Landscapes of Loss Landscapes of Loss

Landscapes of Loss Landscapes of Loss Exhibition at the Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety on the occasion of the World Climate Conference COP 23 2 – 5 November 2017 Andreas Blank, Stefano Cagol, Miru Kim, Nezaket Ekici & Shahar Marcus, Janet Laurence, Reifenberg, Stefan Rinck, Erwin Wurm, Shingo Yoshida Curated by Constanze Kleiner & Rachel Rits-Volloch The video works from this exhibition are also be shown in Bonn at COP23, 6 – 17 November 2017 Contents Curatorial Statement — English 8 — Deutsch 12 Artists and works — Andreas Blank 20 — Stefano Cagol 22 — Nezaket Ekici & Shahar Marcus 24 — Miru Kim 28 — Janet Laurence 30 — Reifenberg 38 — Stefan Rinck 40 — Erwin Wurm 44 — Shingo Yoshida 50 Curators 56 Installation Photos 57 Endmatter — List of works 64 — External links 65 — Colophon 66 Please click on any underlined text on this page and throughout the document to be directed to the corresponding links Curatorial Statement The United Nations Framework With storms, droughts and fires Landscapes of Loss, the exhibition conservation initiatives. Laurence’s Convention on Climate Change raging around the world; with for COP23 at Berlin’s Ministry of practice is a direct response (UNFCC), adopted 25 years ago, growing deserts meeting rising seas; Environment, asks us to stop and take to contemporary ecological now in 2017 holds its 23rd World with wars over natural resources the time to think in the long-term. catastrophes, positioning art Climate Conference, COP23, in engendering migrations; with mass This exhibition of contemporary art within the essential dialogue of Bonn, Germany. With 197 nations displacements of people and mass brings together ten international environmental politics to create and participating in this global initiative extinctions of species, we are now artists with strong links to Berlin, communicate an understanding with up to 25,000 delegates, the already bearing witness to the who, each in their own way, address of the impact that humans have aim of the annual UN Climate sickness that ails our planet. mankind’s role in relation to the upon the threatened natural Conferences is to find ways Yet while Hollywood capitalizes on environment. Through video, world, in order to restore our vital to stabilize greenhouse gas such disasters as entertainment, photography, and sculpture, this relationships with it. Works from two concentrations in the atmosphere fueling our fear only to provide exhibition is designed as an antidote series are shown here: Reflecting on at a level that will prevent scenarios of instantaneous salvation, to the hyper-immediacy of the lives the loneliness of the last of a species, dangerous consequences of human in reality there are no superheroes we live. Landscapes of Loss invites us The Other Side of Nature / Panda interference with the climate system. to miraculously save the day. We to disengage from our phones and (2014), and Dingo (2013), shot in nature Yet while the world’s experts meet have to save our own planet, and it iPads, to switch off the data stream, reserves in China and Australia, to agree on the necessary steps is going to take time. If governments to stop tweeting and messaging, to chronicle in intimate proximity for nations to take to mitigate the continue to function on the basis opt out of the constant barrage of the lives of animals that could human impact on the environment of short-term promises, there is the now and immerse ourselves in soon be the last of their kind. and prevent further catastrophic little hope of healing our damaged our planet — from the Arctic tundra of Janet Laurence’s video Deep climate change, it is not only at the planet. To effect the kind of change Siberia, to the deserts of the Middle Breathing – Resuscitation for the Reef governmental level that practices that the COP conferences hope to East, and the jungles and seas of (2015), and accompanying photo must change. The damage already achieve, we need to radically reform the Antipodes — while we still can. As series Corral Collapse Homeopathy done to our environment will be this age of immediacy; to change our the world’s climate change experts (2015) was created for COP21 in healed through a transformation thinking from what we can get in convene in Bonn in mid-November Paris. Shot in Australia’s Great of the attitudes, expectations, the here and now, to what we can for COP23, Landscapes of Loss Barrier Reef — a World Heritage site and actions of every one of us. do now in order to preserve creates a space of contemplation which is the planet’s largest living, This is a slow process. Decisions the planet for the future. and time for reflection upon the and rapidly dying, structure — this implemented now will take years role we all play in ensuring that series of works envisions a hospital to show results. Yet, in this age of the decisions taken this year will in for the Reef’s threatened corals instant gratification — when all of the long-term halt the disastrous and other marine species, making us want things and we want then deterioration of our planet’s climate. visible the otherwise invisible now; when the flow of information is devastation beneath the surface instantaneous and the satisfaction Of the ten artists in this exhibition, of the sea, and offering hope for the of most of our urges seems only a renowned Australian artist Janet healing of the marine world from the click away; and when politicians are Laurence is most known for consequences of global warming kept in office on the basis of promises her work with the environment, and human impact. If we can care for only quickly fulfilled — we need to re- often undertaken together with marine life in the same way that we learn how to think in the long-term. scientists engaged in international care for our own species, there is 8 — Landscapes of Loss Janet Laurence • Corral Collapse Homeopathy #7 [Detail] • Page 30 • Cat 9 Landscapes of Loss — 9 a chance of deflecting environ- his art to sculpting the detritus of our Shingo Yoshida’s journey in his film Likewise, Korean / American artist mental catastrophe. Laurence’s work planet, recreating in timeless stone The End of Day and Beginning of the Miru Kim engages with the desert is an emergency response: a hospital the all too temporary objects of the World (2015) took him to Siberia, to the in her Camel’s Way series (2012). The for the Reef in this time of ecological day - to - day, Stefan Rinck builds an point where the Arctic Circle crosses female nude, an archetype since crisis, intended to aid survival and alternative mythology, pitting man- the 180th Meridian, the basis for the the dawn of western art history, is effect transformation. made time against the timelessness International Date Line separating here transposed to the sands and of imagination, populating his world two consecutive calendar days. mountains in a 3-week journey with eternal creatures of stone able Inspired by local Chukchi folklore through Jordan’s Wadi Rum Desert. to withstand any extinction. and customs, this film is a journey In positioning the fragility of her own into a place where nature rules, and body within the drama of this natural Berlin-based Israeli artist Reifenberg mankind clings to the traditions landscape, Miru Kim succeeds also addresses the detritus of their ancestors in order to in highlighting the fragility of the polluting our environment, working survive. Straddling the border landscape itself. throughout his practice with plastic between two days, it is a place of bags recycled into the medium of strong mythologies and magical Celebrated Austrian artist Erwin his art. In Ölteppich (oilSpill) (2010) landscapes; an environment of Wurm brings us out of the jungles he fashions a lightbox recreating extremes which defies man-made and seas, the Arctic wastes, and the satellite image of an oil spill; borders and mankind’s influence, yet the scorching deserts, back into ironically using the petroleum- is still perilously close to destruction the city. Our urban landscape is an From the ephemeral landscape based material of the ubiquitous from climate change. environment changing as rapidly and its vanishing creatures, we turn plastic bag to depict one of the as our natural one. The way people to the solid permanence of stone. many man-made catastrophes to Turkish / German artist Nezaket Ekici have lived upon this planet for German artists Andreas Blank and devastate our planet. and Israeli artist Shahar Marcus millennia in family groups and Stefan Rinck are sculptors both together address geopolitical and villages is well on its way to being working exclusively with stone. Italian artist Stefano Cagol and environmental forces through the replaced by the megacity, with Each is conscious of his chosen Japanese artist Shingo Yoshida medium of performance in their millions living and working packed medium as a material reflecting each ventured on a long journey video Sandclock (2012). Shot in the into faceless high-rises. Erwin the very substance of time; in its into the Arctic to record mankind’s burning sands of Israel’s Negev Wurm’s photo series of one-minute strata are recorded the ages of impact upon nature at its most Desert, their performance ironically sculptures, Leopoldstadt (2004), the planet. While in Landscape extreme. In the Norwegian Arctic confronts human endurance confronts through absurdity our Metaphor (2014) Andreas Blank Circle, Stefano Cagol’s video with the extremes of nature and place in the urban landscape. The fashions out of quartz a perfect Evoke Provoke (The Border) (2011) culture. In this actual and political solitary figures posing incongruously replica of a plastic bag, Stefan Rinck documents his solitary attempts hotbed, time is running out, and in empty streets could be seen as creates creatures reminiscent of a at communication in the vast Muslim and Jew alike are turned a sign of urban alienation, but the bygone age of totems and effigies emptiness with a succession of into human sand-clocks measuring humor inherent to these scenarios in the series of five sculptures:Die lights and flares.

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