#1490: “Any War Any Enemy” is a Beautiful Anti-War, Immersive Poem About Nuclear Annihilation

Lena Herzog's Any War Any Enemy is a hauntingly beautiful spatial poem that takes us on a liminal journey about nuclear annihilation. Rather than disassociating and letting power structures sleepwalk us all into catastrophe, she explores a new form of transcendental anti-war protest by leaning into an underlying existential angst that doesn't turn away from the human costs. It's a cautionary tale that serves as a wake-up call about the insanity of mutually-assured destruction, and an opportunity to use VR to ground apocalyptic abstractions into an embodied experience that allows us to bear witness to possible futures that should be avoided at all costs. I previously spoke with Herzog about her first VR piece Last Whispers in 2019 about the extinction of languages. This piece is about the potential extinction of all of humanity via nuclear annihilation, and she's working in the third piece in her trilogy that is aiming to end on a more positive and optimistic note. I had a chance to catch up with Herzog virtually to unpack more about her process of creating this piece, and how she's exploring the more poetic and metaphoric dream logic within her immersive, anti-war poem.