Futurities: human extinction, space visualization and the other side of sustainability

This paper explores how speculative practices engage with evolving ideas on human extinction, space cosmology, post-humanism, and sustainability through expanded photography. Focusing on two projects—Here There Are Lions by Ioannis Galanopoulos Papavasileiou and Alien Landscapes by Ioannis Kontos—it examines how these works reframe themes of planetary precarity, space migration, and ecological collapse. Using ‘verifictional’ methods, both series employ hybrid digital techniques and AI-generated imagery as visual provocations challenging anthropocentric views of survival and progress. Here There Are Lions envisions space as a site of human expatriation and cosmic hope, while Alien Landscapes depicts post-natural terrains shaped by AI and environmental instability. Together, they present speculative futures where landscape becomes a shifting argument rather than fixed geography. Blending art, planetary science, critical futures theory, and cultural geography, these works question sustainability, extinction aesthetics, and visions of life beyond Earth. Positioned as speculative interventions, the series blur boundaries between documentation and simulation, landscape and ideology. The paper argues they expand visual discourse on the limits of Earth-bound existence and calls for an interdisciplinary rethinking of visual art—not just as witness, but as a method for theorizing alternative futures in an era of planetary transformation.