"Enabling rituals for the social production of feelings in times of ecological demise" @ ESRI 2025: "Down to Earth: Exploring Meaningful Ways of Living, Together”

I feel very honored to have been invited to the ESRI 2025 of the Mind&Life Europe Network as a speaker and faculty member. It's buddhist and contemplative nature is new to me and I am very excited - the very thoughtful programming looks extremely promising and this will surely not be just another conference with smoking heads and aching bodies - but a full spiritual, body&mind experience. I am very happy and privileged to take part in it and contribute with some socio-political contributions from my work both as an artist as well as theorist. Find my abstract below and the full program here

Enabling rituals for the social production of feelings in times of ecological demise

Input for ESRI 2025 “Down to Earth: Exploring Meaningful Ways of Being Together” by Kilian Jörg

The ecological crisis has made it into the popular conscience of mainstream discourses over that last decade, but it is today mostly associated with negative feelings such as despair, panic, grief or anxiety. In this input, I want to argue (with Shotwell 2026) that these feelings are not the “natural” result of living in times of planetary catastrophe, but are a cultural product of our hegemonial societal order.

Whereas other catastrophic events, such as natural disasters, black-outs or terrorist attacks often elicit feelings of strengthened solidarity and purpose (compare for example Solnit 2004), it is interesting to investigate why the planetary catastrophe has so far mostly individuated feelings that are of a despairing and atomizing nature: people who suffer from climate-anxiety mostly retreat into depressive inaction and the affective climate of panic leads to activist burn-out that is a real issue in movements.

Discussing examples of my own artistic practice of creating ritualistic spaces, I want to argue for the necessity of creating social and cultural institutions that promote the mutual production of enabling feelings. Ecology is not just a problem of the “natural” world, but equally one of our cultural values and infrastructures that need to be radically revised. The capitalist order based on private property, atomistic individuality, neo-colonial extractivism and heteronormative family constructions has to be de-naturalized in order to reveal it as the main reason for the production of negative feelings in the catastrophe that we need to overcome in order to become able to act. Examples from radical land reclamations and autonomous zones have in most recent times been the most fertile sites for this civilizatory task (compare Jordan & Fremeaux 2024, Gelderloos 2022).

I will talk through my experiences of the speculative-religion-turned-artistic-project Toxic Temple I have invented with Anna Lerchbaumer and will narrate about my most recent artistic project: the creation of the first national holiday devoted to an ecological topic. The Zwentendorf-Holiday will introduce you to a local specificity of Austrian ecological struggles and how they can be institutionalized to create new identities of being part of a community that refrains from the most ecocidal modern infrastructures as a virtue needed to survive and thrive on this planet.

Ecological Reasonings @ Pretty Heady Stuff Podcast

I had the chance to talk with Scott Stoneman about my book "Ecological Reasonings" on his Podcast "Pretty Heady Stuff". Scott wrote such beautiful words on our conversation that I will post below. Find the Podcast wherever you get your podcasts or via youtube below. Also: if you have trouble getting the book because it is too expensive or your library doesn't have it - drop me an email and I will try to help!

"My conversation with Kilian was one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve ever done on writing and thinking. There’s something very refreshing about the way that Kilian thinks about the act of writing in the university. I’m not sure where it came from, but the more tactile and situated sort of theorizing he is able to do makes me want to spend more time with the texts that he looks at and really engage with the threads there.

Because he’s using them to weave together different concepts of liberation, with the ultimate goal, I think, of showing how to fight the imposition of one worldview on the planet. Kilian is fighting to defend other possible methods of reasoning. It might not be a magical solution for our ecological crisis, but I found that talking to Kilian about the ideas in Ecological Reasonings opened up approaches to problems like what to do about Donald Trump or artificial intelligence or our attachment to the car as a convenience we can’t live without, regardless of what it does to us.

One of the wonderful things about his book is that it is using this idea of the “resilience of Reason” to deconstruct and decompose the current technocratic world order — he’s saying that there is a continuum between Trump, the narrowing of political possibilities, and Monorationalism.

What he wants is a world where we are actively “nourishing ground for many other voices to be heard.” Where we are consciously worrying about and destabilizing the relationship between the things we consider active, aggressive and ambitious, and the things we consider passive, wasteful and directionless."

Von verstrahlten Katzen bis zum Zwentendorf-Feiertag

One of the reoccuring topics I keep coming back to in both my artistic as well as theoretical work is that of nuclear power, radiation and the unfathomable long-durationality of radioactive toxicity. I am very happy to bring the different threads and approaches I have developed over the years together in one Workshop at Kunstuni Linz next Tuesday.

24. Juni 2025, 14.00 bis 16.00 Uhr Kunstuniversität Linz, Expostmusik, Domgasse 1

Gastvortrag von Kilian Jörg in der Abteilung Kulturwissenschaften.

Künstler*in und Philosoph*in Kilian Jörg führt uns in das Forschungsfeld der Atomsemiotik ein, das obskur ist, aber nach wie vor relevante Gedankenexperimente anstellt. Er spricht ausgehend von eigenen Projekten über den Zusammenhang zwischen Atom und Anthropozän und ruft uns dazu auf, einen neuen Feiertag auszurufen.

--> More info here <--

"Trash as a Means of Religious Communication" - a Toxic Temple Publication in the Journal On Culture #17

I was invited to write an experimental essay on some doctrinal questions of the Toxic Temple for the Journal On Culture #17 - Trash. Apparently they liked our paper so much that we also made it onto the cover of their entire edition (see above). It was fun to write that thing - find the full text as OA here. 

Trash as a Means of Religious Communication
Warm Greetings to the General Heathen Public from the Toxic Temple  

Trash will outlive us all—it is here to stay much longer than we are. It thus can be understood as the modern, superficially secular prayer to the human afterlife. But what are we telling our ancestors with the gigantic heaps of trash we release into the oceans, bury in our mountains, and hide in the underground? We of the Toxic Temple sense that there is still a confusion, or, rather, a lack of profound reflection and cultivation, around this obvious, and—from a geological and cosmological perspective—central element of our culture. It is about time we cultivate and develop it, particularly because our societies might in fact only appear secular and non-religious on a superficial level. We of the Toxic Temple believe that our relationship—yet brute and uncultivated—to the most long-lasting trash we leave behind can only be understood and at the same time tamed as a form of religious communication. And this is why the Toxic Temple was founded and invites you to join our cause: to experimentally give you a room for the expression, cultivation, and veneration of a transcendent desire we moderns clearly seem to be having—although few heathens yet appear comfortable to speak about it or even seem to be able to understand it for themselves. The Toxic Temple is there for you to embrace your most dirty and wasteful desires!

Toxic Temple-Interview @ UND Heft

Anna Lerchbaumer and me were invited to give an Interview about the Toxic Temple in this beautiful magazine. The UND Heft asked us about our project mainly from the perspectives of how humor can be a strategy to deal with dire topics in the arts (and beyond) and what connections could be made between activism and the arts. The magazine is really beautifully designed and I highly recommend ordering it here. 

"Schrott Fiction" and "Neue Vorsicht" - two appearances in Berlin

 

This week, I am speaking on two occasions in Berlin. 

The first one is at the panel "Schrott Fiction: Wiederverwertung zwischen Nachhaltigkeit und Trash" at the Metropol Con at Silent Green on Thursday, 18.5. 18:30. I will be sharing the panel with Julia Grillmayr, Rudi Nuss, Philipp Böhm, Dominik Irtenkauf and Dilman Dila. Find the program here.

The second one will a little book presentation of my publication "Neue Vorsicht - Philosophie des Abstands im Zeitalter der Katastrophen" on Sunday, 21.5 18 at Clánndestino in Berlin Kreuzberg. Find all the details here. 

 

POLITICISING NEW MATERIALISM AGAINST THE TOXIC ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE NOW - Towards a New Materialist philosophy of the car

I am still at donaufestival, and this shot taken from the actual TV-news of the Austrian Public broadcasting ORF from the report on Toxic Temple is the perfect segway to a publication of mine that has just come out. It has the not fully melodic title "POLITICISING NEW MATERIALISM AGAINST THE TOXIC ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE NOW - Towards a New Materialist philosophy of the car" and is one of three (upcoming) more academic papers that I wrote as a kind of precision / warm-up / focusing for my book on the car I am currently working on. I have found a very nice and devoted publication-outlet for it and am very happy to work along with them in the future. Do check out there well selected program at becoming.press 

Abstract: Contemporary ecological discourses that go by names such as “New Materialism” identify modern, “Cartesian” cosmologies as something old and ecologically problematic they deem necessary to overcome. In this paper, I want to address a certain romantic tendency within many such discourses that focus on what they call the “new” without thoroughly reflecting their own material entanglement with the “old”. To expand this argument, I will demonstrate that “old” Cartesianism has, by means of the car as an prosthesis central to the partaking in modern life, become a material practice vital to all modern dwellers. When Cartesianism is, by many New Materialist thinkers, deemed to be “no longer available to think with”, this might be because its features need no longer be philosophically thought and taught at universities, for they have become an embodied practise for everybody living a “modern” way of everyday life. Central Cartesian features such as the body-mind dualism, the relegation of the environment to a mere “given” and a ocularcentic and logocentric bias are reproduced by the car. An unfolding of the inherent political potential of New Materialist discourses should include such reflections about our very toxic entanglements with the “old” that still forms so much of our ecologically catastrophic now.

 --> find the paper here

Zur Kultivierung der Katastrophe – philosophische Restmüllverwertung des Toxic Temple @ donaufestival 6.5.2023

 

Wow, this week of Toxic Temple at donaufestival was a blast! Trashing an old art institution and then leading a procession of 250 people caring random trash objects through a conservative town in Lower Austria to completely mess up an old church is nothing you do every day. I am so glad we had the chance to do this & we are already sprawling with ideas what to do next. Let me just say for now: Doom Porn and a filmic voyage to less artsy institutions perhaps. The Toxic Temple will spread on!

 

For now, let me just alert you to the philosophical workshop I will give next weekend in the ruins of the Toxic Temple at the second week-end of Donaufestival. Here is the description (it's gonna be in German):

Zur Kultivierung der Katastrophe – philosophische Restmüllverwertung des Toxic Temple

Ecological catastrophe is typically conveyed in abstract numbers, but what does it actually feel like in sensory terms? What goes astray when we take it merely as an imperative to exercise restraint? Can we cultivate a desire for waste, destruction, and pollution, or must we suppress it? With excursions through atomic semiotics, queer and dark ecologies, and philosophies of waste, Kilian Jörg will introduce some of the philosophical impulses behind Toxic Temple in this workshop.

A 2-hour workshop for a limited number of people and unlimited amount of waste.

Also, since we of the cult have thought a lot already about how to avoid becoming a full spectacle for an art-loving cultural bourgeoisie, I want to share the MESS I spoke when departing for the PROCESSION yesterday. It is also in German for now and will be translated soon.

 

Meine lieben Heid*innen, wir sind hier zusammengekommen wegen eines EXODUS, wegen der Migration des Toxic Temple raus aus den Hallen der
Künste und hin zu einer altertümlichen Glaubensstätte – einer so
genannten “Kirche”, welche, mit Eurer Hilfe, in einen Schrein der toxischen Verehrung gewandelt werden soll!

Bisher haben wir vom TOXIC TEMPLE in den Welten der Künste eine Heimat gefunden - doch nun erscheint es uns, dass wir bloß als eine Bespassung fürs Kulturbürgertum fungieren!
Wie ein neuer indigener Stamm wurden wir von Euch als Touristenschwarm überfallen – als Souvenir auf Instagram und Gesprächsstoff bei der nächsten Dinnerparty verwandelt!
Doch der Besuch im Toxic Temple soll Euch als keine Erheiterung zwischen den zwei Dienstreisen erscheinen – und auch nicht als Feigenblatt, mit dem ihr Euch als „auf der richtigen Seite“ verstehen könnt – um dann mit dem elektrisch betriebenen SUV den Alltag zu bestreiten!

Meine lieben Heid*innen, höret die Zeichen: elektrische SUVs brennen sogar noch viel länger und es mag sein, das ihre Dämpfe uns den nächsten Schritt als Zeichen in den Himmel schreiben werden! Kommt ab vom Glauben der „richtigen Seite“! Alle rechtenWege führen verästelt in die Herrlichkeit der Katastrophe! Es ist unser aller Normalität, die toxisch ist – und wir im Toxic Temple verhelfen ihr zur Metamorphose! Verharrt nicht im Normalen und Trivialen! Führt Eure Alltäglichkeit zu Altar, damit ihr Euch wieder bewegen könnt! Erhebt das Toxische in
den Bereich des Göttlichen, um die große Transformation zu
spüren!

Deswegen sagen wir: Praise the better Nature!
Im Plastik verwirklichen sich Fantasien vom Überkommen der Natur, die Jahrtausende alt sind. Im Atommüll strahlt der Heilige Geist als Kommunikationsmedium mit dem Ewigen Reich!
Unser aller Transzendenzgelüste sind immanent geworden und berauschen den Planeten!

Zieht mit uns, liebe Liebhaber des Toxischen, durch die Stadt zu einer alten Kirche, die noch vor kurzen heidnische Glauben praktizierte.
Es gilt dem Toxischen im Anthropozän die Tempel zu weihen, damit uns dort neue Visionen erscheinen können! So wie uns einst im Christentum die Visionen dieser wunderschönen Erdzerstörung erschienen, sollen uns im Toxic Temple die Dämpfe des Jenseitigen überraschen!

Folgt uns, meine lieben Heid*innen und Kulturbürger*innen, zieht mit uns zur Kirche, die wir in unser aller toxischen Begehren neu kleiden werden! Der Kulminationspunkt Eurer Kultur ist genau hier – im Überschäumen des Planeten. Hierauf haben wir alle hingearbeitet!
Die alten Strukturen sollen erstrahlen in neuer Übersteigerung, als Gebet für das Nach-uns, das Unbekannte und Jenseitige!

Lasst uns also diese Pilgerreise machen
Lasst uns zur DOMINIKANERKIRCHE gehen und allen
verkünden:
das ewige Paradies ist auf die Erde herabgestiegen
die Transzendenz ist Immanenz geworden
Praise the better Nature!

Oh yes, and of course you always can find more on our Instagram.

Photos: David Visnjic/donaufestival

Interview and Talk about Toxic Temple

 

 Two things related to our upcoming Toxic Temple MESS at donaufestival 2023:

• we gave a short but nice Interview to the Magazine "Art & Science Krems" about out basic ideas. You can read it here. 
• on Wednesday, the 19th of April, Anna Lerchbaumer and me will attend the "Salon Skug" at rhiz Vienna to discuss the Toxic Temple, its philosophy, cosmology and potential of inspiration for some sort of "eco-punk activism" with the team of Skug Journal. Find more info here.

 

Holy Apparitions on Instagram

 

It usually isn't my medium of choice, but it it my sacred duty to inform you that we of the Toxic Temple had a holy apparition on Instagram. In the weeks from now until the festival, we will produce a series of religious propaganda which will be a lot of fun - we are very much looking forward to the festival! Follow us on Instagram until then! 

https://www.instagram.com/thetoxictemple/ 

Toxic Temple at Donaufestival 2023

Toxic Temple @donaufestival '23

 

Now that the program has been released, I can finally announce that Toxic Temple will have a pretty big presence at this years' donaufestival in Krems an der Donau. 

We will celebrate a MESS in Forum Frohner and the public space of Krems and Stein from 28th to 30th of April and will lead a big Procession as a closing event through the city to the Dominikanerkirche to meet with Alfredo Barsuglia's SKIMMER performance crew. Additionally Julia Grillmayr and me will give one workshop each on the second festival weekend on the 6th and 7th of May.

I will post more information in due time. As of now, I want to thank the whole team of this year's MESS for making such a huge thing happen - especially co-religious founder and dear friend Anna Lerchbaumer for sticking with the project at its most dire times (curation of the donaufestival has not always been optimal, to say the least) and our new dramaturg Claus Philipp for helping us grow and stick with the trouble! 

You can find the whole program on the festival homepage here.

And our little propaganda page www.toxictemple.beauty is on again and you will be able to find more precise information on timing etc. there.

"there is no rave on a dead planet" & Neue Vorsicht - Vortrag & Buchvorstellung in Innsbruck - 10-11.11.2022

Übernächste Woche bin ich auf Vortragsbesuch in Innsbruck, dank der Einladung des wunderbaren Kollektivs contrapunkt.

Am Donnerstag dem 10.11 werde ich am Abend mein neues Buch "Neue Vorsicht - Philosophie des Abstands im Zeitalter des Katastrophen" als Teil der Diskursreihe "Es geht bergab" vorstellen. Ab 19h bei Il Corvo, Mozartstraße 12 - mehr Details hier: https://ilcorvo.noblogs.org/buchvorstellung-neue-vorsicht/

Gleich anschließend am Freitag werde ich im legendären Projektspace und Club PMK einen Vortrag zum Thema "There is no rave on a dead planet" halten. Genauere Beschreibung weiter unten. Mehr Infos hier: https://www.facebook.com/events/525123685639718/

"Es dämmert immer mehr Menschen, dass wir in einem Zeitalter der Katastrophen leben. Wohingegen die ersten eineinhalb Jahrzehnte des 21ten Jahrhunderts noch vielfach hedonistischer Leichtigkeit gefrönt haben, scheint durch die Pandemie, den Ukraine-Krieg, den zunehmenden globalen Rechtsruck und die ökologische Katastrophe nun überall der politische Ernst eingezogen zu sein. Ist die Party also vorbei? Seien wir ehrlich: die Stimmung unter den Ravern ist gedrückt.
 
Umweltschutz und Ravekultur – tatsächlich scheinen sich diese beiden Unternehmungen auf den ersten Blick auszuschließen. Erster befasst sich mit der Schaffung nachhaltigerer und weniger energieintensiver Lebensweisen, zweitere ist mit Hedonismus und Ekstase verbunden: die übermäßige Verschwendung unserer und der Energie anderer, um ein größeres Gemeinschaftsgefühl zu schaffen.
 
Muss eine nachhaltige Gesellschaft prinzipiell also auf Raves verzichten und brav, geordnet und im biederen Sinne „vernünftig“ sein? In diesem Vortrag möchte ich für das Gegenteil argumentieren. Anhand eines Nachdenkens über den Exzess werde ich auf Gefahren des entstehenden grünen Kapitalismus hinweisen, welcher Verantwortung individualisiert und ein ähnlich rigides Verhältnis zu Körperlichkeit entwickelt wie der Katholizismus. Ich werde zeigen, dass eine wirklich radikal ökologische Transformation keinesfalls den Exzess verbieten darf, sondern diesen vielmehr kultivieren muss. Ein ökologische Handlung besteht nicht darin, den am Papier sparsameren Tesla zu kaufen und sonst nichts zu ändern – es geht darum, andere Interaktions- und Seinweisen untereinander und mit dem Planeten zu entwickeln. Hierbei können Raves und Clubs Labore einer neuen Kultur des nachhaltigen Verschwendens sein. In ihnen kann ein Anti-Realismus – ein Verweigern der hegemonialen Wirklichkeitserzählung – gedeihen, der für jeden radikale Wandel unabdingbar ist. Gerade in einem Zeitalter der Katastrophen müssen wir Räume der Leichtigkeit bewahren, um an den traurigen Erzählungen des grün-angestrichenen Desasterkapitalismus vorbei zu tanzen – hin zu besseren und bunteren Welten… ."

Toxic Temple - Book Review in Anthropocenes Journal

Our wonderful book about the Toxic Temple has been reviewed in the Anthropocenes Journal! You can find the review online here: https://www.anthropocenes.net/article/id/1332/ 

Add 28/10/22: at pretty much the same time an interview about the Toxic Temple book has appeared in Telepolis here: https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Neue-Religion-um-Fast-Ewigkeitsdimensionen-von-Plastikmuell-7320692.html

Toxic Temple @ FM4 Im Sumpf

This week we have recorded a very in-depth and interesting interview about Toxic Temple for Radio FM4's infamous "Im Sumpf" with Thomas Edlinger (in German). You will be able to hear our answers to some of the more challenging and interesting aspects of our project together with some of our sound collages and favorite tracks this Sunday from 21-23h at Radio FM4 and afterwards on: https://fm4.orf.at/radio/stories/fm4imsumpf/ 

Praise be!

Talk about ecological art making at FS1

When I was in Salzburg last month, I was quite spontaneously invited to talk about ecologically motivated artistic interventions at the local TV-station FS1. I was able to speak about performative interventions to hack our toxic normality, the possibility of the arts to change our sensual and affective regimes and - last but not least - the necessity to fight capitalism.

 

 Here you go:

 

Toxic Temple MESS - the second (+Book presentation in Vienna)

 

Tonight, at 17h, the second Toxic Temple MESS starts in Vienna's AIL. As part of the "Lange Nacht der Forschung" Anna Lerchbaumer and me will present the Toxic Temple Book at 20:30 and from then on the MESS (a durational, multi-media and transdisciplinary performance) can be visited everyday (Saturday, Sunday, Monday) from 13-18h. On Monday everything will culminate to a HOLY MESS with concerts, recitations, performances etc. 

Here are some images of our opening event:

TOXIC TEMPLE, the book (de Gruyter 2022) - out now!

 

It is with considerable joy that I can announce the release of TOXIC TEMPLE, the book which I consider the next contribution of what I once what to look back at as my oeuvre. In Toxic Temple, Anna Lerchbaumer and me have embarked more than 4 years ago on "an artistic & philosophical journey into the Toxicity of the Now" and have since then met many contributors and inspirations on the way. We have created musical compositions, sound pieces, video installations, entire exhibitions, performances, lectures and whole philosophies of this speculative religion venerating WASTE as a means of communication with the human after-life. In this wonderful book, we have combined various genres of text, from prayers, poetry to philosophical investigations into plastic eternity, nuclear semiotics, the oceanic undead, the many worlds ending, and so many more topics. We have contributions of authors such as Heather Davis, Sam Hertz, Eben Kirksey, Julia Grillmayr, Elisabeth Felkensteiner, Julietta Aranda and many more. On top of that, the book consists of a stunning collage of exhibition documentation, images specifically made for the book and other graphic experiments. You can find some inside-peeks into the book below. The book is now officially on sale and can be either ordered at any of your local bookshops or directly at the publisher. 

Also, we will celebrate two release events:

• on the 8th of May we will have a full afternoon of performative interventions, readings, lectures and concerts around the TOXIC TEMPLE at Hopscotch Reading Room in Berlin 
• from the 20th to the 23th of May we will devote an entire holy MESS to the book in Vienna's AIL