Artist, writer and filmmaker Philipp Humm announces Beyond the Human, a multigenre artandphilosophy project (a contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk) spanning philosophical writing, visual art and film. Released serially online from Tuesday 3 February, the project examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping ideas of agency, responsibility and human sovereignty.
Set from the vantage point of 2045, Beyond the Human unfolds as a “History of the Future”: a narrated sequence of essays, artworks and short videos published across LinkedIn, Instagram, X and YouTube, with a new website serving as the central hub. New works will be released every two weeks through June.
At the centre of the project lies a deliberately unsettling proposition: that artificial intelligence may constitute an ontological rupture - a fundamental break in our understanding of reality – in which humanity ceases to be the primary author of its own civilisation. As machines increasingly replace human labour and assume governance over energy, production, and planetary risk at scale, Beyond the Human asks whether a new ecocentric order, administered by non-human intelligence, could gradually supplant the labour- and debt-based economy on which anthropocentric sovereignty has long depended.
On 3 March, Humm will host the premiere of Beyond the Human on YouTube (@Beyond.TheHuman), an 18minute animated film extending the essays into cinematic form. Using animation to reflect on identity, technological mediation and the limits of humancentred thinking, the film translates philosophical arguments into image and narrative.
From midFebruary, Humm will also publish a weekly chapter of Illustrated Chronicle: The History of the Future, an illustrated serial complementing the main essays.
The project forms the next chapter in Humm’s longrunning engagement with Goethe’s Faust and the modern “bargain” with progress. In 2019 he created The Last Faust, a critically noted cycle comprising a feature film (starring Steven Berkoff) and more than 200 artworks. In midJune, Humm will close the Beyond the Human release cycle with an online screening of The Last Faust on YouTube (@Beyond.TheHuman).
Humm’s practice draws on an unusual professional trajectory across philosophy, contemporary art, film and technology. Before focusing fulltime on art and philosophical writing, he held senior executive roles within major technology companies including Amazon, Vodafone Europe and TMobile USA.
By releasing the material incrementally and in public, Beyond the Human invites audiences to encounter philosophy as an evolving process – one that moves between text, image and moving image, and unfolds in dialogue with its viewers. The current project forms part of a longerterm trajectory that will also include a book, exhibition and theatre work.
Fortnightly release of essays, videos and artworks (3 February–June)
YouTube premiere of Beyond the Human (18minute animated film) on 3 March
Weekly release of Illustrated Chronicle: The History of the Future (from midFebruary)