2 3 overview effect. Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade project and curatorial direction: October 2nd, 2020 – September 20th, 2021 Blanca de la Torre and Zoran Erić overview effect. The term Overview Effect was coined by Frank White in 1987 to describe the cognitive shift reported by a number of astronauts on having looked back from Space at their home planet Earth. The question is, do we need such a distant point of view of the planet we occupy, as a “crew of the Spaceship Earth” to use Buckminster Fuller’s 4 metaphor, to realize that this “spaceship” is slowly running out of “fuel” and that the 5 crew is in need of “oxygen”? This project seeks to address the issue of the environmental justice that can only be approached through an analysis of the inseparable links between climate change and other forms of injustice related to gender, race, corporate imperialism, indigenous sovereignty, and the importance of decolonising and de-anthropocentrizing the planet in order to reshape an inclusive mindset akin to a multispecies world. The curatorial strategy will explore alternative exhibition-making formats and responds to the rhizomatic idea of ECO_LABS where six realms represent distinct sub-themes, all of them interconnected: 1 — GENDER, RACE AND THE COLONIAL TRACE 2 — WATERTOPIAS 3 — THERE IS NO EDGE! (LAND ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMATICS) 4 — LEARNING FROM INDIGENISM 5 — BEYOND ANTHROPOCENE (POST-HUMANISM, ANIMISM AND MULTISPECIES WORLD) 6 — BACK TO THE FUTURE (FUTUROLOGY AND SPECULATIVE REALISM) Each ECO_LAB will take on the role of a think-thank for art and knowledge production related to the sub-themes we derived from the overall concept, within the whole methodological approach to the development of the exhibition. The ECO_LABS will thus create a dynamic and revolving structure that builds on the transversality used as key way of thinking and also establish trans-disciplinary approach from different disciplines such as arts, humanities and social sciences. Sustainability Guidelines The exhibition will put in focus the artists and artistic positions that have a respectful Ravi Agarwal, Maria Thereza Alves, Vasco Araújo, Amy Balkin, Luna attitude towards the environment in response to the hubris (hybris) characterising our Bengoechea, Ursula Biemann, Tania Candiani, Juanli Carrión, Carolina current society, as we strongly believe that art must contribute to the public debate Caycedo, Cian Dayrit, Dirk Fleischmann, Nina Galić, Asunción Molinos Gordo, on the politics of sustainability, developing creative proposals that — both in form and Kitti Gosztola, Lungiswa Gqunta, Tue Greenfort, Michaela Grill, Igor Grubić, content— put forward alternative forms of working fairly with the environment and to Christina Hermauer & Roman Keller, IC-98, Ingela Ihrman, The Institute of collaborate towards a more sustainable future for everybody. Queer Ecology, ISUMA, Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Tamás Kaszás, Juyon Kim, Jacob Kirkegaard, Diana Lelonek, Ernst Logar, Nemanja Milenković, Amor To this end, and with the purpose of ensuring that the project is consistent Muñoz, Kevin Michael Murphy, N55, Michael Najjar, Nils Norman, Fernando 6 with this approach, a number of sustainability guidelines were established in Palma, Marjetica Potrč, Minna Rainio & Mark Roberts, Vera Stevanović, 7 order to take care of the carbon footprint of the whole project and to develop Robertina Šebjanič & Gjino Šutić, Thomas Thwaites, Adrienn Újházi, Marie it in an ecological manner. Velardi, Juan Zamora, Bo Zheng Due to the outbreak of coronavirus, the project will take place in two stages. The In addition to this and in order to work from a global perspective that may encompass first part and the launch of Overview Effect will happen from October nd2 2020 and a planetary vision, the project involves a transnational network of collaborators and it will comprise a group of outdoor installations in the sculpture park of the Museum, partners that will further explore the themes and problems that are the main agenda murals, site-specific interventions by artists in different urban and rural areas, activist of this initiative. Therefore, several organizations and museums such as Muzeum projects in collaboration with local environmental initiatives and local communities, Sztuki, Lodz; Pori Art Museum; Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM), Las Palmas; workshops with the artists and educational programmes, as well as lectures and panel MUCA-Roma and Casa del Lago UNAM, Mexico City; Pilchuck, Seattle; ARTPORT_making discussions with a limited number of people at the Museum and partner institutions, waves, Frankfurt; ARTSail, Miami; Society, Work and Politics Institute (SWOP), University or online, until the launch of the second part, an exhibition with more than 50 artists of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and Bozidar Jakac Art Museum, Kostanjevica na that will be held at the main building of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade Krki, amongst others will join the network, focusing on local problematics and equipping from June 19th to September 20th, 2021. the project with the capacity of re-imagining a new integral ecological consciousness. Going beyond the binary relations of utopias and dystopias and the point after which Artists participating in the first stage: the present and future became the same temporal symbolic dimension, the project can help visualize the multiplicity of possible scenarios, as art’s capacity to produce new Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Tomas Colbengtson, Regina José Galindo, knowledge and experience of the world might envision that change of the paradigm. This Markus Hiesleitner, Kinga Kiełczyńska, Elena Lavellés, Tea Mäkipää, Mary change will only be possible through a posthuman point of view where transdisciplinarity, Mattingly, Anna Moreno, Branislav Nikolić, mirko nikolić, PSJM, Škart, multispecies coexistence and post-anthropocentrism will lead the way for the new post Mariëlle Videler, Tanja Vujinović fossil capitalism era. All of the artists taking part in the first stage will either present new works or conceptually connect their outdoor projects with the works that will be shown in the exhibition at the Museum in 2021. Besides them, the list of artists taking part in the exhibition includes: 8 overview effect. 9 part 1 Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Tomas Colbengtson, Regina José Galindo, Markus Hiesleitner, Kinga Kiełczyńska, Elena Lavellés, Tea Mäkipää, Mary Mattingly, Anna Moreno, Branislav Nikolić, mirko nikolić, PSJM, Škart, Mariëlle Videler, Tanja Vujinović overview effect. 1 Branislav Nikolić 2 10 Tea Mäkipää 11 3 Mary Mattingly 4 Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan 5 Tomas Colbengtson 6 Kinga Kiełczyńska 7 Škart 8 Markus Hiesleitner 9 PSJM (Cynthia Viera & Pablo San José) Branislav Nikolić Built-up Area 13 The traffic sign indicating a built-up area may be found at the point of entry into Built-up Area 1, 2020 every village or town, almost anywhere in the world. The sign usually features a sculpture (metal) black outline standing for an amalgam of urban and rural landscape against a white 500x250x35 cm background. It signifies an abstracted version of a human settlement. It sublimates courtesy of the artist the locally prevalent general features of habitation and building tradition. It indicates how the legislative authorities of a given country view its towns and villages. For the most part, these signs are standardised and feature a combination of high- and low-rise buildings that are characteristic of its locale, often including a prominent religious building, with subtle variations between individual countries. In some areas, only low-rise housing appears, while other examples may also include churches and high-rise buildings. In countries where Gothic architecture used to prevail we may see appropriately shaped outlines. In Iran, for instance, we may see the outline of a mosque, in the Netherlands a windmill, etc. In Serbia, the traffic sign indicating a built-up area is a somewhat modified version of a design formerly used in Germany. The pointed spire of a church was simply flattened and made to look like an ordinary high-rise building. The sculpture/installation Built-up Area is a three-dimensional version of such a sign. It is a translation of a translation of reality: a three-dimensional interpretation of a two-dimensional image that is itself a sublimation of a country’s general architecture. The work was conceived in two versions featuring the same format (500x250x35 cm). The monochrome sculptural version, made using a 3mm-thick steel sheet, is exhibited outside the Museum of Contemporary Art, while the installation, made of found materials and outlining the same shape, will be mounted inside the Museum building, as part of the exhibition Overview Effect in June 2021. 14 15 Born in 1970 in Šabac, Serbia. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Novi Sad, Serbia, the department of painting, in 1996. He received postgraduate degrees from the Dutch Art Institute, Enschede, the Netherlands in 2001 and from the Academy of Fine Arts in Novi Sad, Serbia in 2002. From 1995 he is a member of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia. From 2002 to 2019 he was selector for the Jalovik Art Colony. He works in sculpture, painting, design and as a curator. Branislav Nikolić has exhibited his works independently and together with other artists, both at home and abroad. He lives and works in Belgrade, Serbia. 16 17 www.branislavnikolic.net www.dailydrawingfeed.blogspot.com 18 19 Tea Mäkipää How to be a good human being today? We have already filled up and used the earth 21 to our benefit. Now humankind’s biggest moral problem is our relationship to our environment and declining natural resources. 10 Commandments for the 21st Century, 2007/2020 Parallel to the old moralities, good and bad are now defined according to our impact installation, text on nature and the environment. Human-centric capitalism has meant that each variable dimensions person has the right to consume natural resources to the degree allowed by his or courtesy of the artist her income. Practicing love and caring for “thy neighbour as thyself” today means accepting new limits on consumerism.