In the Atacama the basins of lithium extraction steam off groundwater of neon tones into the desert sky and in the Congo people of all ages dig through reddish brown tunnels to get to cobalt, nickel and platinum as well as graphite and other rare earths. The Anthropocene makes the climate and sends its pictures ahead. The global economy is striving for a crystalline future consisting of batteries, glass, solar panels, screens and Oculus Rift.
Many people may not be aware of this existential transformation of our way of life in the next 35 years, or they may want to see it differently, especially when they look at their children. But it could be that they feel a tremor in the air, hear a crisis from the tectonics, notice cracks in the room. There is a word for that in theatre, film, literature: Suspense. It describes the perceptible tension in the familiar, the loud silence, the oppressive dullness in which the radical new is announced.
The exhibition »Suspension« is dedicated to this geopolitical tension by setting something very old against the near future. The conceived scenario of the exhibition keeps the balance between two artistic currents and qualities:
1. the authentic handmade of timeless, mineral artifacts and
2. a post-generative approach to the images and memories of a once familiar organic environment, i.e. floral nature, as an attempt of artistic animation, may it be in the analogue, digital or virtual realms.
In this open setting between ancient mineral and animated mineral of the future, the organic is almost cancelled out, it appears at most as a synthetic memory. In this sense, the exhibition refers not only to the chemical state of suspension in the basins of lithium production, but also to the current, underground transformation of global capitalism by staging the possible scenario of an almost inorganic future.
»Suspension«
Mit Borrás, Frank Eickhoff, Jörg Gelbke, Spiros Hadjidjanos, Kathrin Köster, Leon Manoloudakis, Lauren Moffatt, Philipp Röcker, Marie Strauss
curated by Stephan Klee
Opening Thu 31 Oct 7 – 10 pm
1 – 22 Nov 2019
Wed - Fri 3 - 6pm
and by appointment
+43 681 81939710
frontviews temporary at
Kunstraum am Schauplatz
Praterstrasse 42
A-1020 Vienna
with the best support of Kunstraum am Schauplatz
and Auswärtiges Amt Germany
related links
Mit Borrás
Frank Eickhoff
Jörg Gelbke
Spiros Hadjidjanos
Kathrin Köster
Leon Manoloudakis
Lauren Moffatt
Philipp Röcker
Marie Strauss
