NOWs: The Antarctic Pavilion

12 May - 31 July 2017 / Nows

First Antarctic Biennale during the 57th Venice Biennale of Art 2017

Palazzo Molin a San Basegio
Fondamenta Zattere Al Ponte Longo 1412, Venice, Italy

Selected artworks created in Antarctica, along with photo and video documentation of the voyage, will debut at The Antarctic Pavilion during the 57th Venice Biennale of Art 2017. This group exhibition will include works by the expedition’s participants and projects from the finalists of the Antarctic Biennale Open Call for young artists.

In March 2017 an international group of artists, scientists, architects and philosophers left the port of Ushuaia (Tierra del Fuego, Argentina) bound for the Antarctic Circle – onboard the scientific research vessel Akademik Sergei Vavilov. They would make landfall at numerous sites on the world’s southernmost continent throughout the next two weeks. At each location, artworks, exhibitions and performances were realized. Mobility, site-specificity and ecological compatibility were key touchstones. Nothing was left behind and no audience was present, except the participants themselves and – of course – Antarctica’s native species. Actions included a landscape photography exhibition for penguins (they didn’t seem to get much out of it) and an underwater installation for whales.

In addition to onshore interventions, throughout the expedition, the vessel itself served as a floating studio, exhibition, installation and performance space; a photo lab, and conference facility. Onboard activities included symposia, debates, and a daily screening program featuring commissioned videos by international artists. Throughout, the focus was on the question ‘What potential does the Antarctic Imaginary hold?’– for exiting polarized identity politics, and ecological insensitivity in public culture. Also, on dialogues leading to future cross-disciplinary collaborations. For the project’s Commissioner, Alexander Ponomarev and the Organizing Committee, the enterprise was ventured in the belief that this remote region must be made more proximate; that the last continent is a fertile site for new beginnings.

This year, The Antarctic Pavilion presents documentation of this 1st Antarctic Biennale – a paradigm-shifting phenomenon in biennale culture: A hot-house in a frozen realm, without mobile phones, internet, ready audience, or escape to another cocktail party, throughout this biennale everyone was in the same boat. While its expedition is complete, its collaborative outcomes are just beginning.

In addition to documentation of the 1st Antarctic Biennale, this year’s Antarctic Pavilion debuts a series of newly commissioned works exploring the aesthetic, conceptual and mythic paramaters of the Antarctic Imaginary.

In “Space Fish” (Raumfisch), Julius von Bismarck for instance realizes a site-specific performance by letting a tropical freshwater fish swim through the cold waters of the Antarctic Sea, facilitated by a custom swimsuit. The work’s thematic background revolves around human exploration. The swimsuit resembles a spacesuit, echoing man’s drive to explore and the romantic connotations of discovering new worlds. Referencing man’s first Antarctic expeditions, the fish reimagines the subject of the adventurer. The performance also emphasizes the role of tourism; travel for pleasure. It is also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists. Usually, the comfort of tourism is the preserve of humanity alone. In Space Fish, von Bismarck dives into the business of attracting the fish, offering a chance to experience the human luxury of movement to anywhere in world.

ARTISTS-PARTICIPANTS (1ST ANTARCTIC BIENNALE):

Abdullah Al Saadi (UAE). ‘Antarctic Alphabets’, Expedition Diaries
Alexander Ponomarev (Russia). ‘Alchemy of Antarctic Albedo (Or Washing Pale Moons)’. Underwater installations
Alexis Anastasiou (Brazil). ‘It ́s Cold out There’. Large scale projection
Andrey Kuzkin (Russia). ‘The Phenomenon of Nature or 99 Landscapes with a Tree’. Series of performances
Eulalia Valldosera (Spain). ‘Penelope’s voice: communicating with animals’. Audio intervention on the ship that travels to Antarctica
Gustav Dusing (Germany). ‘The solid state of matter’. Tent made of frozen cotton
Joaquin Fargas (Argentina). ‘Glaciator’. Robotic & Solar, mixed techniques
Julian Charrière (France/Switzerland). ‘Silence’, Performance
Juliana Cerqueira Leite (Brazil). ‘Vestibule’. Video Installation
Julius von Bismarck (Germany). ‘Space Fish (Raumfisch)’. Performance
Lou Sheppard (Canada). ‘Requiem for the Antarctic Coast’, Sound installation
Paul Rosero Contreras (Ecuador). ‘Arriba!’ site-specific intervention, film, photographs
Shama Rahman (Bangladesh/UK). ‘Truth be told’, Performance with sitar on ice
Sho Hasegawa (Japan). ‘Winter Landscape (Antarctica Version)’
Tomas Saraceno (Argentina/Germany). ‘Aerocene’ Performance
Yasuaki Igarashi (Japan). ‘Bundling Time’, Performance
Yto Barrada (Morocco). ‘Abstract Geology’
Zhang Enli (China). ‘Egg’

NOWs: Future Fossil Spaces by Julian Charrière

13 May - 26 November 2017 / Nows ⟶

NOWs: Julian Charrière: Future Fossil Spaces at Viva Arte Viva, curated by Christine Macel 57th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale, Venice – In his book Tristes Tropiques, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss writes that he wished to have lived fifty years earlier, “in the days of real journeys, when it was still possible to see the full splendour of a spectacle that had not yet been blighted, polluted and spoilt.” More than fifty years later, the artist Julian Charrière travels to Bolivia, to the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. It still spreads out before the artist’s eye as an infinitely vast white salt crust scabbed in polygonal patterns. Yet over the next fifty years, the treasure it harbors, the largest lithium deposit in the world, will drive a dramatic transformation of this landscape: lithium, now a vital component of the digital world’s batteries, has emerged as a resource of inestimable value for Bolivia, and mining will begin in the near future. Charrière is interested in the relationship between contemporary civilization and the world of geology, which has existed since time immemorial and ultimately sustains modern life. Like an anthropologist from the future who studies the present and conceies of the world as a network of human and non-human beings in which people, things, and nature are closely interdependent, making it impossible to isolate the environment, Charrière brings materials back home from his ‘fieldwork’; from the trip to the Salar de Uyuni, he returns with a large quantity of salt sediment in lumps he uses to build an installation in the Arsenale that oscillates between topography and landscape. Material turns into representation; the installation becomes a negative space of the mined salt that leaves a new cavity, a Future Fossil Space, in Bolivia, while guiding the visitor in Venice through a heaped mountain landscape, its layout hexagonal in imitation of the scabs on the salt crust. The earth’s interior is wrestled to the surface, and the primeval landscape that was buried when the Andes broke open and lakes appeared is brought back to the surface as an essence. With a nod to the hexagonal rooms of the library in Jorge Luis Borges’s story The Library of Babel, the artist’s interest concerns the body of knowledge that is stored in the salt segments. Meanwhile, the title Future Fossil Spaces refers to future spaces that will be created inside the earth by the mining operations, the traces that the digital era will engender and that he brings back into the present by displaying the raw material of the digital as an artifact from the past. The artist-anthropologist designs an early mausoleum for the geological age of the digital, offering, as a counterpart to the internet, a physical and tactile experience. Ironically enough, that experience demonstrates that the enlargement of the virtual world requires a hollowing-out of the world of natural resources. It is a narrative of matter reporting on the virtual, material culture that grapples with the progress of our information society; impartial and as real as it is relevant in a world of plural realities. – Julian Charrière: Future Fossil Spaces, 2017. Salt from the Salar de Uyuni, acrylic-containers filled with lithium-brine. Dimensions variable. Installation view: La Biennale di Venezia, Arsenale, 57th International Art Exhibition „Viva Arte Viva“ (curated by Christine Macel) ©Julian Charrière; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany Courtesy: BUGADA & CARGNEL, Paris, France; DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM, Berlin, Germany; Galerie Tschudi, Zuoz, Switzerland; Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, NY, USA; Sies + Höke Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany NOWs: Julian Charrière: Future Fossil Spaces at Viva Arte Viva, curated by Christine Macel 57th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale, Venice – In his book Tristes Tropiques, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss writes that he wished to have lived fifty years earlier, “in the days of real journeys, when it was still possible to see the full splendour of a spectacle that had not yet been blighted, polluted and spoilt.” More than fifty years later, the artist Julian Charrière travels to Bolivia, to the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. It still spreads out before the artist’s eye as an infinitely vast white salt crust scabbed in polygonal patterns. Yet over the next fifty years, the treasure it harbors, the largest lithium deposit in the world, will drive a dramatic transformation of this landscape: lithium, now a vital component of the digital world’s batteries, has emerged as a resource of inestimable value for Bolivia, and mining will begin in the near future. Charrière is interested in the relationship between contemporary civilization and the world of geology, which has existed since time immemorial and ultimately sustains modern life. Like an anthropologist from the future who studies the present and conceies of the world as a network of human and non-human beings in which people, things, and nature are closely interdependent, making it impossible to isolate the environment, Charrière brings materials back home from his ‘fieldwork’; from the trip to the Salar de Uyuni, he returns with a large quantity of salt sediment in lumps he uses to build an installation in the Arsenale that oscillates between topography and landscape. Material turns into representation; the installation becomes a negative space of the mined salt that leaves a new cavity, a Future Fossil Space, in Bolivia, while guiding the visitor in Venice through a heaped mountain landscape, its layout hexagonal in imitation of the scabs on the salt crust. The earth’s interior is wrestled to the surface, and the primeval landscape that was buried when the Andes broke open and lakes appeared is brought back to the surface as an essence. With a nod to the hexagonal rooms of the library in Jorge Luis Borges’s story The Library of Babel, the artist’s interest concerns the body of knowledge that is stored in the salt segments. Meanwhile, the title Future Fossil Spaces refers to future spaces that will be created inside the earth by the mining operations, the traces that the digital era will engender and that he brings back into the present by displaying the raw material of the digital as an artifact from the past. The artist-anthropologist designs an early mausoleum for the geological age of the digital, offering, as a counterpart to the internet, a physical and tactile experience. Ironically enough, that experience demonstrates that the enlargement of the virtual world requires a hollowing-out of the world of natural resources. It is a narrative of matter reporting on the virtual, material culture that grapples with the progress of our information society; impartial and as real as it is relevant in a world of plural realities. – Julian Charrière: Future Fossil Spaces, 2017. Salt from the Salar de Uyuni, acrylic-containers filled with lithium-brine. Dimensions variable. Installation view: La Biennale di Venezia, Arsenale, 57th International Art Exhibition „Viva Arte Viva“ (curated by Christine Macel) ©Julian Charrière; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany Courtesy: BUGADA & CARGNEL, Paris, France; DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM, Berlin, Germany; Galerie Tschudi, Zuoz, Switzerland; Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, NY, USA; Sies + Höke Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany

NOWs: GLÜCKs Autokino

11 - 13 May 2017 / Nows ⟶

NOWs: GLÜCKs Autokino geht auf CH-Tour! Erster Halt: Hardturmbrache in Zürich – ehemals Fussballstadion, jetzt eine Brache mit wachsender Flora & Fauna. Bevor sich Fuchs und Hase gute Nacht sagen, zeigen wir in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Theater Gessnerallee unseren Dokumentarfilm >Jäger & Sammler< ! 11./12./13. Mai 2017 Einlass ab 20:00 Uhr Anfahrt: Stadionbrache Hardturm Hardturmstrasse 269, 8005 Zürich Eingang über Förrlibuckstrasse Tickets hier. Für das absolute Glückserlebnis sollten Sie zwischen 20 Uhr und 20.30 Uhr mit dem eigenen Auto auf der Hardturmbrache vorfahren. Das Autokino findet draussen und bei jeder Witterung statt. Bei schönem Wetter gibt es auch Plätze für Fussgänger und Velofahrerinnen. Vergessen Sie nicht ihr eigenes UKW-fähiges Radio. Weitere Info`s inkl. Trailer zum Film: Autokino «Ein bisschen unnötig Autofahren, ist ein bisschen Freiheit», sagte schon der Luzerner Strassenphilosoph Emil Manser. Bevor alles hybrid und elektrisch wird, bietet Glück all denjenigen eine Plattform, die ihr Herz an Benzin, Gummi und Pferdestärken verloren haben. Dafür verlässt die Gruppe Glück den Theaterraum und veranstaltet ein Autokino – das letzte Kino ohne Rauchverbot. Gezeigt wird der eigens produzierte Dokfilm «Jäger & Sammler»: Ganz in Roadmovie-Manier handelt der Film von Autos, ihren Besitzern, wahrer Liebe zu grossen Motoren und von solchen, die ihr Schicksal selber in die Hand nehmen wollen. Glück möchte der eigenartigen Symbiose zwischen Mensch und Auto auf die Schliche kommen. Immer mit der Frage im Nacken: Wie weit gehen Menschen für Motoren? Wie sehen die Roadmovies der Zukunft aus, wenn Roboter das Steuer übernehmen? Bevor Duracell Häschen in Google-Autos durch die Gegend piepsen und uns GPS Satelliten die Orientierung verlieren lassen, zeigen wir die letzten echten Autofreaks und geben ihnen unsere Bühne. Ganz in Roadmovie-Manier handelt der Film von Autos, ihren Besitzern, wahrer Liebe zu grossen Motoren und von solchen die ihr Schicksal selber in die Hand nehmen wollen. In kleinen Episoden tritt die flammende Leidenschaft hervor. Autoliebhaber und überzeugte Fahrradfahrer reichen sich die Klinke in die Hand und die ganz grossen Gefühle werden aufgefahren – ganz nach dem Motto: «Wer nicht spinnt ist nicht normal!» (Pesche, Protagonist «Jäger & Sammler»). Glück – bestehend aus den Basler Künstlern, Musikern und Theaterschaffenden Gregor Brändli, Jeremias Holliger, Lukas Kubik, Benjamin Matthis und Victor Moser – entstand aus dem Bedürfnis, Arbeiten zu machen, die kollektiv entstehen und dem hierarchischen Theaterprinzip entsagen. NOWs: GLÜCKs Autokino geht auf CH-Tour! Erster Halt: Hardturmbrache in Zürich – ehemals Fussballstadion, jetzt eine Brache mit wachsender Flora & Fauna. Bevor sich Fuchs und Hase gute Nacht sagen, zeigen wir in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Theater Gessnerallee unseren Dokumentarfilm >Jäger & Sammler< ! 11./12./13. Mai 2017 Einlass ab 20:00 Uhr Anfahrt: Stadionbrache Hardturm Hardturmstrasse 269, 8005 Zürich Eingang über Förrlibuckstrasse Tickets hier. Für das absolute Glückserlebnis sollten Sie zwischen 20 Uhr und 20.30 Uhr mit dem eigenen Auto auf der Hardturmbrache vorfahren. Das Autokino findet draussen und bei jeder Witterung statt. Bei schönem Wetter gibt es auch Plätze für Fussgänger und Velofahrerinnen. Vergessen Sie nicht ihr eigenes UKW-fähiges Radio. Weitere Info`s inkl. Trailer zum Film: Autokino «Ein bisschen unnötig Autofahren, ist ein bisschen Freiheit», sagte schon der Luzerner Strassenphilosoph Emil Manser. Bevor alles hybrid und elektrisch wird, bietet Glück all denjenigen eine Plattform, die ihr Herz an Benzin, Gummi und Pferdestärken verloren haben. Dafür verlässt die Gruppe Glück den Theaterraum und veranstaltet ein Autokino – das letzte Kino ohne Rauchverbot. Gezeigt wird der eigens produzierte Dokfilm «Jäger & Sammler»: Ganz in Roadmovie-Manier handelt der Film von Autos, ihren Besitzern, wahrer Liebe zu grossen Motoren und von solchen, die ihr Schicksal selber in die Hand nehmen wollen. Glück möchte der eigenartigen Symbiose zwischen Mensch und Auto auf die Schliche kommen. Immer mit der Frage im Nacken: Wie weit gehen Menschen für Motoren? Wie sehen die Roadmovies der Zukunft aus, wenn Roboter das Steuer übernehmen? Bevor Duracell Häschen in Google-Autos durch die Gegend piepsen und uns GPS Satelliten die Orientierung verlieren lassen, zeigen wir die letzten echten Autofreaks und geben ihnen unsere Bühne. Ganz in Roadmovie-Manier handelt der Film von Autos, ihren Besitzern, wahrer Liebe zu grossen Motoren und von solchen die ihr Schicksal selber in die Hand nehmen wollen. In kleinen Episoden tritt die flammende Leidenschaft hervor. Autoliebhaber und überzeugte Fahrradfahrer reichen sich die Klinke in die Hand und die ganz grossen Gefühle werden aufgefahren – ganz nach dem Motto: «Wer nicht spinnt ist nicht normal!» (Pesche, Protagonist «Jäger & Sammler»). Glück – bestehend aus den Basler Künstlern, Musikern und Theaterschaffenden Gregor Brändli, Jeremias Holliger, Lukas Kubik, Benjamin Matthis und Victor Moser – entstand aus dem Bedürfnis, Arbeiten zu machen, die kollektiv entstehen und dem hierarchischen Theaterprinzip entsagen.

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NOWs: The Antarctic Pavilion

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