Orgasm Before the End of the World

On Saturday, October 3, in the early evening, we continue our discussion of the intersection between the erotic and the political in art. This time, we enter the world of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, where sexual desire, narcotic intoxication, aesthetic decadence, and political catastrophe emerge as different facets of the same crisis.

In “Insatiability,” people are already satiated with everything before society itself has completely collapsed. The characters seek increasingly intense sensations, immersing themselves in erotic relationships, drugs, and philosophical and political experiments. Yet beneath this insatiability, what gradually emerges is not freedom but inner emptiness and the loss of the ability to act independently.

We’ll explore how images of decadence and the degeneration of individual characters relate to the political and social structure of Poland as portrayed by Witkiewicz. Why does the crisis of an individual become, at the same time, the crisis of an entire society? Why does erotic desire so easily become a metaphor for political desire in Witkiewicz’s work? And what happens to a person who is simultaneously insatiable yet incapable of truly wanting anything?

We’ll discuss sexuality and power, decadence and revolution, drugs and mass society, personal degeneration and historical catastrophe — and consider why “Insatiability” still feels so strangely contemporary.

This session is about what happens to individuals and societies when desire ceases to have any limits.

The evening will be led by Pan Volynsky — philosopher, historian, one of the organizers of the Frame philosophy club, and a descendant of Polish-Soviet dissidents.