ΦΘΟΡA

ΦΘΟΡΑ confronts us with the tectonic shifts of the present. In an epoch in which ecological devastation, political radicalization, and economic erosion are inextricably intertwined, the earthquake becomes a cipher for an impending collapse. This work makes seismic real-time activity audible and translates the planet’s physical tremors into an acoustic topography of decay that can be understood as a resonant space for planetary and societal ruptures.

Yet the ruptures we experience are not mere natural events; they are the materialized consequences of a system suffocating on its own contradictions. What articulates itself as an earthquake is the expression of a more comprehensive tectonic process: the collapse of orders that once considered themselves stable. The present epoch is characterized not only by ecological crises but also by escalating political regression, in which authoritarian structures gain power, democratic values erode, and reactionary ideology increasingly permeates the societal mainstream.

As the ground trembles, the foundations of political systems also crumble. The rightward shift no longer confined to extremist fringes but appearing as a legitimate force in parliaments and governments attests to a tectonic shift in thought itself. The re-election of Donald Trump in the United States, the normalization of right-wing nationalist parties in Europe, and the alarming rise of the AfD in Germany are not isolated phenomena.

They are symptoms of profound systemic instability, nourished not only by economic crises or social insecurity, but by a deliberate political radicalization that instrumentalizes the fear of impending collapse. ΦΘΟΡΑ situates itself within this field of tension by making audible the interconnections of ecological, political, and economic quakes and by fundamentally calling into question the illusion of a separate, controllable nature.

The Anthropocene thus appears not merely as an epoch of catastrophes, but as an age of insoluble entanglements an age in which we do not stand outside the crisis but are deeply embedded within it. What becomes visible is not only the disintegration of ecosystems, but also the erosion of democracy, of social cohesion, and of the very idea of progress. Capitalist logics of growth, technological omnipresence, and ecological destruction operate like synchronized quakes, permitting no return to presumed stabilizations.

ΦΘΟΡΑ renders these tremors not as a dystopian warning, but as a description of the present condition. Those who continue to speak of a “crisis” fail to recognize that we are already in a stage of irreversible transformation.