multi-media installation (2022)
curated by carla peca, with sound by serafin aebli
three-channel, color video projection (loops 7’–12’, colored gels on windows and floor, the north face geodome t-shirt or tent, multichannel continuous sound *dimensions variable
«The catastrophe without event is characterized by disparate, diffuse, and ultimately undefinable scenarios, temporalities, localities, and processes. The bleak underlying feeling today is that the continuation of the present will inevitably lead to a radical break or collapse. No one knows, however, exactly how this will come about.» // Eva Horn in Future as Catastrophy, 2022
Installation Views Kulturwerk T66 (Freiburg, Germany), 2022/2023
There is a certain feeling of violence when I step on ice with crampons. Meanwhile, The North Face encourages me to «Never Stop Exploring» – putting thin layers of fabric between body and environment.
«ex-de-plora» investigates the tension between a temporary, hedonistic exposure to ‹nature› and the «epistemic violence of discovery» (Heather Davis). Located in Swiss glacial landscapes, from the geotextile covered Rhone Glacier and to the ice-core-drilling hotspot Colle Gnifetti on 4’500 meters altitude, «ex-de-plora» unfolds in proximity to immediate danger and catastrophe from the perspective of a witness and accomplice.
The work draws inspiration from dominant visual cultures of exploration and catastrophe in the 21st century: through action-camera recordings (e.g. GoPro), or through the metaphor of heat, dominant in news, popular fictions and documentaries (e.g. San Francisco Wildfires 2020, Sahara Sand in Switzerland / Germany 2022, Blade Runner 2047, Visualisations of Mars Inhabitation etc.). Have those images ‹burned› themselves and rendered meaningless?
Installation view, «ex-de-plora», T66, Freiburg am Breisgau (DE), Regionale 23, 2022
Installation view «ex-de-plora», Forum/kHaus, Basel (CH), 2022
The paradigm of «Never Stop Exploring» also manifests in Buckminster Fuller’s architectural model of the geodesic dome, which he envisioned as a self-sustaining, cybernetic, technocratic environment. Since the 1960s, geodesic domes are recurring in ecological discourse in strange ways, imagining futuristic, post-crisis living. The North Face collaborated with Fuller in the 1970s to adapt the dome for their tents and later used the motif on t-shirts to promote their slogan. Both artefacts – tent or t-shirt – are displaced artefact in «ex-de-plora».
Through a hybrid, dream-like experience, the installation blurs temporal and spatial boundaries by combining slow-motion images, tangible objects, distorted views on the outside of the wxhibition space.
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Eva Horn (2014): Future as Catastrophe. Columbia University Press.
Gyorgy Kepes et al. (1972): Arts of the Envorinment (Vol 6 of «Vision + Value).: George Barlitzer.
Lydia Kallipoliti (2018), The Architecture of Closed Worlds. Storefront for Art and Architecture.
T.J. Demos, Emily Eliza Scott, Subhankar Banerjee (2021): The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change. Routledge.
Installation Views: «ex-de-plora», Forum/kHaus (Basel, CH), 2022