Three years ago Latour retired from university teaching, but his thinking on global warming, geopolitics, biotechnologies and, yes, pandemics, has accelerated in urgency. He could have been thwarted by the very forces he writes of, but the Taipei Biennial, which he cocurated (with Martin Guinard), was one of the few major art events to go ahead, opening as this goes to print. Titled You and I Don’t Live on the Same Planet, the exhibition examines how political polarisation and the climate emergency intersect through a series of ‘planets’ inhabited by artists including Yao Jui-Chung, Cooking Sections and Pierre Huyghe. Meanwhile there were further shows and conferences (Critical Zones and ‘Driving the Human’ at the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe), viral essays (‘we have actually proven that it is possible, in a few weeks, to put an economic system on hold everywhere in the world’, he wrote for AOC, translated into at least 12 languages) and artist talks (with
Sarah Sze at the Fondation Cartier in Paris).

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