ABSTRACT
The subject of Zero K is immortality or, in other words, the reification of death, which is literally covered up in the steppe of Kazakhstan. Investors have built an underground facility called “Convergence,” where they can eschew legal questions, experiment with transhumanist technology and practice cryonics. The ambition is to promote deathlessness by means of an ideological superstructure that goes far above material questions. Designed as a total Gesamtkunstwerk, in which aesthetics, discourse, religion and technology converge, the dome proves an ontological project.
The emphasis in this chapter is on manifestations of ideology and aesthetics, which are to enforce the project. In a synergetic interplay with the experiential quality of the building and its exhibits, the “Convergence” brings to bear the old fear of apocalypse juxtaposing it with the mythical desire for eschatology. In contradistinction to a disastrous present, one anticipates a salvific time in which all contingent temporality comes to an end. The totalitarian art of the “Convergence” is accounted for by contrasting it with an open and indeterminate artwork in a New York gallery. For an alternative approach, the chapter draws on Martin Heidegger’s existentialism and theory of art.
