There is a question that sits uncomfortably at the center of how humans organize themselves, the question of whether we are capable of living in peace without identifying an enemy to hate, whether our species can think in terms of anything other than conflict. Baïki poses this question directly and unsettlingly, and KosmoX, released June 3, 2026, builds an entire conceptual work around the disturbing possibility that humanity might only stop tearing itself apart if it found an external enemy to turn against, perhaps one day the aliens. This is satirical art with genuine philosophical weight, a deceptively light-hearted package carrying a very dark message about the disconnect between humanity’s technological progress and its moral maturity, and it lands with the kind of cynical force that only the sharpest satire achieves.
The central argument of KosmoX is provocative and worth taking seriously as the artist’s perspective. There is, the work suggests, a profound disconnect between our capacity to explore and colonize other worlds and our willingness to act responsibly and ethically, the technological ability to reach other planets advancing far faster than the moral development that would make such reaching wise. From this perspective, the conquest of space is merely an extension of earthly logic, the same patterns of expansion and domination and the perpetuation of inequalities simply projected outward into the cosmos. The fantasy of colonizing another planet, the work argues, would likely reproduce the same destructive patterns of overconsumption and pollution and exploitation that characterize human behavior on Earth, the new world becoming just another stage for the same old destruction.
The most pointed insight of KosmoX is its identification of the illusion at the heart of the dream of starting afresh elsewhere. The idea that humanity might escape its problems by beginning again on another planet, the work suggests, is a comforting fiction that serves to avoid the necessary soul-searching that is actually needed here on Earth. This is a genuinely sharp observation, the recognition that the dream of cosmic escape functions as a way of deferring the difficult work of confronting our problems where they actually exist, the fantasy of a fresh start among the stars being a distraction from the reckoning we need to undertake at home. Baïki refuses the comforting illusion, insisting that the problems we would carry to other worlds are the problems we must solve here, that there is no escaping ourselves by changing our location in the universe.
The video that accompanies KosmoX brings this conceptual critique to life with genuine wit and ambition. Filmed entirely in a workshop on the outskirts of Charleroi in Belgium, it features a scientist in his laboratory casually explaining the colonization of another planet, in constant communication with the new colony via a monitor. The casualness of the explanation is part of the satire, the matter-of-fact tone with which the scientist describes colonization reflecting exactly the unthinking acceptance of destructive patterns that the work critiques, the brutality normalized into routine procedure. On the other side of the monitor, we see a welcoming planet subjected to the brutal process of colonization, the coloniser hero subjugating the aliens by force because force is the language he knows best.
The video’s reference to a famous popular science program aimed at young children adds a layer of dark irony to the whole enterprise. By framing the cynical narrative of conquest within the visual language of educational children’s programming, KosmoX exposes the gap between the optimistic and wholesome way that space exploration is often presented and the destructive reality that the work argues would actually accompany it. The deceptively light-hearted images carry their very dark message precisely through this contrast, the cheerful educational format making the underlying cynicism all the more striking, the children’s-program aesthetic revealing the arrogance and emptiness beneath humanity’s pride.
A remarkable feature of the video is that Phil plays each of the thirty roles of Earthlings with the help of costumes and wigs and makeup, symbolizing humanity in all its pride and emptiness and arrogance. This decision to have a single performer embody all thirty human characters is a brilliant piece of conceptual filmmaking, the implication being that humanity’s flaws are universal rather than individual, that the pride and arrogance and emptiness are not the failings of particular people but the shared characteristics of the species itself. By making one person play everyone, the video suggests that we are all the same coloniser, all complicit in the same destructive patterns, the thirty roles being thirty faces of a single human tendency.
The technical achievement behind the video reflects the same DIY ambition that characterizes much genuine independent art. Yves, the director, despite a complete lack of prior knowledge in the field, threw himself wholeheartedly into Blender and Unreal Engine, adding 3D technology to the green screen technique to produce the deceptively light-hearted images that carry the dark message. This willingness to learn complex new tools from scratch in service of the artistic vision reflects genuine commitment, the director mastering sophisticated 3D software specifically to realize the conceptual work, the technical learning curve embraced as part of the creative process.
KosmoX is the kind of conceptual art project that uses satire and craft to confront uncomfortable truths about human nature, the deceptively light surface concealing a genuinely dark and challenging message about our species’ incapacity for peace and our tendency to reproduce destruction wherever we go. Whether or not one fully accepts its pessimistic assessment, the work succeeds in posing its difficult question with force and wit, refusing the comfortable illusions and insisting on the soul-searching that it argues we have been avoiding.
The stars will not save us from ourselves, KosmoX insists, because we would bring ourselves with us. Baïki has made a work of satirical art that holds up a mirror to humanity’s pride and arrogance, asking whether we can ever learn to live without an enemy to hate, and refusing to pretend that escape is possible while the real work remains undone here on our little planet.
