnt contain a little image of itself all the
way through itself, or a little sign that says, This is a frog, do not panic, this is just a part of a
frog, all the way down like one of those sticks of Brighton rock, you suck it and theres the
word all the way down the stick there. So I think the way things are is necessarily twisted,
like all objects, in order to be objects, are actually deviant, there is no one straight unperverse
object, I think everything is kind of deviant that way, and so I think that theres a natural fit.
And it started occurring to me as I was thinking this through, but now I think its much
more Like, I have a really good reason for it, which is that cushions and telephones and
staircases and lightening is all so twisted, theres no straight. And so eventually I started
being asked to write stuff directly on queer ecology and Im very happy about that, and Im
very happy that youre including it in the Extinction Marathon, because obviously the drive
to reproduce sexually, thats maybe part of the problem, isnt it? Because its not just a
human problem about population. Im going to touch the third rail and say the word
population; now everybody, you can think Im a Nazi, but its also a wheat problem. Its like,
Lets get rid of the flowers, lets have these big fat juicy wheat stalks, and then we can eat
them better, and all that. Social space has all been about, since the agricultural age started,
making things that have less and less and less sexy appearance, and sexual selection, its so
expensive from DNAs point of view its actually not utilitarian at all, which means that
genes arent really just selfishsorry Richard Dawkinsit means that there is some kind of
disturbingly meaningless aesthetic component to how genomics, how genetics, actually
works, and thats because theres a kind of weird, disturbing, sexy causality, which is also

aesthetic, about how anything works, and that weve been trying to edit that out for a long
time. And that what art is actually doing of course is directly messing with cause and effect,
which is why its disturbing to most philosophers, isnt it? Like, Oh no, Im being taken over
by this demonic force from the beyond and its doing something to me, and I shouldnt have
emotion. And so theres a kind of intuitive way in which we all know that art is causality
because causality is aesthetic. So this a long winded answer to your question, but yes, theres
an intrinsic link between ecology and queer theory but its not that everything is constructed,
especially in particular by humans, its that theres this irreducible gap between being and
appearing that you cant locate anywhere on the surface or depths of a thing, and so to exist is
to be twisted.

Alan Friedman / avertedimagination.com

HUO: That could almost be a conclusion. I have a few last questions: I wanted to ask you, in
relation to our Marathon, to what extent you think that queer ecology can help us understand
extinction anew and what would be the political stakes of this?
TM: Well like I say, the drive to retweet the agriculture meme, to constantly be reproducing
it over and over and over again, which involves sexual reproduction, which isnt a bad thing,
is intrinsic to the ecological disaster that were in, and so we need desperately to be able to
think how something like queer theory and queer politics and queerness in general fits into
our world and isnt just a kind of human flavoured, superficial thing, but is Not just even
an evolution thing in the kind of Joan Roughgarden sense, that heterosexuality is just a very,
very thin layer sitting on top of a giant ocean of all kinds of other sexuality, but that actually
we are living in a multi sexual object universe where there is no one way in which There is
no dominant top object, one of these things is not like the other, you cant have that, which is
why you cannot have a meta language that explains everything, which is also why you cannot
have one one-size-fits-all political system. And so yes, I think so, I think queer theory forces
you to start thinking about preserving entities that are ephemeral and fragile and intrinsically
finite, which is what we all are, you know, and none of us are completely plastically
transparent to ourselves, and none of us are totally ourselves completely all the way down.
And thinking that involves a kind of exposure, and it involves involves a kind of ecological
act actually of preserving that weirdness as much as you can, and thats kind of where the
Extinction Marathon meets the queer theory I think, it has to do with not just preserving but
fostering the multiplicity of peculiarness that constitutes reality as such, and not allowing it
to die into one bland lump of [[makes a sound to indicate something negative]], thats not
going to happen, we dont want that to happen.

Alan Friedman / avertedimagination.com

HUO: And maybe one very last question: re-reading Deleuze and then reading your
comments on Deleuzes Rhizome, as a metaphor at the crosspoint of all kinds of fluid
sexualities I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that?
TM: Oh sure. You know, the funny thing is that in reviews of my stuff, you know, readers
reports before it gets published and all that, people usually say, I had no idea he was this
Deleuzian, and Im like, I didnt realize it was that obvious, obviously I didnt make enough
of an effort to hide it. Maybe I just talk in a different language to Deleuze; Deleuze talks in
his way about rhizomes and plateaus and all that, and I talk about saucepans and bunnies and
stuff. Maybe theres not that much of a difference fundamentally, and maybe You know,
like my friend Jane Bennett, the author of Vibrant Matter, we had this awesome conversation
last year where we both decided that what we do, we make toysthis is where this toy stuff
is coming fromwe make toys for people to play with, and I think thats Deleuzes mission
and Jane is a Deleuzian, and Im all in favour of making toys. I think that the reality principle
is overrated; actually I think it doesnt really exist, does it? And so imposing it or getting
used to it or accommodating myself to it is not that great because its ontologically violent as
well as politically funny. So in a way that kind of energys coming out of the situationism,
punk idea, you know, I take my dreams for reality because I believe in the reality of my I
take my desires for reality because I believe in the reality of my desires. And so yes, I feel
like I dont want to use this space as a way to go, And in this little tiny bit of how I think Im
quite different from Deleuze because he blah blah blah. You know, we do have our
differences; I think fundamentally its not me and Deleuze though, its me and Deleuzian
materialists who might not be that Deleuzian in the end, people who think that theres this
kind of Spinozan substance or something quite Whiteheadian process. To me thats not
totally Deleuze. Like take Deleuzes concept of the smooth, which I really like, and Claire
Colebrook has enlightened me on this: the smooth means that things are so granular, like
youre up against the surface of the painting or whatever and youre so close to something
that you cant grip it with your conceptual mind; it doesnt mean that everything is
completely opaque. There are some Deleuze conferences apparently where people only wear
felt because wool is striated and thats bad, and felt is nomadic and, Thats what we want,
and thats just whack, isnt it? And thats the fashion equivalent of a kind of materialism
thats holding onto some idea of, There must be some bedrock underneath reality thats more
real than this one, which is just ontotheological metaphysics really.
HUO: This is amazing, thank you so, so much. Ive got one very last question, which is out
of all my 2,400 hours of interviews so far, its my only ever recurring question. It comes
always from my early encounter with the late Italian artist Alighiero Boetti who said that as a
curator I should not just look out at what practices do and then bring that into exhibitions, but
I should actually listen to the practitioners, to artists, philosophers, scientists what they
would like to do but cannot do within the existing parameters of society. And particularly the
artists, we know about artists unrealized projects; we know a lot about architects unrealized
projects, they publish and publicize them, very often get things built by publishing unbuilt
work. But if you think about film directors, artists, visual artists, scientists, philosophers,
poets, we know very, very little about their unrealized projects hence I always conclude
all my interviews with the question of what are your unrealized projects? What are projects
which have been too big to be realized, too small to be realized? Maybe also utopic projects
which are unrealizable or partially unrealizable in terms of transformation of society, or as

Doris Lessing in our last conversation before her death we had this conversation, she was
very old, in her nineties, and Doris said, This question is actually not complete unless we
ask about the projects, the books we didnt dare to write, because there are the books which
are censored, but then there are the books we dont have time to write. So I was wondering:
what are the unbuilt roads for you, the unrealized projects?

Hans Ulrich Obrist on Tim Morton on Instagram!!

TM: OK, wow. Well first of all Id like to say what a wonderful thing to ask anybody, its so
generous and its so open, and since I think that art and thinking are ways of tuning rather
than imposing your concept or getting something to fit, its like listening, like attunement,
somethings already there and your task is to kind of tune to it, slightly merge, tuning. Since I
think that, I think your question is really profound, and its not just about, So what are you
up to? you know. So I feel like Ive only just started putting these thoughts together; I never
feel like I put the thoughts together exactly right, so Ive got a number of projects where Im
putting the thoughts together slightly different. And I have this book Dark Ecology which is
based on these lectures I did in Irvine, the Wellek Lectures, and thats kind of what we were
just talking about actually. But then theres this slightly more future project, I dont know
what its called anymore; it used to be called Weird Essentialism but I dont think its called
that anymore. And Im trying to go again into ontology for real, like, What is the nature of
reality, and is there a politics there? Actually I think there is. And Im working with a lot of
artists, and thats my favourite, favourite thing to do with my whole life because they want
me to help them to put words to what theyre already doing, and theres something about that
that First of all Im in a very good spot because it means Im not imposing my concept,
and it means Im listening, and its very meaningful to me and I dont think that has an end.
And I think what I do started off in intellectual mode, and it still will be, but intellectual
world can be a little bit of a kind of competition zoo space where The very low stakes war,
you know, like people are competing for one inch of ground, and art is obviously much more
open than that intrinsically; Im not saying there are not people who suck in any walk of life,
Im just saying that Im very lucky because I think what I do in my job is a little bit cheeky
anyway and I tend to piss off a lot of people in my fields that I work in in the academy, and
often people are like, Oh, this isnt a book, this isnt an essay, you know, strangled at birth,
but artists are kind enough and they understand a little bit what Im saying and it kind of
clicks, and so I feel like Im collaborating. And on that note I had this idea, and this isnt
copyright Tim so someone else can do it we should all do it, right? I want to form an
organization called the IPCC, have you ever heard of it? This one is the Interplanetary Caring
Citizens, IPCC; its the intergovernmental panel on climate change but my one is going to be
the Intraplanetary Caring Citizens group or groups. And the idea of these groups is its going
to be artists and philosophers and politics people and anyone with any kind of creative
anything, and were going to do news conferences about ecology and global warming.
Because clearly the science isnt getting to people because the scientists are duty bound to
tell the truth which is, Yes, its statistically very, very, very likely, and that means true. And
really true, not just in a religious dogma assertion true, its like post Hume, post Kant
modernity true, We see these correlations in the data and they seem to be causal.
Nevertheless that gives everyone an out, they dont have to believe it because its possible
but its not Because believing means clutching onto things really tightly, and all that,
right? And so I think that we should all do these news conferences where we just amaze
people, and I think we should not be in the persuasion business anymore, please, please,
about ecological reality, we should be in the amazing people business. We should do some

kind of magic, we should be making some kind of miracle where people are so compelled by
this miracle that before they realize theyve changed their belief, theyve already changed. So
thats what I want to do, IPCC, lets make a lot of them.
1. Timothy Morton is the Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. He is the author of Nothing: Three
Inquiries in Buddhism and Critical Theory (forthcoming), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of
the World, Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality, The Ecological Thought, Ecology without Nature, seven
other books and over one hundred essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, food and music. He also writes
regularly on his blog. The following interview is transcribed from a video conference call as part of the Extinction
Marathon at the Serpentine Gallery.

Extinction Marathon: Visions of the Future

Curated by
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director, Serpentine Galleries
Gustav Metzger, Artist
Jochen Volz, Head of Programmes, Serpentine Galleries
Lucia Pietroiusti, Curator, Public Programmes, Serpentine Galleries
Ben Vickers, Curator of Digital, Serpentine Galleries
Claude Adjil, Assistant Curator, Public Programmes, Serpentine Galleries
extinct.ly

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1 Comment

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Alex Spremberg Perth (Australia Occidentale)

wow!
Like Reply Apr 21, 2015 2:22pm
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