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The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030–2100

1891, Br&uuml;hl, Germany&ndash;1976, Paris
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This portfolio of 34 collotype prints after frottage, shown here in two rotations for conservation purposes, was first published in 1926. In the summer of 1925, German artist Max Ernst allegedly discovered the frottage technique while staring at the wooden floor of his hotel. The fantastical landscapes and creatures that emerged from making rubbings of various objects gave Ernst the possibility to merge his &ldquo;inner model&rdquo; and the external world, and present frottage as an art form that best described the active relationship between humankind and the universe. It is worth noting that Darwin&rsquo;s Theory of Evolution only reinforced the Surrealists&rsquo; belief in metamorphosis, and one can see in the Ernst&rsquo;s taxonomy a subtle critique of the overly rational linear narrative in the evolution of life forms. The sequence of prints in Natural History symbolically ends with a human head turned to a wall, a work entitled Eve, the Only One Left to Us. 
By rubbing pencil over a surface covered with paper in the automatic manner of the Surrealists (letting the unconscious guide his hand), Ernst collected imprints from various objects belonging to the natural and man-made world, including leaves, crusts of bread, wooden boards, and wire mesh, each time developing the resulting textures using his own imagination. In the frottage The Earthquake, the delicate veins of a leaf are transformed into the trembling ripples of an earthquake. In the text introducing Ernst&rsquo;s Natural History, fittingly executed as piece of automatic writing, artist and longtime friend Jean (Hans) Arp states: &ldquo;it is man who has replaced the alarm clock with the tremors of an earthquake, the rain of drag&eacute;es with the precipitation of hail. when the shadow of a man encounters that of a fly it causes a flood. it is man too who has taught the horses to kiss as presidents.&rdquo;*
*Author&rsquo;s translation.

Max Ernst

1861, Nizhny Novgorod&mdash;1934, Leningrad
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Root sculptures, 1920s Wood, 22 &times; 22 &times; 27 cm, 29 &times; 20 &times; 17 cm, 25 &times; 25 &times; 34 cm, 27 &times; 16 &times; 15 cm, 18 &times; 20 &times; 18 cm, 30 &times; 26 &times; 46 cm Museum of Organic Culture, Kolomna
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These root sculptures by one of the leaders of Russian Futurism, Mikhail Matyushin, are a unique example of a conscious turn toward Nature during the avant-garde period, a time better known for its admiration for the Machine. In Nature&rsquo;s ready-mades Matyushin found what he seeking: the organic principle of movement that coincided with the form and structure of the material. The laws of natural growth inspired him to search for a new, fourth dimension in art.
Matyushin saw art as an act of creation and a continuation of Nature&rsquo;s creative work. &ldquo;The rocks are my fathers,&rdquo; he wrote, affirming the unity of the laws of organic and non-living nature. His vision of the world as an organic whole implied that humans were also an object for creative exploration, not in the avant-garde sense of constructing a new person but as a natural development of the possibilities &nbsp;of the human organism. In the 1920s, Matyushin headed the department of organic culture at the State Institute of Artistic Culture (GINKhUK) in Leningrad. There, he and his pupils studied the potential for expanding human attention, sense of touch, hearing and sight (including &ldquo;expanded seeing&rdquo; using the back of the head and the spine). Matyushin was both an artist and a musician, and this led him to examine the phenomenon of synesthesia and the relationship between color and sound.

Mikhail Matyushin

1887, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland&ndash;1965, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France
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Urbanism, Algiers, 1930 Courtesy Le Corbusier Foundation
June 28&ndash;September 15
Perspective view of roads Gelatin print on Canson paper, 74 &times; 118 cm
General perspective (first stage) with keys Gelatin print on Canson paper, 70 &times; 105 cm
Birds-eye view of the highway and construction Black pencil on tracing paper, 32 &times; 56 cm
Building perspective with silhouettes Black pencil and India ink on leather transfer paper,43 &times; 106 cm
Birds-eye view of the port Black pencil and India ink, gelatin print on Canson paper, 70 &times; 100 cm
Aerial perspective with buildings indicated India ink on leather transfer paper, 31 &times; 82 cm
September 16&ndash;December 1
General perspective (second stage) with keys Gelatin print on Canson paper, 61 &times; 105 cm
General perspective (third stage) with keys Gelatin print on Canson paper, 70 &times; 106 cm
General perspective. Traffic flows (Access to the territory of Fort L&rsquo;Empereur) India ink on leather transfer paper, 48 &times; 94 cm
Aerial perspective of the port and part of the city India ink on leather transfer paper, 59 &times; 87 cm
Perspective sketch of roadside construction, pedestrian pathways, and various premises Black pencil and India ink on tracing paper, 24 &times; 45 cm
Aerial perspective of the port and part of the city, with calculations Black pencil and India ink on tracing paper, 32 &times; 82 cm
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Presented here in two rotations for conservation purposes, the twelve original plans (executed using various techniques) feature different stages, elements, and perspectives of the grandiose yet unrealized Plan Obus for the city of Algiers on which the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier worked for eleven years. This plan is an early example of how urbanism and architecture slowly turned away from the modernist, self-referential intellectual space and technophile aspirations toward inspiration from nature, bodily forms, and allowing buildings to be shaped by the specificities of the landscape itself. In Algiers, Le Corbusier became fascinated with the casbah (the old citadel and the area around it), the vernacular architecture of which, as he writes, held &ldquo;the secrets of the human dimensions.&rdquo;
Le Corbusier traveled to North Africa as early as 1911, and he was a fervent believer that the Orient was destined to be a place for &ldquo;acting, composing, [and] creating modern life.&rdquo; He saw Algiers as a future capital of Africa and enthusiastically proposed visionary ideas that he considered unsuitable for France or Europe. If realized, the Plan Obus, however colonial its its underlying concept, would have been a masterpiece of twentieth-century urban planning, with an impressive megastructure superimposed on the existing city, its horizontal skyscrapers filled with gardens, its curved roads on top of residential buildings, and so on.

Le Corbusier

1938, Cologne&ndash;1973, D&uuml;sseldorf
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Land Art-Femsehausstellung I, 1969 16 mm film, with sound, video transferred to DVD, 32&rsquo; &copy; The artist and Ursula Wevers Groninger Museum, Netherlands
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First broadcast on German television on April 15, 1969, the film begins with short introductory speeches by its author&mdash;German video art pioneer Gerry Schum&mdash;and Van Abbemuseum director Jean Leering, as if the two were speaking at an exhibition private view. The speeches are followed by contributions from eight American and European artists created in close interaction with nature and from natural materials, all shown with no commentary. This film by Schum introduced viewers to the emergent Land Art movement, to which it also gave its name.
With its earliest works dating back to 1967 and 1968, Land Art was first presented as a movement at the 1969 exhibition Earth Art, and the majority of the show&rsquo;s participants were featured in Gerry Schum&rsquo;s film. Opposed to the idea of art as a commodity and blurring the line between the object and the context&mdash;the work and documentation&mdash;land artists believed they worked at the intersection between art and real life, an idea that was inherited by younger generations of artists concerned with ecology. Land artists wanted to escape from the conventional chain of art production and consumption (studio &ndash; gallery &ndash; collector), and all the works featured in the film subverted the stereotype of the artist as a creator working in the solitude of their studio. The land artists&rsquo; escape from their studios and galleries resonated with Schum&rsquo;s practice: he saw his mission in opening the closed, elitist gallery world to the public and making art more democratic through television. Land Art was his first experiment in creating a &ldquo;television gallery&rdquo;&mdash;a non-material institution that would come into existence during broadcasts and was based on the ideal of communicating artistic ideas instead rather than the ownership of objects.

Gerry Schum

b. 1943, New York. Lives and works in New York
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B-52 in Baby&rsquo;s Tears, 1972 Wood, earth, Helxine soleiroli 60 &times; 78 &times; 15
Prototype: (Sandbox B2), 2006 Wood, sand, 72 &times; 52 &times; 8.5 cm
Courtesy of the artist
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Martha Rosler is one of the very few artists who can find a strong political charge in almost any medium. Into the arsenal of natural materials widely&nbsp;exploited&nbsp;in&nbsp;male-dominated&nbsp;land and environmental art of the late 1960s, like soil, sand, and stones, she&nbsp;introduces living matter, such as cultivated plants, which in her case becomes a tool for anti-war critique.&nbsp;Recreating the all too familiar silhouette of a bomber in works made in 1972 and 2006, Rosler has produced powerful comments on the effects of war on the environment. The container she used originally was an agricultural tray of the type sold to homeowners and professional landscapers.
In 1972, she made a living sculpture of the famous B-52 bomber using the plant soleirolia soleirolii, commonly known as Baby&rsquo;s Tears. B-52s were the bombers used by the American military in Vietnam and, according to estimates, the total number of bombs they dropped was greater than for the entire duration of World War Two. In service since 1955, the B-52 is still the main long-range bomber of the US Air Force. The B-2 Stealth Bomber has been used by the U.S. Air Force during the conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In Prototype (Sandbox B2), Rosler recreated its silhouette in sand. As with the photomontage series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, which she created from approximately 1967 to 1972 and later revived in the 2000s, with these works Rosler employs artistic strategies she first used during the Vietnam War, updating them for a new century, In part reminding us of the continuity of the widespread destructiveness of war.

Martha Rosler

The group was formed in 1975 by Gennady Donskoy (b. 1956, Moscow), Mikhail Roshal (1956, Moscow&ndash;2008, Moscow), and Viktor Skersis (b. 1956, Moscow). It existed until 1979
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Captured in this photo is an action that Gnezdo (Nest) group performed in 1977 at Mikhail Roshal&rsquo;s apartment for an audience of around ten people. Responding to the environmental agenda that was becoming increasingly popular in the 1970s, the group made their modest contribution to the ecological cause: in a minute of not breathing, the three artists spared the environment about a liter (or 2 grams) of CO2, thus reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, which are believed to be the main cause of global warming. A standard car produces around 125 liters (250 grams) of CO2 per kilometer, but had all humans joined Gnezdo&rsquo;s action in 1977, they could have reduced CO2 emissions by almost 3 tons. That said, even this amount of CO2 has no significant impact on climate at the global level. Like Earth Hour, not breathing is a symbolic act. The action was not designed to lower emission levels, but to draw society&rsquo;s attention to anthropogenic climate change.
In previous projects, such as Helping the Soviet Government in the Struggle for the Harvest (1976) and Let&rsquo;s Get a Meter Closer (1977), the group mocked the ideological slogans of Soviet propaganda. A Minute Without Breathing, which imitated official moments of silence, seems to continue the series. It was also a rare example of unofficial Soviet artists engaging with the international artistic and environmental agenda: their ironic comment on the usefulness of art was inserted into a context where symbolic gestures devoted to ecology merged seamlessly with actual environmental activism.
Gnezdo&rsquo;s performance will be re-enacted at Garage throughout the exhibition. Every day at 19:00 all Museum visitors can join in a minute without breathing announced by Viktor Skersis.

Gnezdo (Nest) group

b. 1952, Richmond Heights, USA. Lives and works in Los Angeles
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Smog Collectors, 2019 10 porcelain plates, decal, smog. Each 26.6 cm diameter Courtesy of the artist
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Kim Abeles makes the works in her ongoing series Smog Collectors using time and city smog. Since 1987, the artist has been leaving objects partially covered with stencils in the open air. Over the course of a few days or weeks, smog particles from the polluted city air settle on the object in a dense layer and make the stencilled image visible. For the exhibition at Garage, Abeles used the smog in Moscow to produce several portraits of world leaders, featuring their quotes about the environment.
Smog Collectors make visible the air we breathe. Today the word &ldquo;smog,&rdquo; coined in 1905 in London from &ldquo;smoke&rdquo; and &ldquo;fog,&rdquo; refers to the global problem of air pollution in big cities, from London and Beijing to Los Angeles and Moscow. In 1992, Abeles exhibited a series of thirteen plates featuring smog portraits of American presidents and their quotes about the environment or industry. The length of each plate&rsquo;s exposure to smog corresponded to the president&rsquo;s environmental record. With her series for Garage, Abeles has taken her ecologically-engaged practice to the international level.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Kim Abeles

b. 1978, Croix, France. Lives and works in Antwerp
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Bum Shovel, 2015 Wood, pipe, rope, paint, paper, resin, plaster, metal, 136 &times; 44 &times; 23 cm Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris &mdash; Brussels&nbsp;
Getting Higher Shovel, 2015 Wood, rope, paint, resin, plaster, metal, lamp, 216 &times; 48 &times; 41 cm Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris &mdash; Brussels&nbsp;
Prehistoric Clean Shovel, 2015 Wood, rope, paint, resin, plaster, metal, brush, flints, basin, and plastic packaging 152 &times; 40 &times; 33 cm Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris &mdash; Brussels
Grated Shovel, 2015 Wood, rope, paint, resin, plaster, metal, bone, shovel, metal grater, gloves, clay 159 &times; 50 &times; 45 cm Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris &mdash; Brussels
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Assembled by hand from everyday objects such as a pipe, a kitchen grater, an enamel bowl, and a dishwashing brush, these shovels by French artist Laure Prouvost are mysterious tools that seem to have been invented to dig deep into human nature. Each has its own character, like an anthropomorphic creature with its own unique attitude and habits. Ironically inadequate for their suggested use, the shovels also remind us of the prehistoric past, when humans created their first tools and thus distinguished themselves from the rest of the natural world by gaining the power to transform it.

Laure Prouvost 

There is No Planet B

b. 1936, Cologne. Lives and works in New York
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Circulation, 1969 Water, air bubbles, circulating pump, plastic tubing, and connectors Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
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Hans Haacke&rsquo;s Circulation was first created at a time when the artist was working with natural elements like water, light, and wind, and interested in enclosed systems that imitated living, constantly changing organisms. Circulation is in continuous motion and reflects the conceptual tasks Haacke set himself: &ldquo;make something indeterminate, which always looks different, the shape of which cannot be predicted precisely; [. . .] make something which lives in time and makes the &lsquo;spectator&rsquo; experience time; articulate something Natural.&rdquo;
These principles from Haacke&rsquo;s Untitled Statement (1965) were later adopted by many eco artists, and although he is primarily known as a pioneer of institutional critique, he is also an important representative of environmental art. Unlike many of his colleagues and contemporaries, Haacke did not romanticize or objectivize pristine Nature. Instead, he introduced the idea of ecology as a system inseparable from political, economic, and social relations. In 1969, he presented the work Grass Grows at the seminal exhibition Earth Art at Cornell University, and started working with live systems in Chickens Hatching and Ant Co-op. Haacke&rsquo;s Rhinewater Purification Plant (1972) also demonstrates the &ldquo;system ecology&rdquo; approach. Alongside an acrylic container with purified water and goldfish, the artist displayed Krefeld Sewage Triptych, which incorporated the names of major contributors to local river pollution and formed a &ldquo;real-time social system&rdquo; demonstrating the reasons for the degraded ecosystem and alerting the public to such abuses. Natural processes inspired Haacke to see art as a social system that cannot exist behind museum walls autonomously from life.

Hans Haacke

1951, Erie, USA&ndash;2013, Los Angeles, USA
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Black Tide / Marea Negra, 2002/2003 Color analogue prints from slides, libretto Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna
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In the photographic series Black Tide / Marea Negra, American artist Allan Sekula documented the aftermath of the major oil spill from the tanker Prestige that took place off the Spanish coast in 2002. This impressive documentation of the event is complemented by a meditation on the long-term effects of the largest anthropogenic disaster in European waters: a libretto for an opera set in 2032, by which time, according to expert predictions, the area should have recovered from the spill.
In his photographic projects on the subject of the ocean, Sekula discovers amidst uninhabited and romantically deserted spaces a focus of multinational social life and global financial flows. The oil tanker Prestige was built in Japan, registered in the Bahamas with a Liberian-registered corporation as the owner, operated by a Greek company, and chartered by a Swiss-based oil trader that was shipping Russian oil from Latvia to Singapore. Its crew largely was largely made up of Filipinos and Romanians. The melancholy feeling produced by the pictures of the disaster and the heroic work of the volunteers is combined here with an open-ended scenario for the future. Sekula&rsquo;s documentation of the spill differs radically from conventional photojournalism (the artist describes his work as &ldquo;critical realism&rdquo;). His work aims to look at a concrete event within the complex reality and temporal perspective that most news reports fail to capture.

Allan Sekula 

b. 1973, Plaju, Indonesia. Lives and works in Jakarta, Indonesia
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1001st Island&mdash;The Most Sustainable Island in the Archipelago, 2015 Single-channel video, 14&rsquo; 11&rdquo;; rubbish, fishing net, wood, 540 &times; 200 &times; 40 cm Courtesy of the artist
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Indonesian artist Tita Salina built an artificial island from the plastic rubbish she collected off Jakarta&rsquo;s coast with the help of local fishermen. Setting off on a boat at dawn, she left her symbolic 1001st island to drift among the Thousand Islands, connecting the idea of land reclamation, which is important in the region, with other big issues: the rubbish disaster and the future of traditional fishing.
In fact the Thousand Islands, located to the north of Jakarta, consist of around one hundred tropical islands and coral atolls, some of which form part of a national park that is home to endangered turtles. As a result of rising sea levels and the destruction of the mangrove forests, Indonesia&rsquo;s islands are becoming submerged and there is a risk that, by 2050, 95% of Jakarta may be flooded due to excessive extraction of groundwater. The Indonesian government is investing in ambitious projects to build artificial islands off the country&rsquo;s coast, which, according to the experts, may aggravate the region&rsquo;s ecological problems. 1001st Island&mdash;The Most Sustainable Island in the Archipelago is a melancholic, ironic comment on the rhetoric of sustainable development, which often serves economic interests under the guise of &ldquo;green&rdquo; rhetoric and concern for the future.

Tita Salina 

founded 1987, Tallahassee, USA
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Environmental Triage: An Experiment in Democracy and Necropolitics, 2018/2019 Print, aquariums, water from various sources, dimensions variable Courtesy of the artists
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Continuing their recent interest in the organization and administration of death, the group Critical Art Ensemble uses the concept of triage to analyze necropolitics further. Triage is a medical term which means prioritizing a patient&rsquo;s treatment according to the extent of their injuries and in accordance with available resources. Where in normal circumstances a patient with a higher risk of death is treated first, in a situation of war or crisis the opposite priority is assigned. The artists transpose this concept from the field of medicine to ecology and the environment, exploring whether the same logic could be applied when choosing which local water resources to save in the face of an ecological catastrophe.
In collaboration with a Russian water expert, samples were taken from water sources in Moscow and surrounding areas. Triage will be implemented based on a public vote, which will take place during the exhibition. The voting process is a nod to what the artists consider one the &ldquo;greatest necropolitical art works,&rdquo; MOMA Poll (1970) by Hans Haacke, which was presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. By the end of the exhibition, sufficient votes will have been gathered in order to understand how triage could be organized in the Russian context.

Critical Art Ensemble

Erwin Driessens, b. 1963, Wessem, The Netherlands; Maria Verstappen, b. 1964, Someren, The Netherlands. Live and work in Amsterdam
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Sand Box, 2009 Wood, lacquer, metal, fans, sand, electronics, 245 x 122 x 176 cm Courtesy of the artists&nbsp;
Hot Pool, 2010 Wood, lacquer, metal, heating elements, fans, candle wax, electronics. Diameter 113 cm, height 154 cm Courtesy of the artists
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The Amsterdam-based duo Erwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen have worked in the field of generative art, software, and machines since the early 1990s. Presented here are two of their &ldquo;atmospheric&rdquo; dioramas, Sand Box and Hot Pool, which are a visual description of their conceptual interest in working with self-generating processes. Inspired by the non-subjective, spontaneous yet organized mechanisms observed in nature, the self-maintaining environments inside the works help create imaginary worlds existing in their own alternative climates. Through a small window in the boxes, viewers can see up close the desert-shaping interaction between the wind and sand or the icy landscapes of what seem to be melting icebergs.
Although it can be harmful to nature, technology has also opened up new ways of looking at and perceiving it. In this sense, the true evolutionary process based on complexity rather than control and order is perhaps better represented in the field of technology than in any other, continuously trying to assign visual language to the often invisible processes that shape our reality and our future. Driessens &amp; Verstappen see an artistic challenge in providing us with new ways of perceiving the world around us. They follow to the letter the spaces technology opens up, through which dimensions with an uncanny and mesmerizing likeness to our own continuously reconstitute humans&rsquo; relationship to nature.&nbsp;

Driessens & Verstappen 

b. 1973, Te Awamutu, New Zealand. Lives and works in Sydney
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Together Again, 2017/2019 Installation, dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist
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Lamenting the loss of the ancient relationship with the wild, in this work Australia-based artist Hayden Fowler&mdash;originally a biologist who majored in ecology and animal behavior&mdash;attempts to re-establish this connection for himself. Together Again is many things: its medium combines installation, performance, and virtual reality; its approach combines a means of being together with a wolf and encouraging discussions around the trust, empathy, sensitivity, respect, and equality between humans and animals. The work was first performed in Australia, where the artist worked with a rescued Australian Dingo which now shares his home. In Moscow, Fowler&rsquo;s companion is Yuki, a captive-born wolf whose parents were handed over to his current home after they &ldquo;retired&rdquo; from a local zoo. Trained as a performing animal within film and photo studio environments, Yuki met Fowler during the artist's site visit in November 2018. Without Yuki&rsquo;s consent&mdash;shown by accepting the artist&rsquo;s presence within his space&mdash;the performance would not be possible. First and foremost, Together Again has educational aspirations: to promote alternative means of human engagement with the environment and ecology.
For the performative part of the piece, Fowler shares a cage with Yuki while wearing a VR headset which recreates a virtual wilderness environment based on the local landscape. A tracker attached to the wolf&rsquo;s harness makes it possible to mirror the movements of the live wolf within the virtual wilderness. The artist and wolf exist together, both within the austerity of the cage and within the re-imagined freedom of a simulated natural environment. The artist states: &ldquo;Currently the world is facing a looming death of the ancient in both human culture and our environment, where the delayed effects of modernity and acceleration of technological industrialization are playing out. We are at a critical tipping point in extinction and the loss of our ancient relationships and physical experience of nature and particularly the wild.&rdquo;
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art would like to thank HTC Vive for help in organizing Hayden Fowler&rsquo;s performance&nbsp;Together Again.

Hayden Fowler 

b. 1977, Obninsk, Kaluga Region. Lives and works in Moscow
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Landscape with Birches, Buryatia, October 4, 2018, 2019 Lightbox, 298 x 720 x 10 cm Courtesy of the artist
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The image of a charred birch forest is as beautiful as it is disturbing. The even light on a cloudy day, the damp autumnal air, nature getting ready to fall asleep for the winter&mdash;this landscape looks almost metaphysical, as if untouched by humans. But the dramatic charring on the trees is there to remind us that forest fires are usually not natural disasters but of anthropogenic origin, i.e. they are often caused by human activities. In 2015, Baikal Nature Reserve in Buryatia, close to where these pictures were taken, lost 43,000 of its 70,000 hectares of forest and, according to expert predictions, the damage will not be repaired for decades.
According to Greenpeace, which based its estimate on official figures and satellite images, in 2018 fires affected 14&ndash;15 million hectares of Russian forests, an area twice the size of Ireland. As most of the fires took place in areas that are difficult to reach, no attempts were made to extinguish them. Because they are far away, such disasters often remain invisible or seem of little importance. As the rest of the world is beginning to understand the ecological catastrophe it is facing, Russia remains, in the collective imagination of its people, a nature reserve of clean lakes, dense forests, and ample natural resources.

Denis Sinyakov

Jennifer Allora (b. 1974, Philadelphia) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b. 1971, Havana) have been working together since 1995. They are based in Puerto Rico.) Ted Chiang (b. 1967, Port Jefferson, USA
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The Great Silence, 2016 Single-channel video, 16&rsquo; 53&rdquo; Courtesy of the artists
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Allora &amp; Calzadilla&rsquo;s work, produced in collaboration with the science fiction writer Ted Chiang, focuses on the world&rsquo;s largest (at the time the video was made) radio telescope, located at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and the last wild population of endangered Amazona vittata parrots, which inhabit the Rio Abajo forest surrounding the observatory. Told from the point of view of a parrot, the story is full of paradoxes: humanity has built an enormous machine to transmit and receive radio signals from the far corners of the Universe in the hope of finding intelligent life on other planets, and yet cannot recognize the existence of a different intelligent life form on Earth.
While humanity persistently searches the universe for vibrations that would indicate the existence of life in the lifeless &ldquo;distance,&rdquo; it is indifferent to the disappearance of life forms closer to home. This is particularly surprising, as parrots are one of the rare species which share our ability for vocal learning, a process which also involves vibrations. The &ldquo;great silence&rdquo; that humanity hears in response to signals sent into space creates a feeling of &ldquo;great loneliness&rdquo; on Earth. And while the parrot&rsquo;s story tells of the amazing discovery in humans of another thinking creature, the artists suggest that the viewer cast doubt on humankind&rsquo;s ability to think rationally. The video ends on a heart-wrenching phrase that a real parrot named Alex said to his owner before dying.

Allora & Calzadilla

b. 1947, Cleveland, USA. Lives and works in San Francisco
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Primal Sonic Visions: Geothermal Energy, 2018 Single-channel video, 22&rsquo; 44&rdquo; Courtesy of the artist
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American sound artist Bill Fontana&rsquo;s large-scale project exploring alternative sources of energy was commissioned by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Featuring over twenty recordings from across the planet, the work allows us to see and hear the energy of the Sun, wind, water, and Earth. For the exhibition at Garage, Fontana has made a compilation of four tracks recorded in Iceland and Italy that focus on geothermal energy.
A believer in the huge potential of renewable energy for the future and the necessity of developing it today in order to mitigate the environmental impact of the fossil fuel economy, Fontana has created a deeply moving piece. This meditative video and its immersive soundtrack give the audience an experience of the primal power and beauty of wind, water, and thermal springs, which, Fontana believes, can in turn bring a better understanding of our relationship with the planet and its resources. Ultimately, this experience can be at least as convincing as any scientific conference or public debate on climate change.

Bill Fontana

род. 1960, Эммелорд, Нидерланды. Живет и работает в Джокьякарте, Индонезия
Dogwalk, 2016/2019 Leather, stuffed cow and goat feet, two-channel video. Dimensions variable, video, 3&rsquo; 10&rdquo; Courtesy of the artist
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The twelve costumes created by Yogyakarta-based artist Mella Jaarsma operate both as an installation and as a set of separate, wearable items. The set comes alive once a week as a part of a performance in which actors wearing the &ldquo;uniforms&rdquo; transform into half human-half animals strolling through the Museum and holding each other on leashes. Alluding to a contemporary version of ancient anthropomorphic animals, which featured in numerous cultures as deities or god-like creatures with supernatural powers or which behaved outside established norms, Dogwalk reflects on the long and ambivalent relationship between humans and animals and, more broadly, on the overly simplistic binary oppositions we often operate within.

Mella Jaarsma (Dogwalk)

b. 1960, Emmeloord, The Netherlands. Lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia
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Laws of Nature, 2016 Teakwood and fur, dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist
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Laws of Nature, the second work by Jaarsma presented in the exhibition, questions the dichotomies human/animal and human/nature. Slippers are footwear usually worn at home or in order to feel more comfortable and they can be found in various shapes, including humorous forms such as oversized animal paws for both children and adults. The three pairs of unusual slippers that constitute the artwork are made of teak and fur and sculpted in the shape of huge human feet. In previous versions of the work, visitors could walk through the exhibition space wearing the slippers, emphasizing the awkwardness and tautological nature of wearing human feet over human feet within a man-made environment. However, the image a bare foot appears very natural, or at least as natural as seeing a human wearing fluffy animal paws.

Mella Jaarsma (Laws of Nature)

b. 1960, Padua. Lives and works in Milan and New York
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Others, 2011 Stuffed pigeons, dimensions variable Private collection
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A row of taxidermied pigeons curiously inspects visitors from above, most of whom will probably walk through the exhibition without even noticing the birds. This somewhat invisible work by artist Maurizio Cattelan is in fact rather emotional: it uses pigeons that were killed during a regular sanitization of а city near Venice, where their population is controlled. Cattelan draws attention to these highly marginalized birds as well as to exhibition visitors. Considered as pests that not only ruin the urban fabric but also spread disease, in tourist destinations like Venice pigeons are hunted down. Yet they still seem to be everywhere, as they are extremely well adapted to urban life. The reference to the myriad tourists who disembark in the city and the numerous visitors to its biennials and other exhibitions is evident.
In fact, the concept behind Others has been recycled by Cattelan, who exhibited a similar work with pigeons, entitled Tourists, at the Venice Biennale in 1997 and staged it again in a slightly different way in 2011, also at the biennale. For Cattelan the pigeons underline a relationship with time rather than with the city. He noted that for him the exhibitions that take place at the biennale always seem the same, as if nothing ever changed. It is unusual to see pigeons inside the Museum, but somehow they are such a familiar, common sight that one passes by the work without paying much attention.

Maurizio Cattelan

1967, Ottawa. Lives and works in London
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Delay Decay, 2016 20 digitized cover pages of newspapers, 59 x 42 cm each, lightbox 63 x 855 x 90 cm; two-channel 4K video, silent, 6&rsquo; 34&rdquo;; archival video, 5&rsquo; 24&rdquo; Courtesy of the artist
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The twenty back-lit pages of the cover of Pravda published between April 26 and May 15, 1986 reflect the 19-day gap between the biggest nuclear accident in history, which took place at Chernobyl, and its eventual public disclosure. The most recent newspaper in the vitrine features a transcript of the televized address to the nation by head of state Mikhail Gorbachev on May 14. All the while, the radioactive clouds, as represented by the video, were spreading contamination far beyond the immediacy of the disaster zone.
In Susan Schuppli&rsquo;s work, the disaster itself is not represented: the artist believes that photographs from the exclusion zone often look too romantic in their depiction of an industrial ruin that is slowly being engulfed by nature. In presenting evidence of the Soviet government&rsquo;s prolonged silence, Schuppli makes no accusations and no excuses. Whether an earlier public announcement could have mitigated the fatal consequences remains a question, as do debates around whether the restoration of the ecological balance in the affected areas will take centuries or millennia. Delay Decay is an invitation to revisit the responsibility and risks involved in harnessing the &ldquo;peaceful atom,&rdquo; which currently remains the cheapest and&mdash;under optimum conditions&mdash;the most ecological source of energy. &nbsp;&nbsp;

Susan Schuppli

Profiles of the future

b. 1965, Freetown, Sierra Leone. Lives and works in Melbourne
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The Comforter, 2010 Silicone, fiberglass, steel, fox fur, human hair, clothing, 60 &times; 80 &times; 80cm Olbricht&nbsp;Collection&nbsp;
Litter, 2010 Silicone, fiberglass, human and animal hair. Sculpture 16 &times; 46 &times; 41 cm, pillow 63 &times; 59 cm Olbricht&nbsp;Collection
&nbsp;
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In the list of materials used in the works of artist Patricia Piccinini it would seem natural to see, alongside the animal and human hair, a mixed array of various DNA and genes. The hyperrealism and biomimetic qualities of the creatures the artist creates transcend our tendency toward simplification and easy labels, as they fundamentally challenge what being human means. The hairy teenage girl, tenderly named The Comforter, could well be suffering from a condition called hypertrichosis, which is believed to be a genetic disorder or the result of a mutation. Her only preoccupation, however, seems to be comforting the newborn she is holding, her head lovingly tilted toward the amorphous being which is, in fact, a pharm animal. In Litter, three orphaned baby creatures cuddle together to sleep, too fragile to care about what or who they are.
Although we seem to know a lot about genetic engineering, interspecies breeding, and so on, when presented with the physicality of what this &ldquo;otherness&rdquo; looks like we face the inevitable question of whether society is ready to take an evolutionary leap toward that level of tolerance and interconnectedness. In this sense, Piccinini&rsquo;s new species seem to be cautious: their inertness and inanimate nature could well be a state of nervousness in the face of a possible future encounter.

Patricia Piccinini 

b. 1973, San Miguel de Tucum&aacute;n, Argentina. Lives and works in Berlin
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Gravitational solitary solitary Choreography Beta Scorpii built by: a solo Nephilasenegalensis - three weeks, and a solo Psechrus jaegeri &ndash; four weeks, 2018 Courtesy of the artist
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Reacting to any movement of the air, the fragile web architecture presented in this glass cube is the result of a &ldquo;collaboration&rdquo; between two species of arachnids. The title includes the names of the species that contributed to the making of this tiny universe and the amount of time it took. Webs are believed to be an extension of a spider&rsquo;s sensory and cognitive systems, so the gravity-defying galaxies suspended in the air inside the cube are created through a combination of the sensory experiences of different creatures and their acts of communication. Each spider/web, sharing its space and threads with others, is a living product of interspecies collaboration and a metaphor for the hybrid relationships between humans and non-human species in the world outside the box.
With his series of works produced in collaboration with spider/webs, Argentinian artist Tom&aacute;s Saraceno invites humans to adjust their sensory apparatus to the environment of other species and experience new ways of living together. The installation becomes a space where visitors can, among other things, watch themselves as a community in the state of becoming. Saraceno believes that a physical space inhabited by humans and other species has a creative force that can destroy the current order and produce new, shared hopes. The web here symbolizes both the technocratic Internet and the fragile balance of relationships in the real environment.

Tomás Saraceno 

Boryana Rossa (b. 1972, Sofia) and Oleg Mavromatti (b. 1965, Volgograd). Live and work in USA and Bulgaria
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The Mirror of Faith, 2006&ndash;ongoing Bio-art installation, performance, video 12&rsquo; 55&rdquo;, dimensions variable Courtesy Boryana Rossa
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Shown for the first time at The Coming World, the installation by art collective ULTRAFUTURO examines the turbulent relationship of science and religion throughout history, something which is further complicated by the rise of mass media. The Mirror of Faith takes as its point of departure the much-debated discovery of the &ldquo;God gene&rdquo; as a result of research conducted by molecular biologist Dean Hamer and published in his eponymous book in 2004. According to Hamer&rsquo;s theory, humans with a specific mutation in Intron 7 of the VMAT2 gene (Vesicular monoamine transporter 2) are predisposed to spirituality. The idea that faith in God can be &ldquo;programmed&rdquo; in people provoked heated discussions and debates, and The Mirror of Faith is an artistic representation of this concept. It comprises a mural, video documentation, a performance, and a reliquary containing yeast cells&mdash;an organic fungus that has no consciousness&mdash;which have been injected with the God gene obtained from a human volunteer. If we believe the theory, the genetically modified yeast should be considered a holy relic.
In 2014, as a resident at Hangar in Barcelona, Rossa worked with Dr. Michael Edel and Dr. John Gibling in the Pluripotency Laboratory at the University of Barcelona. They collected and isolated DNA samples from volunteers, including artists, scientists, and religious practitioners, exploring the subject with a good dose of humor. The isolated VMAT2 with mutation in Intron 7 (or the God gene) was transfected into a primary organism&mdash;yeast cells&mdash;in order to question both what defines spirituality and the technique of genetic engineering. Alluding to the story of Thomas the Apostle (Doubting Thomas), who did not believe in Jesus&rsquo; resurrection, the artists give the audience the opportunity to touch a new relic and find out for themselves whether it works.

ULTRAFUTURO

Sascha Pohflepp (1978, Cologne&ndash;2019, Berlin), Matthew Lutz (b. 1980, Pennsylvania, USA. Lives and works in Berlin), Alessia Nigretti (b. 1996, Catania, Italia. Lives and works in New York
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Those Who, 2019 Multimedia installation with dynamic content, dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist
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Produced specially for The Coming World, Sascha Pohflepp&rsquo;s artwork is based on his research at the State Darwin Museum in Moscow as part of the Garage Field Research program. Critically rethinking our understanding of evolution, and in particular the idea of the determinism of classical evolutionary theory that exists alongside &ldquo;irrational&rdquo; versions of phenogenesis, Pohflepp has created an imaginary extension to the Darwin Museum, which was one of the first museum displays in Europe to examine the theory of evolution. In this speculative museum, evolution is driven not by natural selection or genetic drift but by anthropogenic technology: a combination of synthetic biology and genetic engineering with artificial neural networks as sources of imagination.
Pohflepp believes that with the development of advanced biotechnology and artificial intelligence we are entering a new era in which evolutionary history may see an unexpectedly rapid rise in the diversity of man-made creatures. This spotlights questions of how artificial intelligence knows and imagines the world, how creative potential can be defined when the subject of creativity is life itself, and how natural and unnatural evolution might coexist in future.

Sascha Pohflepp, in collaboration with Matthew Lutz and Alessia Nigretti

b. 1975, Stavropol. Lives and works in Moscow
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Temple of Venus, 2019 Installation, video, &nbsp;4&rsquo; 32&rsquo;&rsquo; Courtesy of the artist
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This new, site-specific work by Sergei Kishchenko is driven largely by his long-term research into the history of fertility cults and partly by the architecture of the exhibition, which resembles a space station from a Tarkovsky movie. It is made up of various different elements that come together to form a temple or ritualized space, more specifically a temple of Venus embodied in the ancient forms of Mother Earth located at the center. On one side of the capsule, a group of highly magnified black-and-white photographs of seeds allude to women&rsquo;s historic role in the development of agriculture. A series of new works references the papyri found carbonized in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum, which had to await the arrival of new technology enabling us to read these documents from the oldest surviving library on the planet and unravel the knowledge we lost to Mother Earth.
In Kishchenko&rsquo;s scenario, a room like this could exist on a space station or a space ship departing our destroyed planet. &nbsp;The key to understanding Temple of Venus is Giulio Camillo&rsquo;s Theater of Memory, an epic idea for a universal archive which the Renaissance Italian philosopher worked on but never realized. Contained in a single room and resembling an amphitheater, it was designed to facilitate the retrieval of any micro or macro connection that passed through the universe and our memory.

Sergei Kishchenko

b. 1981, Montreal. Lives and works in Montreal
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The Nine Eyes of Google Street View, 2009&ndash;ongoing Slide show, 36' 32&rdquo; Courtesy of the artist
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Selected especially for The Coming World, the collection of images on view is part of Jon Rafman&rsquo;s ongoing project The Nine Eyes of Google Street View. Over the past decade, Rafman has been compiling a vast archive of Google Street View stills, creating an epic record of humanity in action in the spirit of pioneering street photographers. Each time the images are shown, the collection is shaped and structured according to different criteria, influencing how they are read and interpreted. As the artist puts it, &ldquo;Street View collections represent our experience of the modern world, and in particular the tension they express between our uncaring, indifferent universe and our search for connectedness and significance.&rdquo;
Captured by a robotized camera, they show the world untainted by emotions or moral dimensions: a dog peeing on a wall, a car crash and a boy crying, two women standing with two guinea pigs on a leash, a butterfly flying in the middle of a dirty street, children running and laughing, a blaze of light. The images have an effect on us through their rough aesthetic, but most notably through the meaning we seek in them and ultimately never fail to ascribe&mdash;one of the features that makes us human&mdash;regardless of how insignificant the subject may be.

Jon Rafman

b. 1979, Uri, Switzerland. Lives and works in Zurich and Bern
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Purity of Vapors, 2012 Silicone, pigments, 111 SmartWater bottles, fridge, 180 &times; 60 &times; 61 cm Courtesy of the artist and Spr&uuml;th Magers
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In Purity of Vapors plastic water bottles are presented as natural objects: positioned as beauty and wellness products that cleanse the body from within, bottles of water promise us eternal youth and natural purity, which have become commodities. Taking the feast of natural purity on supermarket shelves to the extreme, Pamela Rosenkranz fills empty water bottles with skin-toned silicone that looks like a homogenized solution of a body belonging, perhaps, not to a human but to a perfectly smooth barbie doll, empty on the inside.
Rosenkranz&rsquo;s interest in synthesized scents and skin-toned pigments, as well as her use of commercial color names (Creamy Brown, Fresh Ebony, Milky Stay) mark her art as extremely nonorganic. In several works reminiscent of those by French artist Yves Klein, she seems to mock the idea of &ldquo;natural&rdquo; creative expression by producing expressionist paintings after ingesting Viagra. She is equally sceptical of lifestyle brands and their slogans, such as Fiji&rsquo;s &ldquo;Untouched by man,&rdquo; Evian&rsquo;s &ldquo;The most important body of water is yours,&rdquo; and ASICS&rsquo; &ldquo;anima sana in corpore sano&rdquo; ("a healthy soul in a healthy body"). Exploring the empty centers of history, politics, and contemporary culture, Rosenkranz invites the viewer to think of how our philosophical and scientific understanding of what is &ldquo;natural&rdquo; and &ldquo;human&rdquo; is changing in the epoch known as the Anthropocene.

Pamela Rosenkranz  

b. 1982, Frankfurt, Germany. Lives and works in London
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Geomancer, 2017 HD video, stereo sound, 48&rsquo; 15&rdquo; &copy; Lawrence Lek Courtesy of the artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London Commissioned for the Jerwood / Film &amp; Video Umbrella Award
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Lawrence Lek&rsquo;s CGI fantasy&nbsp;Geomancer&nbsp;tells the story, set in Singapore in the year 2065, of an environmental satellite that wishes to become an artist. The film imagines the crisis that might happen when the world has become a techno-industrial complex run by a posthuman intelligence, and humanity is no longer considered special. In an automated world where algorithms dedicated to copying and studying massive amounts of data have appropriated every profitable human behavior, art could become the last refuge of humanity. But what will happen when an emotionally-aware AI gains the power of self-expression, and creative genius is no longer the domain of humanity? Lek's&nbsp;Geomancer, with its 3D animation and synthetic voice-over, seems to be an example of posthuman aesthetics: a visual and intellectual exercise anticipating the usurpation of creativity by AI.&nbsp; Drawing on his 2016 video essay&nbsp;Sinofuturism (1839&ndash;2046 AD), Lek&rsquo;s u(dys)topian world reflects the growing geopolitical influence of the East, and cultural mutation of contemporary China. &ldquo;Classic&rdquo; Western futurism, with its rejection of the past and its cult of speed and production, gives way to the hopes and fears associated with AI and the nonhuman. Departing from conventional science fiction portrayals of human-machine relations, Lek explores the dynamic new era of sinofuturism, presenting it not as a manifesto or a call to action but as a conspiracy theory that allows us to better understand the complexities of today.

Lawrence Lek

Artist collective formed in 2000 by Helgard Haug (b. 1969, Sindelfingen, Germany), Stefan Kaegi (b. 1972, Basel, Switzerland), and Daniel Wetzel (b. 1969, Konstanz, Germany). Live and work in Berlin
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win&gt;&lt;win, 2017/2019 Multimedia installation Commissioned for the exhibition After the End of the World and initially produced by CCCB (Barcelona) with FACT+BLUECOAT+RIBA NORTH (Liverpool)
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Rimini Protokoll&rsquo;s immersive installation invites the viewer on a journey through time that may seem so real it will be impossible to forget. In the future, we will encounter creatures that emerged on our planet 670 million years ago and will continue to survive when many other species have vanished from the face of the Earth. The name of the project refers to the win-win principle, which allows both sides in an interaction to benefit from it without the other side losing. But if these amazing ancient creatures are destined to win as a result of human impact on the planet, what guarantees are there that we will survive?
The warming of the ocean, overfishing, and even the increase in the quantity of algae all seem to work in favor of jellyfish, which are already virtually immortal in their polyp stage, when they reproduce through budding. Resulting from a collaboration with marine biologists and environmental activists, Rimini Protokoll&rsquo;s work changes our understanding of these animals and offers us an opportunity to see ourselves from the outside.

Rimini Protokoll

b. 1970, Valmiera, Latvian SSR. Lives and works in Riga
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FOOOD 2050, 2014&ndash;2019 Digital print on paper, acrylic cube, 410 &times; 507 &times; 25 cm Courtesy of the artist
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It is believed that in the first century AD, 150 million people were living on Earth. By the early nineteenth century the number was 978 million, and over the course of the twentieth century the population grew from two to seven billion. The United Nations predicts that by 2050 the planet&rsquo;s population will reach ten billion people, and 70% more food will be required to feed them. Even today, humanity is unable to feed itself without the use of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and GMO, and over the next forty years we will need to produce more food than we have over the past 8,000 years. Teaming up with microbiologist Jānis Liepiņ&scaron; and the company GenScript, artist Gints Gabrāns offers an alternative to the endless expansion of the food industry: genetically modified bifidobacteria that can synthesise enzymes which will allow humans to metabolise cellulose, and therefore obtain more nutrients from common foodstuffs, and eat paper and wood.
Cellulose (dietary fibre) makes up a considerable part of plant-based foods, but it cannot currently be digested by humans and therefore has no nutritional value. With the enzymes that break down cellulose, humans will be able to obtain around 30% more nutrients from foods like potatoes, carrots, rye, wheat, rice, buckwheat, cabbages, and leafy greens. Moreover, if we could digest cellulose, 100 grams of paper would give us more energy than 100 grams of bread. An enzyme allowing to break down cellulose is not a sci-fi idea but an actual scientific invention that could potentially save humanity from hunger not only in the overpopulated world of the future, but also today, when over 800 million people suffer from hunger and chronic malnutrition. According to the World Health Organization, 46,000 people starve every day, which means one person dies from starvation every two seconds. FOOOD 2050 could change that.
The virtual reality extension of this project, developed by the artist specifically for the exhibition, is available through the QR code. A virtual skyscraper 30 km high is placed above the Museum building and is activated through its GPS coordinates. The building hosts the FOOOD 2050 office, as well as the Diabetes Center, Methane Control Center, and other organizations ensuring life support on the overpopulated planet.

Gints Gabrāns

Practicing ecological thinking

Founded 2006. Live and work in Amsterdam
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Materialism, pencil, 2018 Mixed media (polyvinylchloride, copper), 2.8 &times; 1.8 &times; 2.4 cm Courtesy of the artists
Materialism, Volkswagen Beetle, 2018 Mixed media (cotton, polyurethane, horse hair, steel, rubber, tar, aluminum, wood powder, tectyl, glass, polyoxymethylene, lacquer paint, polyvinylchloride, acid, aluminum magnesium alloy, paper, grease, motor oil, gear oil, polyamide, acrylonitrilebutadiene-styrene, brake fluid, lead, polymethyl methtacrylate, stainless steel, copper, bakelite, high-density polyethylene, cork, brass, glass wool, porcelain, plexiglass, polybutylen, terephthalate, magnet, kit, graphite, vitrite,&nbsp; tin, chrome, wolfram), 316.7 &times; 123.8 &times; 105 cm Courtesy of the artists
Materialism, Cable, 2018 Mixed media (wood, graphite, paint), 6 &times; 4.5 &times; 2.5 cm Courtesy of the artists.
Materialism, AK47, 2019 Mixed media (maple wood, steel, carbon steel, paint, bakelite, resin, chrome, smokeless powder, brass, lead, tracer compounds, lacquer, copper, lead styphate, paper), 30 &times; 27.4 &times; 130 cm Courtesy of the artists.
Materialism, M16, 2019 Mixed media (aluminum, glass fiber, steel, carbon steel, stainless steel, hard anodized coating, phosphate coating, chrome, smokeless powder, brass, lead, tracer compounds, cupronickel, paper, lead styphate, nickel), 28.5 &times; 24.9 &times; 110 cm Courtesy of the artists.
Materialism, 2018/ 2019 Video, 4&rsquo; 35&rdquo; Courtesy of the artists.
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Although the name of the work consists of a single word, Materialism, the list of materials used to create it is unusually long and, at first sight, does not match the stylized, minimalist cubes displayed on the series of plinths. Amsterdam-based artist duo Studio Drift &nbsp;describe the process used to arrive at this visual presentation as opposed to that of production. Fascinated by the idea of understanding (again) what the objects around us are made of, they deconstruct them, measure them, analyze their proportions, and finally present them as three-dimensional infographics. The objects selected for this iteration of Materialism range from everyday items such as a pencil, an iPhone (4S), and a plastic bag to those in more limited circulation: guns such as the AK-47 (also known as the Kalashnikov) and M16.
While slowly replacing nature&rsquo;s ability to awe humans, technology and science are becoming equally complex fields, yet they often create more alienation from what they produce than identification with it. This installation may appear to alienate us further from the objects by presenting their anatomy in such standardized cubes, but this form and its various manifestations also help us see what the materials we are surrounded by actually have in common, their interconnectedness, which is disguised by different shapes or simply concealed from view.

Studio Drift 

b. 1981, Vidnoye, Moscow Region. Lives and works in Moscow
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Karma, 2019 Installation, dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist
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In Karma, Obrazumov continues his investigation into the daily rituals of corporate spaces and the way they reflect the collective unconscious of office culture. This installation explores the consumer trends inspired by green marketing: healthy lifestyle, superfoods, organic and ecological produce. Illogical pairings of objects found in a contemporary office&mdash;upside-down lamps filled with artificial grass, superfoods in liquid soap dispensers&mdash;invite us to review the new habits of &ldquo;mindfulness&rdquo; as unconscious attempts to earn karma points and buy peace of mind in the face of a global ecological crisis.
Karma is the latest in Obrazumov&rsquo;s series of works devoted to the collective unconscious, from a study of mystical rituals that are supposed to bring luck and wealth (7753191, 2015) to a visualization of the economy of stress and worry in the life of an office worker (Reduced Functionality Mode, 2018). Green consumer trends are presented as markers of ecological trauma: by purchasing certain goods, we hope to mute our anxiety about the environment. A karma audit reveals the merging of consumerism and metaphysics in the life of ordinary people who do not know what else they can do to help the planet.

Alexander Obrazumov (Karma)

b. 1981, Vidnoye, Moscow Region. Lives and works in Moscow
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Un/recyclable, 2019 Installation, 140 x 2,124 x 8 cm Courtesy of the artist
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The light object which Alexander Obrazumov produced for the exhibition is placed inside the gallery in such a way that it is only visible from the outside. Un/recyclable is a comment on the ambiguous nature of green rhetoric. Turning his attention to the three pillars of ecological mindfulness&mdash;the three Rs of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle&mdash;Obrazumov shows how a message can change depending on the perspective. On their way to the Museum, visitors see a sign in the distance that reads &ldquo;recyclable,&rdquo; but as they approach the entrance the prefix &ldquo;un&rdquo; appears, changing the meaning of the word to its opposite. In the traditional of institutional critique, this message can be read as a comment on the Museum&rsquo;s own green policy, but the artist is interested in the broader context.

Alexander Obrazumov (Un/recyclable)

b. 1984, Moscow. Lives and works in Moscow
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Pass Me the Salt, Please, 2019 Site-specific installation, dimensions variable Сourtesy of the artist
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Created specially for the exhibition, the immersive installation by Russian artist Anastasia Potemkina reproduces the look and therapeutic effects of a salt room. Salt therapy, also called halotherapy, is a type of cleansing procedure that reproduces the climate found in natural salt caves and is often used in spa centers. It is believed that air enriched with highly-dispersed aerosols (minute particles) of sodium chloride has a positive effect on the respiratory system because it contains few allergens and pollutants and also has a bactericidal effect. Potemkina goes beyond the exploration of the physical effects of salts and uses them as transmitters of energy, something which crystals are believed to do. Together with the plants in the room, which Potemkina identifies as magnifiers of signals, she creates a system to facilitate a human ability yet to be explored in detail: synesthesia, an emphatic, non-verbal form of communication. If cultivated further, synesthesia could allow us to relate to other-than-human species and objects, achieving a more holistic and accurate understanding of the environment we live in.
Pass Me the Salt, Please includes a set of seven translucent, circular plates displayed on the walls behind the chaise-longues where visitors can lie down. Each is engraved with an image of a plant.These plants have been used since ancient times by various cultures as medicines or anaesthetics, but also for spiritual and religious practices, as a way to achieve a different level of consciousness that allows humans to get the answers they need from the myriad invisible information channels around them. For the artist, the potential for developing heightened perceptual qualities lies dormant within our mental capabilities and is a key sphere to develop in the future.

Anastasia Potemkina

Formed by Sixten Kai Nielsen (b. 1978, Fredensborg, Denmark) and Martin Rosengaard (b. 1979, Helsing&oslash;r, Denmark) in 2002. Live and work in Copenhagen
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Human Hotel. Ten Years of Radical Human Matchmaking (2009&ndash;2019), 2019 Installation, dimensions variable Courtesy of the artists
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The Danish art collective Wooloo, which works with social sculpture, presents the decade-long history of the social project Human Hotel and offers a means of extending art beyond the temporal and spatial limitations of the exhibition. Attempting to contrast symbolic acts in the field of art with real-life practices, Wooloo collaborated with Garage Field Research to initiate a Human Hotel community in Moscow and develop a self-learning algorithm that will in future suggest to users ecologically responsible solutions and models of behavior.
Wooloo first became involved in the global environmental movement during the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen (2009), where the group helped over 3,000 activists from across the globe to find accommodation outside of the overbooked hotels through an informal network of local hosts. This large-scale exercise in social cooperation radically transformed the collective&rsquo;s practice and formed the basis for Human Hotel: a community which brings together like-minded hosts and travelers through communication and mutual support.
Shifting their artistic and organizational energy from traditional exhibition practices to working with the everyday and creating useful tools for the global community, Wooloo return to the world of art with a radical project. The self-learning algorithm developed by the group echoes Google&rsquo;s alleged experimental project &ldquo;The Selfish Ledger,&rdquo; which leaked online, a program that would collect data to create encoded versions of users and potentially &ldquo;improve&rdquo; them by not only predicting their behavior but also directing it. In the coming world of pressing ecological problems such social engineering may indeed be necessary.

Wooloo

b. 1957, Accra, Ghana. Lives and works in London
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Purple, 2017&nbsp; Six-channel video Installation, 62&rsquo; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna
The video installation is on view&nbsp;from June 15 to November 17, 2019
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John Akomfrah&rsquo;s impressive epic video is composed of cinematic and newly-shot footage from the farthest corners of the world. The installation immerses the viewer in the color purple, a hybrid hue that combines the coldness of blue and the warmth of red, thus symbolizing the complexity and interdependence of every living thing. The montage of scenes of natural beauty creates a painful sense of the looming loss that humanity is facing. The reference to Tyrian purple, an expensive pigment which was initially created from a rare type of gastropod and became a symbol of might for Roman and Byzantine emperors, is a reminder of an early example of humankind&rsquo;s exploitation of nature not for survival but as a means of acquiring wealth and demonstrating power.
Moving from images of birth to images of death, the narrative unambiguously points to the destructive nature of our activities on the planet, which is inevitably moving toward an ecological disaster. In his panoramic views of nature&rsquo;s most stunning landscapes, now altered by humanity, Akomfrah uses a technique popular in Romantic painting, placing solitary human figures at the center of his compositions. But if in German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich&rsquo;s work anonymous figures confront the merciless and sublime forces of nature, in Akomfrah&rsquo;s video they seem to embody the arrogance reflected in our vision of humankind as the center of the universe, ruling over all life on the planet. The irritating idleness of the figures in Purple reads as a premonition of the global consequences of humanity&rsquo;s indifference toward its own ecological impact on the planet.
Commissioned by the Barbican, London and co-commissioned by Bildmuseet Ume&aring;, Sweden,
TBA21&ndash;Academy, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Museu Cole&ccedil;&atilde;o Berardo, Lisbon, and Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow.

John Akomfrah

b. 1978, Croix, France. Lives and works in Antwerp
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The day global worming turned my jumper like this, 2018 Sweater, epoxy resin and "sign" (oil and varnish on wood panel). Jumper 50 &times; 65 &times; 5 cm, sign 21 &times; 26.5 cm, metal grid approx. 110 x 30 x 6 cm Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris &mdash; Brussels
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In a playful commentary on the conceptual tradition of exhibiting existing documents, readymades and artefacts, Prouvost displays her own jumper, which appears to have been drenched in rain or flood water (or perhaps sweat) because of &ldquo;global warming,&rdquo; but is in fact soaked in epoxy resin. By giving the abstract environmental discourse a personal dimension, the artist inverts the famous feminist argument &ldquo;the personal is political&rdquo; and presents a political problem as everybody&rsquo;s personal matter. This is a clever move in terms of ecological politics, as most people among the minority which can have an impact on the planet&rsquo;s fate seem to believe that they can somehow remain unaffected by global climate change.

Laure Prouvost (The day global worming turned my jumper like this)

b. 1978, Croix, France. Lives and works in Antwerp
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The day global warming turned my jumper like this, 2018 Sweater, epoxy resin and "sign" (oil and varnish on wood panel). Jumper 50 &times; 65 &times; 5 cm, sign 21 &times; 26.5 cm, metal grid approx. 110 x 30 x 6 cm Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris &mdash; Brussels
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The second work here by Laure Prouvost is a neon sign addressed to humanity or gods. The artist seems to refrain from panicking about the current state of things: the alarm has not reached the red level and is presented in a calm, light blue hue with three dots instead of an exclamation mark. Perhaps it is too late to panic or maybe it is pointless. The phrase chosen by Prouvost comes from an English translation of Kafka&rsquo;s Metamorphosis made without a dictionary by her friend, artist Rory Macbeth, who does not speak German. Finding creative potential in an incorrect translation, the artist treats language as a medium that works through mistakes, omissions, and misunderstandings.

Laure Prouvost (Citizens or Gods, Men are Truly Stuck)

b. 1968, Redondo Beach, USA. Lives and works in Los Angeles
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The Garden, 2017/2019 Interactive installation, dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist; Gallery 303, New York, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; Victoria Miro, London; Regen Projects, Los Angeles
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An unexpected oasis occupies an entire gallery of the Museum, coming as a relief within the exhibition: a patch of green in the midst of the concrete grey of the Soviet building around it.&nbsp; As visitors approach the greenhouse, they stumble upon an illuminated, white, sterile chamber, a quintessential contemporary living space protected from the nature around it. The Garden, a large-scale living installation staged by American artist Doug Aitken, offers a visceral experience of the split between the natural and man-made environments we enact or see enacted in front of us. Visitors are invited to enter the room and for a short period of time they are free to contemplate the nature behind the glass, to sit, to walk, to stand or to destroy it all (furniture is replaced and recycled).
The Garden becomes activated when participants enter the chamber but also when they contemplate it from outside as the subject of the gaze changes: sometimes it is the people inside who are observed, sometimes it is the solitary green patch of plants. In turn, the passive observers turn into main actors when entering the sterile white chamber, their decisions having a direct impact on the environment the next visitor will find themselves in. What remains constant against the backdrop of changing expressions of human nature is the landscape: alive, humid, accommodating, yet infinitely remote behind the thick glass of the room.
<hr />
<h2 dir="auto">Admission to the installation&nbsp;The Garden.&nbsp;18+&nbsp;</h2>
Tuesday, Thursday:&nbsp;17:00&ndash;21:30 (break from 19:00 to 19:30) Sunday:&nbsp;14:00&ndash;18:30 (break from 16:00 to 16:30)
Conditions:
With an exhibition ticket Queuing may be necessary A waiver must be signed (your passport or a copy of it is required)

Doug Aitken

1954, Xiamen, China&ndash;2019, Paris
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American Kitchen and Chinese Cockroaches, 2019 Plywood, MDF, metal, gypsum board, plastic, resin, linoleum, ceramics, cardboard, enamel Kitchen: 380 x 378 x 271 cm Cockroaches: three males, each 135 x 45 x 25 cm; two females each 110 x 45 x 30 cm Courtesy of the artist
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Specially commissioned for the exhibition The Coming World, the new installation by Paris-based artist Huang Yong Ping is a visual metaphor of how the artist sees the world today: shrunk to the size of a kitchen and invaded by cockroaches, the most common inhabitants of the kitchen ecosystem. The commission is an unrealized idea that Huang first conceived in 2006. Constructed in Moscow thirteen years later, the installation has taken on a prophetic quality in the light of the economic war America recently declared on China and the new geopolitical order that is taking shape.
Key to understanding the piece is a historical event, the so-called Kitchen Debate, that took place at the opening of the American National Exhibition in Sokolniki Park in Moscow in 1959. In a series of exchanges which took place in front of a model America kitchen, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev debated the merits of capitalism and communism. Sixty years later, the American kitchen from the photographs finds itself in Russia, overtaken by giant Chinese cockroaches. Huang&rsquo;s meticulous reproduction takes the symbolic scene to an extreme by producing each part of it in the respective country: the kitchen walls were constructed in Russia, the vintage appliances bought and shipped from the United States, and the silicone cockroaches were produced in China especially for this new historic meeting.

Huang Yong Ping

The Coming World Game Club

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The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030&ndash;2100 references two speculative predictions about the future taken from science and science fiction, and which are no longer considered accurate: the depletion of oil that will put an end to the fossil fuel era by 2030 and the colonization of other planets by humans, who will achieve immortality by 2100.
What are the different perspectives on this speculative period today? Garage has invited three contemporary thinkers specializing in timelines&mdash;the history of predictions&mdash;and utopias to share their ideas of what awaits us from 2030 to 2100.
<h2>Lia Perjovschi</h2>
Romanian artist Lia Perjovschi (b.1961, Sibiu, Romania) has made chronology her medium. Based on a variety of sources, she composes timelines of various lengths and themes: from anti-art to culture, from the age of the dinosaurs until today. Meticulously picking out forgotten people, discoveries, and inventions from the informational landfill of today, she writes alternative timelines that challenge official histories. In these three graphic compositions, she warps the future into a swirl and then stretches it out into a line, confirming that predictions can never be completely accurate and showing how future disasters are rooted in the past, something which makes the present moment almost impossible to pinpoint.&nbsp;
<hr />
<h2>Ben Woodard</h2>
American philosopher and writer Ben Woodard&rsquo;s (b.1984, Tucson, USA) timeline presents the decades to come with laconic and straightforward descriptions, as if reading headlines from a future newspaper. A world of scarce resources distributed by force, of digital movements and planetary colonizations, begins to unravel. It starts with allies the UK, USA, and Russia closing their borders and annexing foreign oil and coal reserves. By 2040, the world is immersed in the Virtual Apocalypse, triggered by the Digital Separatists (DS) who choose to &ldquo;emigrate&rdquo; to the virtual world rather than living in physical reality, or volunteer to join sleeper ships bound for Mars. The next few decades are characterized by China&rsquo;s technological innovations, debt wars with Eastern Europe and South Asia, rising temperatures and water levels, a rebellion of artificial insects, and the invention of shared consciousness on Mars.
<hr />
<h2>Helge Jordheim</h2>
Professor of Cultural History Helge Jordheim (b.1971, Drammen, Norway) and Senior Researcher Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, both of whom work at the University of Oslo, Norway and are members of the Lifetimes research group, propose a short science fiction story of a sort. Moving away from a conventional or linear version of a timeline, they present a narrative composed of texts within texts where the reader can discern various futures spread between excerpts from existing books and novels, and their own writing. Thus, we perceive not one but multiple worldviews and outcomes: audacious, vivid, scary, imaginative, continuously interlacing, and never quite reassuring. Unless&hellip; &ldquo;it didn&rsquo;t happen that way at all.&rdquo;

The Coming World: 2030–2100

&nbsp;Formed in 1998 by Sven Jonke (b. 1973, Bremen), Christoph Katzler (b. 1968, Vienna), and Nikola Radeljković (b. 1971, Sarajevo
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Tape Moscow, 2019 Installation, dimensions variable Courtesy of the artists
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Тhe group Numen/For Use has taken over part of the Atrium space of the Museum to create a large-scale biomorphic sculpture made of Klebio, a newly developed compostable adhesive tape made of cellulose. Resembling a semi-transparent tentacular structure or a rhizomatic plant inside of which visitors can wander, the corridors of interconnected cocoons largely reproduce the architecture we observe in nature. Numen/For Use has installed site-specific tape installations in institutions around the world, but this is the first time the group has used this type of biodegradable tape, which was developed by the German company Compostella in collaboration with the artists. Around 900 square meters of tape is wrapped layer upon layer, transforming the chaotic skeleton that the installation resembles at the start into a uniform finished structure. Visitors can enter the sculpture and spend time inside it, an experience that might be compared to being in the womb, or in a completely alien world.
The works in this series mimic the world we live in, with its interconnections and branches coming from a core structure that is horizontal rather than vertical, multilayered, and built on self-tensioning anchor points. They are a visualization of the Other, a biomorphic, organic world with soft walls and an unstable base, which triggers various reactions. Some people have described feeling skeptical and insecure in this new environment, others have experienced it as regressing back into childhood, with the sculpture&rsquo;s shape encouraging playfulness and carefree behavior, inducing visitors to roll around and crawl on all fours.
<hr />
<h2>Activation installation&nbsp;Tape Moscow&nbsp;</h2>
Monday, Wednesday:&nbsp;17:00&ndash;22:00 Saturday:&nbsp;12:00&ndash;17:00
Rules:
Accessible only with an exhibition ticket Queuing may be necessary Take off your shoes. No bare feet. Accompany your child if they are under the age of 10 Leave your bag in the cloakroom. Food, drinks, and sharp and inflammable objects are not allowed Don't walk, jump or bounce within the installation. You can move around by crawling.
For safety and logistical reasons, only 2 people are allowed inside the installation at any one time and for no longer than 5 minutes.
Maximum load within the installation: 100kg per m2
The installation is not wheelchair accessible.

Numen/For Use

From the invention of  landscape painting to environmental art

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Anonymous Feuilles de choux tapestry, Grammont Tapestry Workshop, Flanders, mid-16th century Wool, silk, 320 x 380 cm Private collection
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The oldest work in the exhibition is a feuilles de choux (French for &ldquo;cabbage leaves&rdquo;) tapestry produced in the mid-sixteenth century in the town of Grammont (now Geraardsbergen, Belgium). A popular style that replaced the earlier millefleur (&ldquo;thousand flowers&rdquo;) tapestries, and which in fact features the leaves of a Mediterranean weed called acanthus, feuilles de choux reflected a new understanding of nature: no longer a domain of elegant things subservient to man, it was now depicted as wild world of unbridled forces beyond human control. In the context of The Coming World, this tapestry by an anonymous craftsman can be interpreted as an early and rare example of the &ldquo;emancipation&rdquo; of nature.
Works of art featuring animals and birds against a background of plants were called verdures (French for &ldquo;greens, leaves or grass&rdquo;) and the term became a synonym for this type of tapestry. This Grammont verdure features a relatively rare scene of a confrontation between two big cats, a leopard and a tiger. The two felines and a wolf that watches them may be an allegory of human passions as in Dante, or symbols of power and fierceness, as in Antiquity. In fact, historians connect the emergence of acanthus leaves in tapestries to the fashion for classical antiquity, and the grotesque mascarons hiding in the fruit and flowers framing the scene indicate this. Strange, comical, and often deliberately ugly, in Antiquity such masks pointed to the mystical and mysterious nature of our reality. During the Renaissance, they were seen as a deliberate distortion of conventional form. Their association with ancient caves (or grottos) in the fifteenth century gave birth to the notion of grotesque.

Feuilles de choux tapestry

c. 1602, Naarden, The Netherlands&ndash;1670, Haarlem, The Netherlands
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River Landscape with Fishermen is an example of Dutch Golden Age painting, and Salomon van Ruysdael&mdash;although not as famous as his nephew Jacob van Ruisdael (1629/1630&ndash;1681)&mdash;was one of the great representatives of landscape painting, which in this period in Holland became a genre in its own right. Salomon van Ruysdael specialized in sea and river landscapes, as if in homage to the element of water, which played a major part in the Dutch economic boom of the era and which features in many other works in this exhibition.
Van Ruysdael is known as a &ldquo;tonal&rdquo; painter because he created his images using numerous tones of a few subdued colors. With landscape painting, the focus in art shifted from the life of humans to Nature. In this particular painting, the main characters are the sky and the willow trees. Humans are harmoniously inscribed into the landscape: the fishermen&rsquo;s boats are hardly noticeable, their reflection dissolved in water, and the red roofs merge with nature in the hazy background. Attentive to the everchanging weather, the artist has come to a new understanding of nature, which lives according to its own laws, an understanding that a century later would be reflected in the Romantic idea of the sublime.

Salomon van Ruysdael

1622, Amsterdam&ndash;1678, Venice
Landscapes by the Dutch painter Karel Dujardin focus on village life, the pastoral character of which is underlined by the almost idyllic coexistence of humans and animals and a sunny palette that the painter adopted during a visit to Italy (to which he would return and spend the rest of his life). Curiously, in Landscape with Cattle and Ploughing Peasants humans occupy a modest place by the side of the beautiful, strong, and gentle animals that are the main focal point of the painting. Even in Dujardin&rsquo;s time, the idea of humans living in harmony with other species and the environment was colored by a nostalgic longing for a true connection with Nature, which was rooted in the Antique idyll and anticipated later &ldquo;returns to nature,&rdquo; from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to contemporary neo-Luddites.
In 1780, Russian Empress Catherine the Great bought this painting for the collection of the Hermitage Museum. In the late 1920s or early 1930s, like many other paintings from the museum, it was sold in Europe by the young Soviet state in order to raise foreign currency. In 1932, an industrialist from southern Germany purchased the painting at Galerie van Diemen in Berlin. It was later sold by his heirs and recently returned to Russia.

Karel Dujardin

1830, Kingston-on-Thames&ndash;1904, Kingston-on-Thames
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This photographic plate depicting an elephant walking (or running or both&mdash;the subject is still being debated) is one of hundreds of plates of domestic and wild animals whose movement photographer Eadweard Muybridge captured on film for the first time in history. Starting as a landscape photographer, he later devoted his life to motion studies, extending them to men, women, and children from all classes of society, including people with physical and cognitive disabilities. Muybridge&rsquo;s technique of shooting and subsequently projecting the sequence of images through a zoopraxiscope&mdash;his own invention, which was a predecessor of the movie projector&mdash;earned him an important place in history. However, it is not only for his contribution to the relatively short history of the role of technology in the study of nature that his work is included in this exhibition. The philosophical implications of his life&rsquo;s work are important for the concept of evolution, demonstrating time and matter in motion.

Eadweard Muybridge 

Alexander Obrazumov (Karma)

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