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
