a liquid platform on the climate crisis,
anthropocenic interactions and ecological transition a project by MUSE Science
Museum Trento conceived and curated by
Stefano Cagol
Eugenio Ampudia (ES), Nezaket Ekici
(TR/DE),
Elena Lavellés (ES), Shahar Marcus (IL),
Hans Op de Beeck (BE), Philip Samartzis (AU)
curated by Stefano Cagol
April 9-May 29, 2022
MUSE Science museum Palazzo delle Albere, Trento
The first exhibition
of WE ARE THE FLOOD addresses different aspects of the
Anthropocene through the research of six prominent
international artists, including Eugenio Ampudia (Spain),
Nezaket Ekici (Turkey/Germany), Elena Lavellés (Spain),
Shahar Marcus (Israel), Hans Op de Beeck (Belgium) and Philip
Samartzis (Australia). The nine exhibited
works– most of
them presented in Italy for the first time – move in the most
up-to-date areas of contemporary art through multiple
expressive languages, ranging from video art, documentation of
performances, living installations and actions, to sound art
and the most recent eco-acoustic research. The suggestions triggered by works that favour an
evocative, highly symbolic approach and refined aesthetic
research lead us to reflect, spanning from the icebergs and
fragmented ice of the Antarctic to the Negev desert, from
water to fire, from hypnotic black gold to the proposal for
a paradigm shift that puts life back at the centre,
according to a hypothesis of a new "Biocene".
WE ARE THE FLOOD is a liquid platform on the climate crisis,
anthropocenic interactions and ecological transition, a MUSE
project conceived and curated by Stefano Cagol to engage the
public with the Anthropocene using the language and
interpretation of contemporary art.
_____
Eugenio Ampudia
(Spain), Concierto para
el Bioceno, 2020, HD video, 7:30 min. Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcellona (ES). Courtesy
l’artista / the artist;
Max Estrella Gallery, Madrid (ES)
Opera segnalata da
/ Artwork selected by
Blanca de la Torre
The video artwork captures a concert
in the setting of the historic Gran Teatre del Liceu in
Barcelona, with a performance of an elegy for string quartet,
"Crisantemi" by the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, in front
of an undoubtedly exceptional audience: a line-up of over two
thousand green plants – 2,292 to be precise, as many as the
regular audience size of the theatre. Eugenio Ampudia states he
conceived this show for the plants as a symbolic act of
reformulation of the present, a paradigm shift based on an
eco-social compromise, in the balance between the demands of our
society and the needs of the environment. This proposal for
change is declared right from the title of the artwork through
the reference to the concept of "Biocene", brought forward in
the recent Bienal de Cuenca by the curator Blanca de la Torre,
which replaces the term Anthropocene - the definition of the
most recent era as that of our impact on the planet - to appeal
instead to the beginning of a new era with life (bíos) finally
considered at the centre.
Eugenio Ampudia (Spain, 1958) is one of Spain's
most successful artists. His conceptual artworks on the
contradictions accompanying us in our run towards the future
have been exhibited internationally in leading institutions such
as ZKM in Karlsruhe, The Whitechapel Gallery in London and
Matadero in Madrid. He has participated in several biennales,
including Cuenca (2021), Havana (2019) and Singapore (2006), and
in 2017 he was a finalist for the Spanish national pavilion at
the Venice Biennale.
_____
Nezaket Ekici (Turkey/Germany), Methexis. 2012, HD video, 3 min. Courtesy l’artista / the artist;Camera: Ben
Hertzog; Editing: Daniel Landau; Sound design: Daniel Meier;
Assistance: Maya Elran; Tamar Dekel; Naanma Bar-Or; Shahar
Marcus; Stills: Maya Elran
This video work by Nezaket Ekici results from a
performance that tests the artist's body and resistance in a
practice that we can ascribe to the sphere of the so-called
living installations. The work opens with an apparently
innocuous marine scene, but when the point of view goes through
close-up shots, the hostility of the place unveils in the
conspicuous salt crystals that identify the saltiest body of
water in the world, the Dead Sea. On this water that excludes
almost any possibility of life, a body floats, the face immersed
in the water, the eyes closed, the breath suspended. As well as
drawing attention to the various issues in our relationship with
water in all its forms – as many of the artist's works do – this
immersion brings to mind dreaded future scenarios of a planet
Earth that could become irremediably inhospitable to us. The
title evokes a Greek term, methexis, which can be translated as
participation and originally entered into Plato's philosophical
language to express the concept of the relationship of the part
with the essence, akin to the idea of the exhibition and our
"being flood".
Nezaket
Ekici (Turkey, 1970), international well known performance artist,
lives and works in Berlin and Stuttgart. She uses her body as a
means of expression and investigation, mainly developing her
practice through interactions with the public. At the Hochschule
für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig, Germany, she studied by
Marina Abramović’s class. Exhibited in museums like PS1 New York
(2004) and Istanbul Modern (2014), and participated in biennales
such as Venice (2007), Curitiba (2009) and Bangkok (2020).
_____
Elena Lavellés(Spain),
Pattern
of Dissolution, 2017, HD Vídeo, 30 min. Courtesy l’artista
/ the artist; Suono / Sound: Javier Lara
Opera
segnalata da / Artwork
selected by Blanca de la Torre
This video artwork
by the Spanish artist Elena Lavelléstakes three
different elements, oil, coal and gold, as emblems of
contemporary Western society, between development, crisis and
the consequences of its choices. In the images, these different
substances become an inseparable whole, which the artist
observes from extremely close points of view that amplify the
surfaces, reflections, flows and jolts. Hypnotic constellations
are formed, incessant and inexorable movements that become a
metaphor for the insistent and viscous wave that we can be.
These atmospheres are made even denser by a deep sound composed
especially for this work. Moves in the territories of
intersection between geology, ecology, social investigation and
aesthetic research, Lavellés refers to the questions of the
exploitation of natural resources, touching on the concepts of
materiality, duration and landscape.
Elena Lavellés (Spain, 1981) is
one of Spain's most promising artists, having just been awarded
the most prestigious accolade for Iberian artists: an invitation
to the Royal Spanish Academy in Rome. Among the awards, she
received Generaciones de La Casa Encendida in Madrid in 2018 and
she was part of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in
New York in 2017. She studied at the California Institute of the
Arts - CalArts in the United States and also philosophy and
geology at the Complutense University of Madrid.
_____
Shahar
Marcus (Israel),
Still
Burning,
2010, opera video / video work, 2:36 min. Courtesy l’artista / the
artist
Israeli artist Shahar Marcus stages fire, human
combustion, an image that, with its crudeness, leads to the idea
of the self-destruction of human beings and their role in the
complex concatenation of causes and effects of the phenomenon of
global warming. A person appears seated at a table, bent over
it, defenceless. Suddenly, flames surround him, but he remains
motionless, no jumps, no shakes, no attempts to free himself. A
shapeless material covers the upper part of the body: several
layers of dough envelop the torso, the limbs and the head. As
does in other of his artworks – the artist claims to draw
inspiration from his culture and to refer here to the golem, a
mythical figure from the ancient Jewish Kabbalistic tradition,
moulded from mud to protect us. The thought goes to our habit of
looking for solutions outside ourselves, searching for something
to exorcise the moment we live. But perhaps not even an
invincible golem can save us.
Shahar
Marcus (Israel, 1971) is one of the most prominent
Israeli artists on the contemporary scene and works mainly in
the fields of performance and video art, reflecting on the
narrative of his own history, traditions and environment. He
participated in the Moscow Biennale (2009) and exhibited at the
Tate Modern in London, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and in
major museums in his country, such as the Israel Museum, Tel
Aviv Museum of Art, Petach Tikva Museum of Art and Haifa Museum
of Art.
_____
Nezaket Ekici
(Turkey/Germany)
& Shahar
Marcus (Israel), Sand Clock, 2012, still da video / video still, Camera: Ben Hertzog. Editing:
Daniel Landau,
Courtesy gli artisti / the
artists
A four-handed performance by Nezaket Ekici and
Shahar Marcus in the Israeli Negev desert draw attention to the
idea of time related to our presence on Earth. Both artists
appear as part of a group of performers. They are in the sunny
desert, motionless like ancient sculptures emerging from the
sand. Their legs are streched apart and their arms are raised
above their heads, holding a transparent sphere from which a
thread of very fine grains inexorably descends on their bodies,
like those of a sandclock. Sand on them and all around them.
This allegory refers to the passage of time, to a time shared
between us and the environment and to the need to merge with it
to understand it. We are all together, yesterday and today, and
the artists want to underline it. This performance is part of
the ‘In Relation’ project, which comprises a series of video
works from performances carried out in collaboration by Nezaket
Ekici and Shahar Marcus through a dialogue with the landscape
and its primary elements.
Nezaket Ekici (Turkey, 1970) is an
international well known performance artist, lives and works in
Berlin and Stuttgart. She uses her body as a means of expression
and investigation. She studied by Marina Abramović’s class.
Shahar Marcus (Israel, 1971) is one of the most prominent
Israeli artists and works mainly in the fields of performance
and video art, reflecting on the narrative of his own history,
traditions and environment.
_____
Hans Op
de Beeck(Belgium), Staging Silence (3), 2019, still da video / video still, Courtesy
l’artista / the artist
In the image taken from one of the
latest evocative film works of the Belgian artist Hans Op de
Beeck, the protagonist is the act of "staging", which becomes a
metaphor for the human being's attitude of shaping and
subjugating what surrounds for use and consumption. On opposite
sides of the image, two hands are immortalised in the foreground
as they lay small "islands" on the water surface that complete a
larger motionless landscape. They are crumpled tinfoils
reflected on a dark, still liquid surface like the icy sea of a
rocky archipelago illuminated by twilight. The short circuit is
between the imagery of an unreachable, uncontaminated place and
the influence of our impact, which the artist symbolically
brings up to here. The suspension between illusion and
prevarication brakes appearances, proportions and balances, and
the two hands predominate over everything, embodying our innate
presumption of feeling like creative divinities who can do
anything.
Hans Op de Beeck (Turnhout, 1969) is one of
Belgium's most internationally acclaimed artists. His
multidisciplinary practice includes large-scale installations
and sculptures, but also video works, paintings and drawings,
developing reflections on our society and its dilemmas, from the
relationship with space and time to the idea of eternity. He has
participated in the Venice, Shanghai, Singapore, Kochi-Muziris
and Aichi Triennials, and exhibited at MoMA PS1 in New York, the
TATE Gallery in London, the ZKM in Karlsruhe and the Reina Sofia
in Madrid.
_____
Philip Samartzis (Australia), Brash Ice . Icebergs, 2010, opere sonore /sound works, registrate in
Antartide orientale / recorded
inEastern
Antarctica, Ingrid Christensen Coast, Courtesy l’artista/ the artist; Verbier 3-D
Foundation (CH)
The two sound works by Australian
Philip Samartzis, recorded in East Antarctica over ten years
ago, immerse us in an extreme polar landscape. They manage to
give voice to this hostile and remote continent through the
sounds coming from its most intimate belly: the ice moving on
the sea surfaces closest to the poles, from the icebergs to the
most transparent crystals. In these artworks, water in its
different states reminds us of its relevance in ecosystems and,
on the other hand, a protagonist of climate change and its
threats, amplified at the poles. The two pieces in the
exhibition are part of the "Floe" (ice floe) series: one brings
the ear closer to the movements of the most voluminous moving
masses of ice, the icebergs, while the other focuses on the
so-called brash ice, the accumulations of ice composed of
fragments no more than a couple of metres in diameter that float
and collide at the water's edge. The works are part of the field
of ecoacoustics, which investigates natural and anthropogenic
sounds and their relationship with the environment.
Philip Samartzis (Australia, 1963) is a sound
artist, professor at the RMIT School of Art in Melbourne and
artistic director of the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture. As an
Australian Antarctic Division Arts award winner (2009 and 2015),
he has worked in East Antarctica on Macquarie Island and the
research vessel Aurora Australis. In 2021 he worked at the High
Altitude Research Station at Jungfraujoch (HFSJG), invited by
the Swiss National Science Foundation.
