Truths and Desires of Lost Souls on the Edge of our Civilisation

Friday, March 18, 2016, 6:30 pm
Truths and Desires of Lost Souls on the Edge of our Civilisation
Filmscreening and artists talk

Anna Zett This Unwieldy Object & Elisophie Eulenburg Tomorrow’s Program (Premiere)
Dr. Helge Torgersen (Institute of Technology Assessment, Vienna)
Lotte Schreiber (Filmmaker)
Moderated by Alexander Martos (Science Communications Research, Vienna) 

INTERDISCIPLINARY PROGRAMME

An interactive, interdisciplinary programme with experts from cultural and natural sciences accompanies the exhibition THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF BEING in the form of dialogical tours under the title Walk the Talk.
In a moderated discussion two scientists from different fields exchange ideas on selected works and themes with the audience. 
Additionally, the essay films This Unwieldy Object by Anna Zett and Tomorrow’s Program by Elisophie Eulenburg will be screened and discussed in an artist talk.

Anna Zett, This Unwieldy Object, Germany/USA, 2014
HD video 16:9, 47 min, video still, © Anna Zett
English with German subtitles

In the science drama This Unwieldy Object the animated dinosaurs of Hollywood cinema meet the petrified ghosts of colonial science. You follow the protagonist on a road trip into the dusty heart of the USA, where fossil traders, sculptors, and paleontologists are trying to reconstruct the plot of natural prehistory. But the more experts and entrepreneurs she talks to, the more obscure their projects appear. As the protagonist gets carried away by her own theories, the screen itself turns into a virtual dig site for unwieldy objects between science and fiction, trauma and entertainment, the remote past and the near future.

Anna Zett (*1983 in Leipzig, DE) lives and works in Berlin. In her films, texts, installations, and performances, the artist and author explores the underworlds of modernity and tragicomedies of science. Voluntary vulnerability and political engagement play significant roles as do historical research and an experimental setup. Recently her works have been presented at the Serpentine Cinema London, National Gallery Prague, Transmission Gallery Glasgow, Sorbus Gallery Helsinki, Banner Repeater London, and TENT Rotterdam, amongst others. Besides fine arts, works in the last year also include a radio play, a collaborative dance project, and various essays published e.g. on “The New Inquiry”. annazett.net.

 

Elisophie Eulenburg, Tomorrow’s Program, Bahamas 2013/2014, docufiction
HD video 16:9, 31 min, video still, © Elisophie Eulenburg
English with German subtitles (Premiere)

Following a devastating natural catastrophe, a number of people have found refuge in an isolated place in the middle of nowhere. In a synthetic atmosphere of colourful carpets, fake bookshelves, and plastic plants, things obey strange gravitational forces. While objects constantly totter dangerously, people have adapted to their self-created, unstable living environment. In Elisophie Eulenburg’s film Tomorrow’s Program the contradictory story of a struggle for survival is told through fact and fiction. The interviewed report about catastrophic events, while the camera observes their delight about diverse entertainment activities on a transatlantic cruise. The juxtaposition of the real experiences of the passengers on board and their subjective imaginations of a future world interwoven with the artist’s visual metaphors results in the multilayered narrative structure of the film.

Elisophie Eulenburg (*1983 in Bonn, DE) lives and works in Berlin. She studied art at Central Saint Martins College, London, Berlin University of Arts, and Cooper Union College in New York. In her anthropological observations she investigates the increasingly ambivalent relationships between mankind and nature. She has participated in numerous international exhibitions with her photography, videos, and sculptures, and was involved, for example, in the media project Brienner 45, which can be seen in the permanent exhibition of the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism.


Event in the framework of:

The Impossibility of Being

Exhibition: March 17 – April 30, 2016
Opening: March 16, 2016, 7:00 pm

Diana Artus, Julius von Bismarck, Anina Brisolla, Sophia Domagala, Brad Downey, Andreas Greiner & Armin Keplinger, Sven Johne, Tillman Kaiser, Caroline Kryzecki, Janina Lange, and Via Lewandowsky

Curated by the current – Hannah Beck-Mannagetta & Lena Fließbach

In the face of the current political situation and the ever more obvious consequences of environmental changes, an anthropocentric worldview can be put into question. In its transience and apparent imperfection, the supposed supremacy of mankind manifests as a fatal delusion. In various – often tragicomic – ways the artists of the exhibition deal with the futility of human action, the failure of perfection, and the demarcation and permanent pursuit of optimisation. Here, the fragility of the relationship between nature and culture, the limitations of material and technological progress, and an ineffective interpersonal communication as an individual as well as a socio-political phenomenon become visible in their works. In the end, however, it also becomes apparent that accidents, mistakes, and failure are a necessity in order to be creative in the first place.

An interdisciplinary programme with experts from cultural and natural sciences accompanies the exhibition in the form of dialogical guided tours and a film screening with a subsequent artists talk. Furthermore, Caroline Kryzecki and Brad Downey will present also site-specific works.