We were told again and again that a new, much stronger epidemic was just a matter of time, that the question was not IF but WHEN. Although we were convinced of the truth of these dire predictions, we....were reluctant to act and engage...–Slavoj Zizek.

On a planet we have simultaneously neglected and exploited, we reel from the consequences: pandemic, pollution, climate change and war. Pandemics as global disasters had irreversible effects; ‘turned the world upside down’. Covid-19 can be seen as a 'late lesson' from an early warning! Environmental degradation increased the risk of pandemics along with causing other disasters, including catastrophic industrial pollution destroying life in the oceans. The work presented here is prompted by this crisis, taking a more conceptual approach. The conventional viewpoint that we rely on, telling ourselves that everything is going to be all right, is upended, and the precariousness of our existence is revealed. We are barely clinging on! Yet even when confronted by this reality, we remain ‘silent’/ignore the urgency of stopping environmental disasters. The glimpse of hope that appears–as in parts life goes on, resisting defeat–finally disappears. Our attempt to sustain an increasingly unsustainable world fails. Silence reigns over the image, a silence of explanations unknown!