09-02-2009

Exhibition text by Petra Heck

Neïl Beloufa (FR), Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács (NL), Heman Chong (SG), Graham Ellard & Stephen Johnstone (UK), Johannes Heldén (SE), Sebastian Diaz Morales (AR/NL), Ann Lislegaard (NO), r a d i o q u a l i a (NZ), Semiconductor (UK), Mark Aerial Waller (UK)

Text as PDF

In Search of the Unknown is situated in a strange place, at an unfamiliar time, in the midst of visions of the future that pursue the present and the nightmare of there being no future at all. Here, in the first exhibition of 2009, at a moment when the financial prospects for the world are most uncertain, the search for the unknown and unimaginable and the friction between past, present and future is central.

In the exhibition In Search of the Unknown science fiction functions as one of the artistic instruments applied by the participating artists. Visions of the future from the past and present are problematized. In this way the genre of science fiction, present particularly in the domains of literature, film, architecture, the graphic arts and digital media, is gradually becoming a definitive source of inspiration for a whole lot of visual artists.

Science fiction unites within itself the apparent contradiction of the possibility of reacting to an unknown future, without excluding the past and present. Tate curator Jessica Morgan therefore writes that science fiction is always a commentary on the present state of affairs. Science fiction is presented as a 'glimpse of the future', but reflects not only on the present; it is perhaps still more a reflection on the past.1 It is logical, then, that the works being shown here say more about the present, about the time in which they are made, and about the past, than about the future.

This friction in time, between future, present and past, is central to a number of the installations in the exhibition. For instance, the idea behind Mark Aerial Waller's Superpower – Dakar Chapter is that the light which we see on earth today took thousands of years to reach us here, and thus in fact throws light on our past. Waller's science fiction story strikes one as futuristic, but strangely enough is played out against an African backdrop, by soap opera stars. The film by Ellard & Johnstone shows the 'retro-futuristic' utopian architecture of the artist César Manrique on the volcanic island of Lanzarote. The buildings now look disconcertingly nostalgic, like statements about how the future was once imagined. At the same time the landscape reveals itself as timeless and indeed extraneous, literally looking 'extraterrestrial'. It therefore should not be surprising that it was used as a location for a film about an alien planet. In a format that blends fiction (or science fiction) and documentary, Beloufas work Kempinski speaks to us about a magical world, about future and alien technologies such as telepathy and telethought. But since the interviewees imagine themselves in the future and speak about it in the present tense, once again a gap opens up in time. This disjointedness of time, and our relation to it, also emerges in works by Lislegaard, Heldén and Chong.

There are a whole lot of different ideas about how we can look at the realization of time, how we deal with future time, the past and present. For instance, the science fiction writer J.G. Ballard writes that the present has annexed the future. According to Ballard we learn to live, thinking that everything happens at the same moment. He formulates this as follows: 'Today nobody is interested in the Future at all. The Future has been annexed into the present. Occasionally a futuristic image is trotted out, ransacked like an image of the past and absorbed into the ongoing continuum that represents present-day life. After all, time is no more than a neuropsychologic structure that we inherit and that like the appendix or corporal hair we no longer need. Our next great evolutionary leap will not be of the physical but mental type. We will learn to live thinking that everything happens at the same time. That is to say 'No Future'.'

Sebastian Diaz Morales used this citation as his point of departure for the video installation Oracle, in which images function as signs. Like an oracle, without value judgements or interpretation, they speak about the future as a continuum from the present. The 'now' is revealed to the viewer as a point of tension between the past and the future.

The artist Philippe Parreno asks what we would do if a future scientific concept of time would demonstrate that all previous images of time were false, and that the past, the future and even the present had never existed, if we would learn that the idea of interwoven narratives, like our personal history and future, were all wrong. With regard to this Parreno cites the scientist Julian Barbour, who writes that time does not exist, that it is an illusion. According to Barbour we have no evidence for the past, only our memories of it, and no evidence for the future, only our belief in it.2 Or as the French architect François Roche – who himself has produced many designs for the future and given lectures that take place in the year 2050 – writes, (science) fiction shifted neither forward nor rearward but into the here and now, and that we must learn to live in the present between 'Back to the Future' and 'Tomorrow Now'.3

As the literary critic and authority on science fiction Fredric Jameson has written of utopias (of which science fiction is one), 'disrupting' the future must become a new discursive strategy – and 'utopia' is an ideal form for this disruption. Jameson asserts that we must reflect on the fracture itself, and should not focus on the traditional image of how things might look after the fracture. He calls for a concentration on the rupture, on the impossible, on the unrealisable itself. With this he asks if we should not be developing an anxiety about losing the future, about historicization, just as George Orwell had an anxiety about the loss of the past, memory and youth. This anxiety about a threatened future is often dramatized in science fiction, particularly in time travels. A different choice in the present causes a totally different future for everyone, as emerges in La Jetée, a film by Chris Marker.4

In addition to these displacements among past, present and future, the artworks in In Search of the Unknown have other common denominators. In the installations documentary, science, fantasy and (science)fiction rub elbows or even flow into one another. In addition there are works in the exhibition that focus less on the concept of time, and more on the boundaries of art and science, a concern that literally returns in the term 'science fiction'. Hugo Gernsback, the inventor of the term, primarily saw science fiction as a means for popularizing science and scientific discoveries. On the other hand, the history of the genre reveals that this idea was only of limited interest of later writers. Precisely this link between science and fiction emerges in a number of works in the exhibition.

For instance, Radio Astronomy is an art and science project that intercepts sounds out of space and broadcasts them out on the Internet and in the gallery. The project is a collaboration between r a d i o q u a l i a and radio telescopes spread all over the world. In Manifest Destiny Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács explore the boundaries of what we can perceive in time and space, fictionalizing this with a voice-over that is based on real stories from scientists. The video reveals the limitations of our tinted powers of imagination, while also showing how we desire to look beyond these boundaries and conquer new territories (for instance, in the cosmos). Semiconductor made the video Do You Think Science..., in which a group of scientists are asked if science can explain everything. By doing so, Semiconductor uncovers the hidden motivations the researchers have for searching out the furthest boundaries of human knowledge. Their attempt to recover the meaning of the question opens up a Pandoras box of philosophical limits that exist within science.

The artists in the exhibition are fascinated with images of the future and aberrant realities. They cast doubt on the impossible and seek new or alternative visions. Technology, ideology, architecture and political constructions are central to science fiction narratives, and are also largely the foundation for the artworks in this exhibition, whether they appear to be fictive, documentary, scientific or something other.

1 Dominique Gonzalez Foerster, TH.2058, London, 2008, p. 21.
2 Dominique Gonzalez Foerster, TH.2058, London, 2008, p. 86.
3 http://www.rethinking-academic.org/scientificpapers/FictionandMass-FR.pdf
4 Fredric Jameson, Archeologies of the Future, The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, London 2005, http://www.utoronto.ca/utopia/archeologies.pdf

Neïl Beloufa (b. 1985, lives and works in Paris (FR))
Kempinski, 2007
DVD, 13'58'
http://www.neilbeloufa.com/

Kempinski is a mystical and animist place. People emerge from the dark, holding fluorescent lamps; they speak about a magical world, about future and alien technologies such as telepathy and telethought. Their testimonies spark confusion and contradiction in this unique blend of fiction (science fiction) and documentary. The scenario of Kempinski, filmed in various towns in Mali, is defined by specific rules: interviewees were asked to imagine the future and speak about it in the present tense. Beloufa confronts us with the common prejudices about progress and regression; advanced technology, as we know it today, appears backward in comparison with what is presented in Kempinski. Moreover, the hopeful, poetic and spiritual fantasies in the film are melodically recorded and edited. Kempinski thus cleverly challenges our exotic expectations and stereotypes about Africa.

Persijn Broersen (b. 1974) & Margit Lukács (b. 1973) (live and work in Amsterdam (NL))
Manifest Destiny, 2009
HD, 17'
music/sound effects: Berend Dubbe; actor: John Pope; 3D animation: Gertjan van Ouwedorp; interior camera: Bert Oosterveld
The film was funded by the Dutch Film Fund and the Rijksakademie.
http://www.pmpmpm.com/

The definitive version of Manifest Destiny, the work that Broersen and Lukács made during their final year at the Rijksakademie, is presented here. The pair themselves describe the film as 'a trip through an imaginary cosmos'. The context for this cosmos is formed on the one hand by our tinted imaginative powers, and on the other hand by the human urge – our 'Manifest Destiny' – to want to look across boundaries and conquer new territories. For years the fictional scientist in the voice-over – based on interviews with real scientists – has been doing research on alien planets where there may be life. In contrast, the visual narrative tells about a journey within the existing mental framework, namely a trip through outdated visions of the moon and Mars, an imaginary planet, a savage, empty Earth, and finally an observatory, the point of departure for the unknown. Among other places, the images were made on the plateau of Chile's Atacama Desert, where at an altitude of 2500 meters there are extremely sensitive telescopes searching for planets outside our solar system that are similar to the earth, out on the limits of what we can perceive in time and space.

Heman Chong (SG, b. 1977, lives and works in Berlin (DE) and Singapore)
Kryptonite, 2008
from the series 'Surfacing'
3000 self-adhesive stickers applied directly onto the wall, variable dimensions
Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space
http://www.hemanchong.com/mainmenu.html

Chong is an artist and curator whose practice involves an investigation of the reasons why and methods by which people imagine the future, and how it can be represented by a series of conceptually generated objects, situations and texts. In his series of wall installations entitled 'Surfacing', the artist has opted for a working process by which the work is folded around existing architecture, taking form as the artist affixes stickers to the wall. By repeatedly pasting up stickers, the space is marked by a minimal change. By this Chong responds to the passage of time in that specific place. The wall installation Kryptonite consists of various stickers the shapes of which refer to a drawing of kryptonite from an old comic book. Kryptonite is a mineral which comes from the planet Krypton, origin of the comic strip hero Superman, but also represents his Achilles heel – the weak spot in an otherwise invulnerable hero – since he loses his powers when he comes in the vicinity of a piece of kryptonite.

Heman Chong (SG, b. 1977, lives and works in Berlin (DE) and Singapore)
Until The End Of The World (Paused), 2009
Instructions on paper, performance, TV monitor, DVD
Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space
http://www.hemanchong.com/mainmenu.html

In this new work, made for the exhibition by Heman Chong, the Wim Wenders science fiction film Until the End of the World being shown is paused when the first visitor of the day enters. The film remains on pause for the rest of the day. This means that each day a different fragment from this science fiction film is to be seen. It is a road movie which, according to Wenders himself, is 'a metaphor for the journey we must all take toward our future'. In Until the End of the World Dr. Farber has developed an apparatus by which images can be sent direct to the brain, so that blind people, including his wife, can see again. That is in sharp contrast to the deteriorating state of the world, where the continued existence of mankind is threatened by a nuclear satellite that is about to fall to earth.

Graham Ellard (b. 1960) & Stephen Johnstone (b. 1958) (live and work in London (UK))
Proposal for an unmade film (set in the future), 2007.
16 mm., color, sound, 21'
Funded by the Arts Council England, London, with the support of Film London Artists Moving Image Network. With additional funding from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London.
http://www.ellardjohnstone.com/

Filmed on the island of Lanzarote, Proposal for an unmade film (set in the future) weaves together the extraordinary volcanic landscape of the Timonfoya National Park with the 'retro-futuristic' utopian architecture of the artist César Manrique. The film supposedly originated from the pre-production process for a cheap science fiction film or architecture documentary which was never finished, forgotten, and later found in an archive. It suggests the story of a visitor who attempts to create a paradise on earth in which volcanic bubbles become time capsules, buildings change into spaceships and sculptural mobiles become radio antennas or navigational devices. Among other things, in the film we see a museum and a garden with a mobile designed by the artist Manrique. Through their situation in volcanic formations like craters and caves, these objects produced a visionary, spectacular and dramatic feeling. But today the architectural objects chiefly look disconcertingly nostalgic, like statements about how the future was once imagined. On the other hand, the landscape appears timeless or placeless - literally 'otherworldly'. It was for that reason that the area was used as the location for a film about an alien planet, the science fiction film Enemy Mine by Wolfgang Peterson, 1985.

Johannes Heldén (b. 1978, lives and works in Stockholm (SE))
The Prime Directive, 2006
internet piece (Flash)
Originally published by Afsnit P
http://www.johanneshelden.com/

Johannes Heldén is a Swedish artist and poet. The Prime Directive is an online artist's publication with an infinite number of pages. With the aid of thousands of text fragments animated within a dark, futuristic landscape, the viewer creates the narrative, the linearity. The Prime Directive is comprised of two non-linear landscape levels. With each click of the mouse a new time gap opens up, a new possibility to slip through somewhere, like a text, a variable or a prime number. The Prime Directive is also a sort of machine that generates a context where there is none, within the world that we regard as the real world.

Ann Lislegaard (Norwegian, b. 1962, lives and works in Copenhagen (DK) and New York City (USA))
SCIENCE FICTION_3112 (after 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick), 2007
Sound installation, 8'30' loop
illus. Installation view; Mind the Gap, Sundholm, Copenhagen
http://www.lislegaard.com/index.php

It is strange how science fiction often takes place in the future, but always in the course of time ends up belonging to the past. Time always overtakes the writer's or filmmaker's view of the future in a particular year. In the sound installation by Ann Lislegaard, the complete soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, is speeded up, folded, stretched out and telescoped to a length of eight-and-a-half minutes. The work is installed in the cellar of the Netherlands Media Art Institute and carries the sounds outside, to the street. Reeled off at different speeds, the past and the future blend with the physical environment of the Keizersgracht. As Lislegaard's soundtrack reverbs off the surrounding buildings, the listener or accidental wanderer walks into sound waves of manipulated time.

Sebastian Diaz Morales (Argentina, b. 1975, lives and works in Amsterdam (NL) and Buenos Aires (AR)) Oracle, 2007
2 screen video installation, sound on headphones
Digital video on DVD, 11'
Produced by HERMÈS
Collection NIMk

Oracle confronts us with a seemingly random succession of images. An immobile man, filmed from the back, stares out to sea. Two goldfish swim in a pond littered with banknotes. A crumpled plastic bag is blown over the street and lands in the gutter. Clouds from explosions form and dissolve again. These images act as signs; like an oracle, they speak about the future as a continuous extension of the present, without judgment or interpretation. 'Now' is revealed to the viewer as a point of tension between the past and the future. Or, as J.G. Ballard says: 'After all, time is no more than a neuropsychologic structure that we inherit, and that like the appendix or corporal hair is no longer need. Our next great evolutionary leap will not be of the physical but mental type. We will learn to live thinking that everything happens at the same time. That is to say 'No Future'.'

r a d i o q u a l i a (Honor Harger & Adam Hyde) (New Zealand, 1998)
Radio Astronomy, 2004 - 2009
sound installation
image: antenna at Ventspils International Radio Astronomy Centre, Latvia, 2001
http://www.radioqualia.net/

Radio Astronomy broadcasts radio waves from space on the Internet and inside the gallery. The project is a collaboration between the artists and radio telescopes throughout the world.
Though weight of images associated with space is overwhelming, in popular culture, we have no sense of what space sounds like. Indeed, most people associate space with silence. Yet through the intervention of the technology of radio, we are able to hear radiation from many astronomical sources, including the Sun, planets and distant stars. But despite this, very few people have ever heard space.
Whilst optical astronomers use telescopes to look at the visible light emitted by stars, radio astronomers use radio telescopes, or antennae, to detect radio waves. Stars and planets are not directly audible, as sound waves can not propagate in the vacuum of space, but some waves emanated by planets and stars can be converted into sound using the same kinds of receivers which are used for broadcast radio. Radio allows for astronomical radiation which is physically present, but inaudible, to be heard. By combining radio astronomy with radio engineering, we can hear as well as see the stars.
The sounds in the installation are: Solar bursts from the Sun; Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio signals of the Sun interacting with the Earth’s ionosphere; radio bursts from Jupiter; plasma waves from Jupiter’s moons; lightning storms on Saturn; Pulsars; and Cosmic Microwave Background radiation from the Big Bang.

Semiconductor (1997) (Ruth Jarman & Joe Gerhardt) (live and work in Brighton (UK))
Magnetic Movie, 2007
DVD, colour, stereo, 4'56'
Additional audio: VLF recordings by Stephen P. McGreevy
An Animate Projects commission for Channel 4 in association with Arts Council England
http://www.semiconductorfilms.com/

Semiconductor was given the opportunity to go to the Space Science Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, where the artists collective sought to get more understanding of the phenomenon of magnetism. On video the artists interviewed scientists about magnetic fields in relation to the sun, Earth and Mars, and the techniques that are used to visualise them. Because of the complexity of the research they are undertaking the scientists use metaphors to make the material understandable. Thus they speak in terms of hairy balls on the sun and dancing dots, or about abstract forms or motion. In Magnetic Movie Semiconductor makes this material, which lies outside our visual capacities, more understandable. They have here applied the technology of VLF (very low frequency) sound recordings to bring magnetic fields to life and used photographs as the basis for the animation. The question is whether we are here looking at a series of scientific experiments, the cosmos in motion, a documentary or a fictional world?

Semiconductor (1997) (Ruth Jarman & Joe Gerhardt) (live and work in Brighton (UK))
Do You Think Science..., 2006
DVD, colour, stereo, 12'15'
funded by NASA Space Sciences Fellowship, Berkeley
http://www.semiconductorfilms.com/

In Do You Think Science... the pair of artists interview a group of space scientists about the unanswerable. In doing so, Semiconductor reveals the researchers hidden motivations for seeking out the most extreme boundaries of human understanding. This attempt to recover the meaning of the question opens up a Pandoras box of philosophical limits that exist within science.

Mark Aerial Waller (UK, b. 1969, lives and works in London (UK))
Superpower – Dakar Chapter, 2004
1 source DVD installation, colour, sound, 14'
Polyurethane foam wall (dimensions variable)
Courtesy of the artist and Rodeo, Istanbul
http://www.markaerialwaller.com/

 

Superpower – Dakar Chapter reminds one of a tv soap opera crossed with a cheap horror film. If you look more closely however you see a sort of science fiction film. Shot in the capital city of Senegal, Dakar, the film unfolds as a complex scientific/fictional story, with its starring roles going to the three stars in the astral belt of Orion, in the human guise of three professors: Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. They are played by two local soap stars and an African artist. As an introduction, you are given the information about the three stars, and about light travel in general. Waller uses this astronomical information to underpin the central idea of the film, that the light we see on earth takes thousands of years to reach us, and in fact throws a light on our past. We follow the professors as they prepare to run interference on an extraterrestrial particle cloud causing temporal disturbances on earth. The characters slip in and out of several time zones, so that fantasy and documentary become almost interchangeable. Mark Aerial Waller rearranges and distorts the traditional logic of film, thereby producing a disjointed, psychological time travel film in which fact and fiction, past, present and future all blur.

Tubelight:
http://www.tubelight.nl/Articles/view/779/Het_onbekende_van_kosmische_proporties_tot_menselijke_maat

n8-blog:
http://n8.nl/blog/science-fiction-op-de-keizersgracht

Met dank aan:
BeamSystems, the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts and the National Arts Council of Singapore.