Terra Incognita : art-science fabulations
Sound exhibition presented in art space Praxis in relation with visual art works and tatoo flashes.
The presentation text is describing the complete exhibition with this 3 parts.
A printed catalogue including visual archives is available on demands by writing to: [email protected]
Participating artists :
Felix Stöckle, Thalles Piaget, Nicolas Polli, Eve Chariatte, louis hector, Till Langschied, Colin Rayanl, Premjish Achari, Rodrigo Toro Madrid, Monika Stalder, Sara Koller, Andrea Marioni.
I was in Arnaud Verin’s garden last summer. A kind of wild garden, between human organization and vegetal anarchism. There were a few sculptures here and there, mostly ceramics, but also mixed materials, supermarket plastic sunglasses, cheap Greek statues, Arnaud’s crafts and other kinds of combinations. Some of the artifacts were already colonized by insects, others hosted plants, seeds, birds… I immediately told my friend : “That’s the way an exhibition should be considered.” and that’s the way Terra Incognita : art-science fabulations has been thought of, involving more than thirty artists using several art practices.
There is no romanticism in choosing a garden as a starting point. Forget lost Eden. There is a hidden lesson in that small parcel of earth, the call to “learn from the garden”. To view the garden as a reference system. Other gardens in the area followed the French style. Then, not far away, there was some wasteland around the roads and less than a kilometer further wild nature along the river.
Make a quantum leap and all those different gardens could mirror art institutions, off-spaces, and galleries, and could function as templates of our world operating with their respective management systems in order to care about the life they are hosting.
Make another quantum leap, and you’ll notice that gardens aren’t created collectively, but by a particular accumulation of singular life forms, potential shelters, rocks, bacteria, mushrooms, temperatures, Arnaud’s junk… All of these elements are linked by a peculiar balance and diversity of relations forming a biotope.
Now, how does science enter the game ? Well, because this art-biotope in practice is constituted by artists, self-conscious critters, who aim to offer a comprehension of the world around us, like scientists do. In the following years, according to the last GIEC report, we will be entering an unknown period concerning our relation to earth, a terra incognita. To live through this fact, rationalism isn’t enough. It is necessary to add some tales, or as the philosopher G. Bachelard suggested : surrationalism. For it seems that science and art are mechanisms that are difficult to combine. Even if quantum and Newtonian mechanics are both valid and useful in order to apprehend some life phenomena, they are still impossible to reunite, despite the efforts.
It is common for artists to utilize science or for science to utilize artists. But how could an art-science work ? How can an artistic process be a contributive tool with its own mechanisms as peers are dealing with contemporary scientific challenges ?
It is yet hard to say, but we certainly know that fabulation is a method used on both sides.
So, I guess, like with gardening : before harvesting, it is necessary to focus on morphogenesis and the conditions that would allow for life to grow. In other words, to care about the ground, the humus, consider art as compost, the first stage of a biotope, when fabulation and reality meet, the stage in which all works of this exhibition come together.
Supported by : Ville de Bienne, Abteilung Kultur Basel-Stadt, Swisslos Kultur Kanton Bern, ProLitteris and FSRC/SRKS
