Antonio Fiorentino, Dominium Melancholiae, 2014

Unknown Unknowns. An introduction to mysteries. Exhibition view. Photo: DSL Studio

The exhibition’s full title is Unknown Unknowns. An Introduction to Mysteries. I love its ambiguity. While the show is curated by astrophysicist Ersilia Vaudo Scarpetta from ESA and looks at scientific realities such as gravity or mathematics, the word “mysteries” gives it a more spiritual aura, suggesting perhaps that we will emerge the exhibition as “initiated members.”

One of the main anchors of the show is that we only know 5% of the observable universe. Perhaps even less than that. I love this humbling admission that scientists, designers and artists alike have more questions than answers. The show, however, attempts to equip us with ideas and prototypes that could make this unknown unknown more “manageable”: tools to inhabit outer space, augment human senses, print body parts, make our knowledge of cosmic concepts easier to understand by all, etc. I’m more dubious about the exhibition’s ambition that it might help us overturn our anthropocentric vision of the world and our imperialistic urge to tame the unknown. I’ve heard that one so often over the past few years, I’m wondering if anyone still pays attention to that kind of claim.

Momoko Seto, Planet Σ, 2014

Momoko Seto, Planet Σ, 2014

Visitors of the show will find that the technological often contends with the artistic when it comes to creating aesthetics and ideas that stop them in their tracks. Recent images captured by the James Webb space telescope have made that very clear.

Here are some of the ideas and works I found most fascinating during my visit of Unknown Unknowns:

Unknown Unknowns. An introduction to mysteries. Exhibition view. Photo: Gianbellomo for Elle

Adam Elsheimer, The Flight into Egypt, 1609

The show opens with a reproduction of Adam Elsheimer’s The Flight into Egypt, a Biblical scene that is considered to feature the first realistic depiction of the night sky, with the Milky Way represented as a myriad of individual stars accurately distributed in the constellations of Ursa Major (the Great Bear, Big Dipper and Plough) and of Leo.

On a side note, there’s an appealing show at the Prado Museum looking at how art has represented the cosmos in the past.

Julijonas Urbonas, When Accelerators Turn into Sweaters, 2016-ongoing. Photo by Aistė Valiūtė and Daumantas Plechavičius

Julijonas Urbonas, When Accelerators Turn into Sweaters, 2016-ongoing. Photo by Aistė Valiūtė and Daumantas Plechavičius

Julijonas Urbonas, When Accelerators Turn into Sweaters, 2016-ongoing. Photo by Aistė Valiūtė and Daumantas Plechavičius

Julijonas Urbonas, When Accelerators Turn into Sweaters, 2016-ongoing. Exhibition view. Photo: DSL Studio

During a residency at the CERN centre, Julijonas Urbonas investigated the unique properties and imaginary qualities of superconductors, used in particle accelerators to generate large continuous electric and magnetic fields for beam acceleration and manipulation. Urbonas was particularly interested in quantum magnetic levitation, a phenomenon that occurs when scientists use the properties of quantum physics to levitate an object (specifically, a superconductor at its critical temperature) over a magnetic source (a quantum levitation track designed for this purpose).

The artist explored the impact that levitation would have on art, design and architecture if this event were possible at room temperature. ‘What if your clothes, for example, were made of this levitating stuff? Maybe such a levitating wearable could bring particle physics into the experiential realm: the micro into the macro?’

The artist started experimenting with knitting superconductor fibres immersed underwater – non-coated superconductors can ignite under oxygen exposure – and looking into cryogenics to make them levitate.

Urbonas created a full-scale stainless steel replica of a section from the Large Hadron Collider and developed a way to weave superconducting fibres into textiles. The cables knit together to create a kind of sweater and levitate in response to the magnetic field.

The work, titled, When Accelerators Turn into Sweaters, is part of Urbonas’ study of gravitational aesthetics, a term he coined to describe an art and design approach that exploits the means of manipulating gravity to create experiences that push the body and imagination to the extremes.

Alicja Kwade, Selbstporträt / Self-portrait, 2021. Photo: Roman März

Alicja Kwade broke down the body into the purely elemental by presenting it in 24 small vials containing the chemical elements that make up the human anatomy: oxygen (O), carbon (C), hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N), calcium ( Ca), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), sulphur (S), sodium (Na), chlorine (Cl), magnesium (Mg), iron (Fe), fluorine (F), zinc (Zn), silicon (Si), bromine( Br), copper (Cu), selenium (Se), manganese (Mn), iodine (I), nickel (Ni), molybdenum (Mo), chromium (Cr), cobalt (Co).

Her artistic investigation of the self echoes the complexities of understanding what it means to exist. We all share these chemical elements and yet, once mixed together to form a body, they give strikingly different outcomes.

Amy Karle, Regenerative Reliquary, 2016. Photo: Ars Electronica Vanessa Graf

Amy Karle grew bone on a bioprinted scaffold in the shape of a human hand. Made of biodegradable hydrogel, the scaffold eventually disintegrates allowing the human Mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs from an adult donor) seeded onto the design to grow tissue and mineralise into bone.

The sculpture is kept inside a glass bioreactor, in reference to the practice of using reliquaries to contain the purported or actual remains of religious figures. Instead of enshrining the inanimate remains left after death, the Regenerative Reliquary looks at future bodies by suggesting the possibility of growing living body parts. In the perspective the Milan exhibition, the work suggests a future when we will be able to use 3D printing to “fix” the first humans on Mars. It also investigates who we could become if we exploit the full potential of biotechnologies.

Jan Hosan, Super Kamiokande, 2018. Courtesy of the artist

Neutrinos are sub-atomic particles that travel the universe and pass through matter (including our bodies) all the time. Studying these particles helps scientists detect dying stars and understand why the Universe has so much more matter than antimatter.

Spotting neutrinos requires special detectors. The largest of its kind, the Kamioka Observatory, is buried under a mountain in Hida, in Gifu Prefecture, Japan. The steel tank with a diameter of 39.3 meters and a height of 41.4 meters is located deep underground – in order to be exposed to as little cosmic radiation as possible. The walls are lined with thousands of highly sensitive light detectors that look like golden bulbs. They can identify the tiniest amounts of light produced by the passage of the neutrinos in their interactions with water. Which is a very very rare event.

In 1987, the Kamiokande detector caught the first neutrinos from a supernova. A dozen neutrinos came from supernova 1987A, which occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits the Milky Way.

Jan Michael Hosan was one of the very few photographers allowed to take pictures inside the giant gold chamber of the Super-Kamiokande when the neutrino detector had to be reopened for maintenance work. The photo of the Kamioka Observatory is gigantic and mesmerising. In the image above you can just about see an orange dinghy that floats on the surface of the water.

Susanna Hertrich and Shintaro Miyazaki, Sensorium of Animals, 2016–2019. Exhibition view. Photo: DSL Studio

Designer Susanna Hertrich and researcher Shintaro Miyazaki explored the possibility of expanding the human sensory apparatus and enhancing it with sensorial abilities similar to those found in elephant nose fish. The species can navigate and find prey in the murkiest rivers by emitting brief pulses of electricity. It also relies on a passive system attuned to the minute electric signatures of everything living in its environment. Hertrich and Miyazaki wondered if it would be possible to engineer a similar EM sense for the human sensory apparatus.

The installation offers insight into a research process that normally remains hidden. Books, electronic prototypes, images deriving from the research process, a desk and a chair, inspiring works, tools and curious items are displayed inside a “research aquarium”.

The project also has a purely speculative strand as it tries to imagine a world where we are able to feel our invisible EM infrastructure and their signals and processes as sensible pulses, rhythms and tickings. What kind of future society would unfold through the design of such altered sensory capabilities? Or conversely, what kind of society would develop the necessity for such sensory capabilities?.

The publication that accompanies the project can be purchased in paper but its digital version is entirely free.

Yuri Suzuki, Sound of the Earth: Chapter 3. Exhibition view. Photo: DSL Studio

In the foreground: Bosco Sodi, Perfect Bodies. In the background: Yuri Suzuki, Sound of the Earth: Chapter 3. Exhibition view. Photo: DSL Studio

Yuri Suzuki‘s soundoftheearth.org website invites users to listen to sounds from all over the world and to submit sounds that will join the global archive. Machine learning then links user-submitted sounds to their nearest sonic neighbours, creating a collective soundscape without borders.

The physical installation is a gigantic geodesic sphere situated at the entrance of Unknown Unknowns. Walking around the sphere, you can listen to a range of sounds that have been submitted via the soundoftheearth.org website.

More images of the exhibitions. Most of them are from Unknown Unknowns. An Introduction to Mysteries. Others from the other shows that are part of the Triennale:

Unknown Unknowns. An introduction to mysteries. Exhibition view. Photo: DSL Studio

Unknown Unknowns. An introduction to mysteries. Exhibition view. Photo: DSL Studio

Nonhuman Nonsense, Planetary Personhood; A universal declaration of martian rights, 2020-21

Björn Dahlem, The Still Expanding Universe, 2013. Photo: Achim Kukulies, Düsseldorf

Philip Hubbard, Flyem/Hhmi-Janelia Research Campus, Google, Flyem Project, 2020

BIG + Icon Build + NASA, Project Olympus, 2020. Design for the first permanent settlement on the lunar surface; multi-material model

Vincent Fournier, Kjell Henriksen Observatory #1 [KHO], Adventdalen, Isola di Spitsbergen, Norvegia, 2010

Vincent Fournier, Mars Desert Research Station #11 [MDRS], Mars Society, San Rafael S 64 well, Utah, USA, 2008

In the foreground: Andrea Galvani. Instruments for Inquiring into the Wind and the Shaking Earth. In the background: Alighiero Boetti, Mettere al mondo il mondo, 1975. Exhibition view. Photo: DSL Studio

Refik Anadol, Universe Simulations: The Merging of Milky Way & Andromeda. Exhibition view. Photo: DSL Studio

Antonio Fiorentino, Dominium Melancholiae, 2014. Photo: Jean Brasille

André des Gachons, Observations météorologiques, 1915-17

André des Gachons, Observations météorologiques, 1915-17

Three times a day (morning, early afternoon and at sunset), painter and illustrator André des Gachons would look at the sky and turn his weather observations into small watercolours. Between 1913 and 1951, he sent around 77,000 to the weather service in Paris.

Giovanni Agosti and Jacopo Stoppa, Il corridoio rosso. Exhibition view. Photo: DSL Studio

Giovanni Agosti and Jacopo Stoppa, Il corridoio rosso. Exhibition entrance. Photo: DSL Studio

Giovanni Agosti and Jacopo Stoppa, Il corridoio rosso. Exhibition view. Photo: DSL Studio

Unknown Unknowns. An Introduction to Mysteries, one of the main exhibitions of the 23rd International Exhibition at the Triennale, is curated by Ersilia Vaudo, the Chief Diversity Officer of the European Space Agency. The triennale is open until 11 December 2022.

Previously: An artificial planet made entirely of human bodies; Supre:organism. Alternative perspectives on space exploration, etc.
Also part of the Triennale di Milano: “Have we met?” A multispecies approach to the planet.

I opened this book right after I had listened to a radio interview about the sharp rise in the artificialisation of soils and natural spaces in France. Each year, more areas of the country are being covered in concrete in order to build houses, shopping malls but also, and increasingly, warehouses, data centres and other infrastructures necessary for the acceleration of the digital economy.

Server Manifesto opens on another story that points to the physicality of an infrastructure that is otherwise presented to us as being as impalpable and evanescent as a cloud. When a massive fire destroyed a data center in Strasbourg, it literally consumed all the information stored there. Because the data had not been stored anywhere else, the blaze also incinerated the naivety of anyone thinking that spending money on offsite-backup is superfluous.

Major fire at the data centre cluster OHV in Strasbourg, France, on March 10, 2021. Photo via

In his book, Niklas Maak looks at the impact that both data and the places where it is stored have on cities and society.

Given the economic and political importance of data ownership, data centres have often been compared to more traditional sites of power like castles of feudal lords, cathedrals and office towers of large corporations. But while its predecessors have left highly visible marks in landscapes and cities, the server farm tends to be anonymous. Usually relegated to the outskirts of cities and sporting bland architecture, the data centre is both massive and virtually invisible.

“Die DDR ist richtig programmiert” (The GDR is programmed correctly): slogan on a banner behind the Robotron stand at the Fighter and Winner exhibition in East Berlin, GDR, 1969. Photo via

Benthem Crouwel Architects, AM4, Equinix data center in Amsterdam

Data center MareNostrum, Barcelona

Jenny Odell, The Data Center Mural Project, 2016

In a chapter titled, Architecture Has Become the Décorateur of Platform Capitalism, Niklas Maak notes that there are exceptions to the inconspicuous server farm strategy. Art, design, architecture and eco-friendly elements are increasingly used to cloak under an eye-pleasing blanket the social, political and ecological problems generated by server farms.

The vertical profiling of AM4, Equinix’s new data centre in Amsterdam, for example, immediately brings to mind the World Trade Center. In particular, the double tower which suggests the idea of the mirroring and the backup copy central to the Internet age. As for the “sustainable” Spark in Os (Norway), it will be made of wood and local stone, will produce more energy than it consumes and supply heat to local housing estates and public baths. The structure will also boast a vegetable garden, a water lily pond and flower beds. This is the kind of poster boy for eco-conscious (or better said greenwashed) internet infrastructures that will make us forget that what happens inside server farms is opaque, unregulated and exploitative.

Many architects, artists and scientists before Maak have criticised data centres for their ecological footprint, their sheer ugliness and their role in the digital colonisation of Europe but they stopped short of describing any alternative model or infrastructure. Maak imagines what data storage for the benefit of all citizens would look like.

In his book, the author calls for a physical space where citizens would be able to understand that governance is no longer possible without access to data. He proposes that the server farm becomes “a place of political activation”. Such place, halfway between a civic centre and a public internet infrastructure, would help citizens visualise what a digital society could do with the data it collectively generates, if it did not give it away to private corporations and platforms. That space would make it clear that the technological future, as well as the political and economic sovereignty of both Europe and Africa, should no longer be squeezed between two models: the Silicon Valley model powered by surveillance capitalism and the Chinese Big State model with its paralysing social point system.

This new breed of data centre could play an important role in what Francesca Bria calls a “smart green new deal” for digital society in This Is a Historic Moment. Why We Need New Public Spaces to Experiment with and Reclaim Digital Sovereignty for the People, the introductory essay of Server Manifesto. Building on her experience as the Chief Technology and Digital Innovation Officer of Barcelona, Bria explains how the contract would put digital technologies at the service of both social and environmental sustainability. It would require digital sovereignty in Europe, data privacy for citizens, a move from data extractivism to data commons as well as ambitious regulation and a digital industrial strategy.

The book closes on a series of designs by students of the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main who imagine possible models of data centres that better respond to societal and environmental demands: data factories physically distributed throughout city centres to be better integrated into the fabric of society; infrastructures that hover over cities like clouds (of the meteorological kind); a server farm that floats on the sea; server farms that upcycle e-waste that rich countries dump on people living in the Global South, etc. All the projects were rather ingenious. Like the other sections in the book, these students’ designs suggest that the construction, management and societal role of data centres could be improved.

Maybe the future is not all doom and gloom then!

Inside the book:

Design Investigations students at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna: Takuma Kikuchi, Lucy Li, Florian Sapp and Alan Schiegl, Interspecies Play, 2022

Joost Emmerik, Botanical Bath, 2022. Have we met? Humans and Non-humans on Common Ground at La Triennale di Milano 2022. Photo: Cristiano Corte

Curated by Het Nieuwe Instituut under the title Have we met? Humans and non-humans on common ground, the show is an uplifting meditation on the urgency to welcome the perspectives of non-human life into our vision of the world. Have we met? questions our anthropocentric understanding of a planet that exists solely for human exploitation. One of the most damaging consequences of this shortsightedness is our failure to face environmental crises in a comprehensive and meaningful way.

The idea of a planet shared fairly between all living species is not a new one, not even in the West. What is original however is the collection of credible, collaborative tools and proposals that attempt to recalibrate the relationship between plants, fungi, microbes, humans and other animals. Instead of the usual techno-solutionism and pompous “design will save the world” mindset, the attitudes, tools and technologies selected for Have we met? explore realistic possibilities for interspecies relationships. These projects also reflect the Zoöp model which commits to making the interests of non-humans part of its organisational decision-making. In this model, the voices and interests of non-human life are represented by a “Speaker for the Living” who acts as observer, advisor and teacher in the organisation.

Have we met? Humans and non-humans on common ground features a dozen projects. I was particularly drawn to the ones that looked at the offshore energy industry in the North Sea.

An offshore oil drilling rig platform is towed by tug boats up the River Tees to Able Seaton Port for decommissioning in England. Photo: Getty, via The Independent

Drilling platform off the Dutch coast. Assessed by marine researcher Fiona Middleton. Have we met? Humans and Non-humans on Common Ground. 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition, La Triennale di Milano 2022. Photo: Cristiano Corte

Marine scientist Fiona Middleton has investigated the fate of pipelines, platforms and other offshore infrastructures in the North Sea. She identified a cluster of five small oil platforms located near the Dutch shore. One of them has already been decommissioned while the others are in some state of pre-decommissioning.

The Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (or OSPAR) states that rigs, including their contents and pipelines, must be entirely removed from the sea after decommissioning. However, several research by marine biologists have shown that offshore oil platforms have become oases of life, with fish, sponges, crustaceans, seabirds and other marine life using the base of the platforms either as a place to anchor to or as a place to visit and find food. Some scientists are even suggesting that the ageing oils rigs could be repurposed as ocean reefs.

In an interview with Wineke van Muiswinkel for Het Nieuwe Instituut, Middleton explains that before the arrival of offshore infrastructures, the North Sea wasn’t in great shape ecologically. Decades of trawling and anthropic marine activities had destroyed the oyster bed and other rocky structures that provide habitat for sea creatures.

Middleton‘s research challenges thus environmental campaigns that call for all oil rig structures to be entirely removed at the end of their economic lives. By leaving the rig structures in the sea we would shift from human values to non-human values without having to invest any money nor effort.

Embassy of the North Sea, Designing the Problem, 2022. Have we met? Humans and Non-humans on Common Ground. 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition, La Triennale di Milano 2022. Photo: Cristiano Corte

Embassy of the North Sea, Designing the Problem, 2022. Have we met? Humans and Non-humans on Common Ground. 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition, La Triennale di Milano 2022. Photo: Cristiano Corte

Designing the Problem, a project by Darko Lagunas, is also looking at energy exploitation in the North Sea and in particular the aftermath of offshore oil and gas energy. Lagunas is part of the Embassy of the North Sea: a group of artists, researchers, lawyers and activists that want the North Sea to become a real actor by listening to the political voices of things, plants, animals, microbes and people in and around the North Sea.

The research shown in the Dutch Pavilion invites us to consider what happens in the North Sea and other parts of the world when we build wind turbines in the sea. The wind turbines will reduce CO2 emissions but at what -or whose- cost? Are we going to, once again, disturb and endanger the marine life that we do not see?

The Embassy of the North Sea also probes into the environmental and humanitarian cost of the so-called green energy transition, in particular the mining -at the other side of the world- of the minerals necessary for the production of wind turbines. Outsourcing pollution and extractivism to distant countries is never going to be a “sustainable” solution. What we need, the project suggests, is to challenge the current economic system based on unlimited growth. We also need funding to help marine life thrive, a legal Zoöp representative acting on behalf of non-human interests and measures that ensure the fair treatment of workers and the environment in regions where raw materials are mined.

Brynjar Sigurðarson of Studio Brynjar and Veronika, Borgþór Sveinsson (still from the documentary), 2012

Brynjar Sigurðarson of Studio Brynjar and Veronika, Borgþór Sveinsson (still from the documentary), 2012. Have we met? Humans and Non-humans on Common Ground at La Triennale di Milano 2022. Photo: Cristiano Corte

Brynjar Sigurðarson of Studio Brynjar and Veronika, Borgþór Sveinsson (still from the documentary), 2012. Have we met? Humans and Non-humans on Common Ground at La Triennale di Milano 2022. Photo: Cristiano Corte

Borgþór, a documentary by Brynjar Sigurðarson and Sebastian Ziegler, follows a hermit who spends the winter in a cabin in the remote countryside of Iceland. Named Borgþór Sveinsson, the man is looking for bullfish, a rare species that only exists in a few places in the world. He patiently investigates what might interest the fish in an attempt to find a common ground.

Harald den Breejen and Sjoerd van Leeuwen, commissioned by regenerative farm Bodemzicht, Chicken Mobile, 2020-ongoing

Harald den Breejen and Sjoerd van Leeuwen, commissioned by regenerative farm Bodemzicht, Chicken Mobile, 2020-ongoing. Have we met? Humans and Non-humans on Common Ground at La Triennale di Milano 2022. Photo: Cristiano Corte

Mobile chicken coops. Photo: Bodemzicht

Chicken Mobile, designed by Harald den Breejen and Sjoerd van Leeuwen for regenerative farm Bodemzicht enables the regeneration of degraded soil. Chickens graze on fresh grass and insects in the open air all year round. They are moved from one area of ground to another in mobile chicken coops. Their grazing stimulates abundant grass growth, builds living soil and accelerates carbon storage.

In my view, Chicken Mobile is less a radical way to “advance equality in multispecies cohabitation” than yet another smart way to put animals at the service of human interests. The project does however present an improvement on the treatments that farming systems (particularly intensive ones) inflict on the vast majority of chickens and other sentient beings. Chicken Mobile also reflects the greater concern (compared to most Western countries) that Dutch people seem to have towards animals and the environment in general. The Netherlands Government, for example, has recently announced plans to halve the country’s nitrogen output by 2030 by using less fertiliser and cutting livestock numbers by 30 percent. I wish Belgium, France and Italy (the European countries I’m most familiar with) stopped looking at the impact of the meat industry on the environment as the ultimate taboo that shouldn’t be mentioned for fear of upsetting the electorate.

Leena Valkeapää and Oula A Valkeapää, Manifestations, 2017

Leena Valkeapää and Oula A Valkeapää, Manifestations, 2017

A compilation of text messages and emails between Sami reindeer herder Oula A. Valkeapää and his partner environmental artist Leena Valkeapää, the video Manifestations gives an intimate view into the Arctic landscape, where the fates of humans and the reindeer are deeply entangled. Everyday exchanges convey glimpses of modes of knowledge in a world that is changing due to the pressures of the modern economy and the climate crisis. They also communicate an air of questioning where the questions become a part of life, without the need to find clear answers.

More images from the Dutch Pavilion at the Triennale:

Joost Emmerik, Botanical Bath, 2022. Have we met? Humans and Non-humans on Common Ground at La Triennale di Milano 2022. Photo: Cristiano Corte

Joost Emmerik, Botanical Bath, 2022. Have we met? Humans and Non-humans on Common Ground at La Triennale di Milano 2022. Photo: Cristiano Corte

Have we met? Humans and Non-humans on Common Ground. 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition, La Triennale di Milano 2022. Photo: Cristiano Corte

Julian Abraham “Togar”, Water have no enemy, enemy have water, 2022. Have we met? Humans and Non-humans on Common Ground at La Triennale di Milano 2022. Photo: Cristiano Corte

Have we met? Humans and Non-humans on Common Ground. 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition, La Triennale di Milano 2022. Photo: Cristiano Corte

Have we met? Humans and Non-humans on Common Ground. 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition, La Triennale di Milano 2022. Photo: Cristiano Corte

The Netherlands pavilion Have we met? Humans and non-humans on common ground was curated by Klaas Kuitenbrouwer and Ellen Zoete. The show is part of Unknown Unknowns: An Introduction to Mysteries, the 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition, open until 12 December 2022 at Triennale in Milan.

Joan Fontcuberta and Pilar Rosado, Beautiful agony, 2020-2021

Joan Fontcuberta and Pilar Rosado, Beautiful agony, 2020-2021

Joan Fontcuberta’s keynote at ISEA 2022. Photo by Joan Casto, Iconna / UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)

Throughout his career, Joan Fontcuberta has developed a conceptual photography practice that merges humour with technological experiments and a critical reflection on the concept of evidence. The Age of Monsters, the title of his talk at ISEA, echoes Antonio Gramsci‘s words who, while while he was locked in a prison by Mussolini’s Fascist regime, wrote: Il vecchio mondo sta morendo. Quello nuovo tarda a comparire. E in questo chiaroscuro nascono i mostri / “The old world is dying. The new one is slow to appear. And in this chiaroscuro monsters are born”. Fontcuberta applied the quote to photography, reflecting on the relationships between analog photography (the old world) and the images generated by AI (the new world). For the artist, we should reassess the photographic medium at a moment when analogue photography has shown its inability to respect its promise of delivering truth and memory while the new photography sides with virtuality, machines and algorithms. The term “monsters” can also be interpreted literally. Most of Fontcuberta’s works, after all, explore the strange and the uncanny.

Joan Fontcuberta’s keynote at ISEA 2022. Photo by Joan Casto, Iconna / UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)

Joan Fontcuberta’s keynote at ISEA 2022. Photo by Joan Casto, Iconna / UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)

For one of art pieces he described in his ISEA opening keynote, Fontcuberta collaborated with Pilar Rosado to work with a dataset of video-selfies uploaded online by people while they were having an orgasm. The duo used GAN (Generative Adversarial Networks) technology to initiate a process of deep learning aiming to generate false portraits of (non-existent) persons at the moment of climax. This process makes it possible to identify the expressive models characteristic of orgasm and to transfer their expressive typology to any face.

These characteristics were transferred to the faces of four powerful political figures: Donald Trump, Silvio Berlusconi, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Spain’s former king Juan Carlos I. Each of them has been associated with sex scandals and abuses of power. In the films that Fontcuberta and Rosado made, we see the men experiencing an orgasm in the middle of an official discourse. It’s funny and cringe. Obscene and pitiful. The GAN technology, however, has been applied in a deliberately crude way. The artists’ deep fake experiment was never intended to deceive. What the artists wanted to do with this parody of deep fake was to reveal the mechanisms of deception.

Joan Fontcuberta and Pilar Rosado, Beautiful agony, 2020-2021

Joan Fontcuberta and Pilar Rosado, Beautiful agony, 2020-2021

The work is completed by 3D busts of the powerful figures, their faces petrified, as if they had locked eyes with Medusa in the middle of an orgasm.

Unfortunately, the videos are not available online, due to a matter of intellectual property rights. What a pity!

Right after Fontcuberta’s keynote, I attended Ecologies and biotechnical relationships. One of the highlight of the session was Ecopornography in Digital Arts, a paper presented by Zane Cerpina and Stahl Stenslie. Their investigation of “ecopornography” explores how digital arts represent nature in a way that is not explicitly sexual but that nevertheless arouses the viewer and triggers a feeling of excitement similar to the one experienced when exposed to pornography.

Zane Cerpina and Stahl Stenslie, Ecopornography in Digital Arts

According to the researchers, there has been an exponential growth in ecopornographic content in contemporary society and culture due to the massive use of digital media and technologies to the point that nature seems to be a commodity like any other. An example can be found on Instagram where #nature #flowers #naturephotography #wildlife #green are among the most popular hashtags. Similarly, there is an hyperaesthetisation of nature in digital arts. This omnipresence and hyperaesthetisation of nature in nature is not entirely good news because it can lead to a state of exhaustion and indifference.

The objective of the Ecopornography in Digital Arts paper was to call for an in-depth analysis of nature-related content across digital media and media arts. How can digital arts be more critical in exploring and exposing the effect of ecoporn on society? When does ecoporn’s hyperaestheticization of nature lead to an anaesthetic loss of sensation? A new taxonomy of ecoporn can help us reflect on these questions.

Stenslie and Cerpina identified 5 subcategories of ecoporn in digital arts: Nature Pure, Nature Rough, Nature Hurt, Nature Saved and Nature Fake.

Joakim Blattmann, Treverk (9), 2018

Joakim Blattmann<, Treverk 3

Nature Pure can be defined as an idealised representation of nature that aims to appeal and seduce.

The highly popular 360 degrees recreation of Monet paintings, for example. Or Joakim Blattmann, Treverk (Woodwork), a series of installations based on audio recordings of minuscule movements in trees as they are dying.

Studio Rosegaarde, Waterlicht

The Nature Rough enables people to experience the thrills of an instagrammable Apocalypse. Maybe you enjoyed Nature Rough if you were watching the eruption of the La Palma volcano from the comfort of your own home or if you got a chance of being virtually flooded in Studio Rosegaarde, Waterlicht, a large-scale intervention that shows how high the water level could reach as the climate heats up.

Jacob Kirkegaard, MELT

Nature Hurt highlights humanity’s negative impact on nature. An example of that type of nature representation is MELT. In 2013 and 2015, Jacob Kirkegaard travelled to Greenland to make audio recordings of ice melting, documenting how water moves through different aggregate phases, from solid to liquid, changing the combination of molecules irrevocably.

Rihards Vitols, Woodpecker, 2016

In Nature Saved, Man is the hero and saviour of wildlife. Rihard Vithols’s Wood Pecker proposes to replace some of the bird species with artificial ones. He built wooden boxes that replicated the sounds of birds to see if they would scare away the plant-eating insects and help to maintain ecological balance in a forest.

Anna Ridler, Mosaic Virus, 2018

Nature Fake celebrates artificially created nature. As in Anna Ridler’s famous Tulips series.

The researchers also said a few words about the “Ecoporn Personality Test” they are working on. The digital tool for individual self-reflection would allow users to explore their ecopornographic preferences and tendencies.

After Fontcuberta, Cerpina and Stenslie’s talks, life at ISEA got decidedly tamer.

Previously: The long-lost archive of curious animals, Photography Off the Scale: Technologies and Theories of the Mass Image, etc.

For her solo show at arebyte in London, Heaney has created an immersive experience using quantum computing as both medium and subject matter. Packed with giant octopus cushions, glitches, satirical ads, an unearthly atmosphere and a garden of earthly delights, The Evolution of Ent-: QX is both a celebration of quantum physics and a warning that, unless we start to engage with its mind-bending, shape-shifting and radical mechanisms in a creative and ethical way, the technology will end up being harnessed by the Big Tech for purposes that might not benefit society as a whole.

Libby Heaney, The Evolution of Ent- QX, 2022

As soon as you step inside the arebyte gallery, you find yourself in the lobby of a fictional start-up company called QX, (Quantum eXperience). The parody QX ads and brand videos that greet visitors deploy the kind of slick aesthetics and inflated rhetoric that the tech industry uses to promote its products and services. In this case, the product is quantum technology. By emulating big tech’s communication strategies, Heaney not only exposes the dynamics of profit, techno-solutionism and surveillance capitalism but she also establishes a critical space of enquiry. A space that makes more tangible and comprehensible the transformative changes that quantum computing is expected to bring to tomorrow’s everyday life.

Libby Heaney, The Evolution of Ent-: QX, 2022. Installation view at arebyte Gallery. Photo by Max Colson

Libby Heaney, The Evolution of Ent-: QX, 2022. Installation view at arebyte Gallery. Photo by Max Colson

As visitors go through the immersive installation, they experience the physics that underpins quantum computing. The artist describes it as behaving in a fluid, shifting and slime-like way.

The new visual language created via Ent- provides a starting point for future alternatives to how we think, talk, and enact upon political, social and environmental issues. The idea of something being in multiple states at the same time – the quantum superposition – could be another way to rethink gender, for example, or as a metaphor to reimagine hierarchical relations within institutions or governments. The way that quantum entanglement – a phenomenon in which entities exhibit strong correlations that cannot be explained by classical physics – could be coupled with the entwined state that lies within all matter leaves the areas of futurity, responsibility and kinship (amongst others) open to new interpretations.

Libby Heaney, The Evolution of Ent-: QX, 2022. Installation view at arebyte Gallery. Photo by Max Colson

I got in touch with the artist, researcher and scientist to learn more about the installation:

Hi Libby! How did you go from a background in quantum computing and physics to an art practice?

I loved art at school because it was an escape from the chaos at school and home and making things really relaxed me. However, because I come from a working-class family, I was encouraged to study something they thought would be more stable jobwise like physics. All through my time as a scientist, I was drawing and making art, and it was only a matter of time before I switched back again. I’m so glad I did!

You were probably the first artist to work with Quantum Computing in 2019. Why do you feel it is important that artists engage with this new area of study?

Throughout history, artists have experimented with new technology so of course, it was natural to start experimenting with quantum computing when I had access to the machines. IBM currently has 5 qubit quantum computers available to the public and a wonderful online textbook that explains how one can write small programs and generate quantum phenomena like entanglement. I used to think these machines were too small to make any meaningful art, but recently I wrote some video editing software using entanglement data from a 5-qubit machine and the results were really strange and exciting.

Can any artist who doesn’t have your background grapple with quantum computing in a meaningful way?

There’s definitely a learning curve, but there is with traditional, digital coding too. I would really suggest experimenting with IBM’s public quantum computers using their Qiskit textbook, extracting data from various algorithms and then using that to generate forms using Processing or Unity or another digital software package. One can learn so much by actually doing and experimenting rather than reading a book or listening to a lecture.

Libby Heaney, The Evolution of Ent-: QX, 2022. Installation view at arebyte Gallery. Photo by Max Colson

Libby Heaney, The Evolution of Ent-: QX, 2022. Installation view at arebyte Gallery. Photo by Max Colson

Which strategies do you use to communicate to the audience the complexity and invisible processes at play inside quantum computing? Is it about being didactic, about finding new metaphors, about developing a new language or maybe a new aesthetic?

I think science is didactic and that can only go so far in expressing the themes I’m interested in. Rather back in 2019, I asked myself how can I use the pluralities and strong correlations from entanglement within a quantum computer to develop an aesthetic that wouldn’t otherwise be developed. A blurred pixelated aesthetic was the result, it was surprising and exciting as it could only have been generated from quantum data. Using that, with a team of developers, I’ve created an immersive experience, where groups of people can experience the invisible processes inside a quantum computer through their bodies and perceptions.

The Evolution of Ent-: QX, your exhibition at arebyte, features motifs from Hieronymus Bosch. Why did you bring one of his paintings into the installation?

Unlike quantum computing, which is not yet really in the public’s awareness, Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights is really famous. In my mind, there’s an ongoing question about how to present advanced technologies to a general audience. Therefore by connecting Bosch to quantum computing, it gives my audiences an accessible way into the themes I wanted to speak about. For instance, I wanted to centre and celebrate hybridity and most people are familiar with Bosch’s hybrid monsters. Viewers also remember the naked people in The Garden of Earthly Delight’s central panel and may ask themselves why there are no humans in my animation – perhaps they realise that they are the humans in the work now, experiencing desire around quantum art through their phones screens or bodies. I also wanted to speak about the future of quantum computing, in which through Bosch I align with both heaven and hell.

Libby Heaney, The Evolution of Ent-: QX, 2022. Installation view at arebyte Gallery. Photo by Max Colson

The Evolution of Ent-: QX looks with irony and concern at the future corporate exploitation of Quantum Computing. Do you feel that there is still agency, time and opportunities to ensure that the technology doesn’t follow a purely capitalistic path?
You explain how QC can help us think beyond binaries and reach deep interconnectedness. How optimistic are you about the way it will shape the world in the future?

There is time as full scale quantum computers are still around 5-10years away, but I think big tech companies and governments are following a purely capitalist agenda around quantum computing and the momentum is such that I doubt they can be swayed off their path. I like to think that my work will raise awareness of quantum computing in new communities and may have some influence particularly when I speak to former science colleagues who rarely think about ethics and the real world impact of their work.

There is a radical potential underlying quantum computing. To access this, perhaps creatives will develop a quantum games engine, which will enable folk to experience the shapeshifting pluralities and entanglements of the quantum world. Perhaps being inside these new worlds will feel like a new type of acid trip, which will open people’s eyes to new ways of experiencing ourselves and each other. How much future counterculture movements, like one based on a type of quantum virtual reality (QVR), can shift late capitalism without becoming consumed by it is difficult to say… it’s hard to imagine moving away from capitalism right now… (I’m writing this as it’s almost 40deg outside in London).

One of your areas of investigation is the kind of power structures that new technologies give rise to. The ethical pitfalls, biases and potential dangers of AI are fairly well known today (though certainly not adequately addressed). How about the development of Quantum Computing? What could go wrong for humanity?

Quantum computing will lead to a paradigmatic shift in how we process information and understand the world. For one, I believe QC, when fully developed, will exponentially extend and accelerate modes of surveillance capitalism and its attendant biases and pitfalls. And no one is talking about this. Quantum computers are also a weapon, as they will be able to break all currently used encryption including the blockchain. Whoever develops one first will have a huge advantage over everyone else. Quantum computers will also be able to simulate matter at a resolution not achievable with even the best supercomputers, leading to new drug design and better materials. While this sounds great and new materials are certainly needed for energy storage and transfer, one may also imagine quantum computers being used to develop new lifeforms, new types of bio and chemical warfare and for manipulating people’s genes and DNA.

Libby Heaney, The Evolution of Ent-: QX, 2022. Installation view at arebyte Gallery. Photo by Max Colson

Libby Heaney, The Evolution of Ent-: QX, 2022. Installation view at arebyte Gallery. Photo by Max Colson

I have a curiosity about QC and I’m not sure you’ve looked into that issue yourself but I never managed to understand whether QC will be less damaging to the environment than digital computing. In terms of extraction of resources to build the devices and infrastructures or in terms of energy consumption. Do you have an idea about that?

Because quantum computers are a type of reversible computer, the energy required to run code is much lower. They don’t chuck out as much heat as our digital devices.

Matter qubits should be cooled close to absolute zero which takes energy, but while the computational power scales exponentially, the energy usage scales only linearly so this is good. There is a liquid helium shortage so this method of building a quantum computer might not be sustainable in the future. However, there are other methods which do not require cooling like using photonic qubits.

What is next for you? Any upcoming exhibition, research or project you are working on?

Ent- is travelling a bit – as a full dome version to Munich planetarium and to Ars Electronica, Linz. In terms of new work, I’m currently working with Mozilla Foundation on a project investigating what would happen if the emergent systems of nature informed our data-driven systems and I’m also working with NeON Digital Art Festival in Dundee and Glasgow University on a quantum world-building project.

Thanks Libby!

The Evolution of Ent-: QX. Libby Heaney runs until 20 Aug 2022 at arebyte Gallery in London.
On 26 July, you will be able to follow the streaming of Quantum Slimifications. Libbey Heaney in conversation with Mónica Bello and Nora N. Khan.

What physical form might Black utopia take? What are the legacies of Afrofuturism? Who are the TRAUMAnauts? Are there seducing and compelling alternatives to Western visions of progress? How can fantasy, myth and fiction address racism and injustice? Or even give new perspectives on ecology and gender identity?

In the Black Fantastic is a collection of works by artists from the African diaspora whose imagination revisits dominant portrayals of the past, reclaims narratives about the future and engages with the inequities of today’s society. The fantastical element shouldn’t be confused with escapism. The strange and eccentric Black Fantastic deploys myth and spiritual practices to make emerge new visions of Black possibility. It’s about summoning different cultural traditions to confront the racialised every day and expand the visual spectrum of Black experiences.

Kristin-Lee Moolman, from Baloji series, 2018

Wole Lagunju, Belle of the Hearth, 2014

Kordas Jatafa Henry, Earth Mother, Sky Father (trailer), 2019

In the Black Fantastic is a brilliant book. Because of the colour illustrations of exciting art and because of the quality of the essays. In Black Feminist Voodoo Aesthetics, Feminism and the Arts, Kameelah L. Martin explores the cultural importance of Black women’s speculative interventions, transmission of Ancestral memory and knowledge. Michelle D. Commander’s essay In Populated Air: Flying Africans, Technology & the Future encapsulates the soul of the book by bringing together folklore of the African diaspora and a sharp questioning of Western modernity that suggests the need for what Amiri Baraka calls “spiritually-oriented Black technologies”.

I was also particularly moved by a text in which Ekow Eshun explains how journeys across sea and space -a familiar element of the Black speculative imaginary- not only grapple with a world that treats Black people as alien and Other but is also often used as a metaphor to help revisit the “founding trauma” or the Middle Passage.

Here’s a fraction of the amazing artworks I discovered (and sometimes rediscovered) in the book:

David Uzochukwu, Wildfire, 2015

Mickalene Thomas, Untitled #3 (from Orlando series), 2019

Nuotama Bodomo, Afronauts, 2014

Get Out, dir. Jordan Peele (still), 2017

Us, dir. Jordan Peele (trailer), 2019

Jean-Claude Moschetti, Ouri #4, 2010

Allison Janae Hamilton, Three girls in cabal palm forest II, 2019

Cristina de Middel, Okowako (from This Is What Hatred Did series), 2014

Curtis Essel, Allumuah (trailer), 2020

Larry Achiampong, Relic I (still), 2017

Marc Asekhame and Daniel Obasi, from “Chaos and creation in ages pre-lockdown”, The Face, May 2020

Gordon Parks, Invisible Man Retreat, Harlem, New York, 1952

Mohau Modisakeng, Passage, 2017

Robert Pruitt, I Need a Vacation from this Vacation, 2015

Athi-Patra Ruga, Night of the Long Knives, 2013

Alisha B.Wormsley, There are Black People in the Future, 2017

Fabrice Monteiro, Untitled #3 (from The Missing Link series), 2014

Wilfred Ukpong, BC1-ND-FC: Strongly, We Believe In the Power of this Motile Thing That Will Take Us There #1. From the series: Blazing Century 1: Niger-Delta/Future-Cosmos (from Blazing Century 1), 2017

Hew Locke, Ambassador 1, 2021. Photo: Anna Arca

Lina Iris Viktor, Eleventh, 2018

Here Locke, Albion (from How Do You Want Me? series), 2007

Nick Cave, Soundsuit, 2014

P.S: The artwork on the cover of In the Black Fantastic is Juliana Huxtable, Lil’ Marvel, 2015.
P.S. 2: The publication accompanies an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.

Previously: Africa State of Mind. Contemporary Photography Reimagines a Continent, UFA – University of African Futures, Kinshasa. Always on the move.

In the 1960s, pollution in Japan caused the spread of fatal conditions such as the Itai-itai disease and Yokkaichi asthma. In spite of scientific investigations, local politicians, bureaucrats and business owners put profits before people’s health and poisonous industrial waste continued to be released in the environment.

In 1970, a small group of Buddhist monks, exasperated with the lack of governmental intervention, decided to protest. They adopted the name Jusatsu Kito Sodan (Group of Monks Bringing the Curse of Death) and traveled to some of these contaminating industrial sites. Equipped with conch instruments and books of curses and incantations, the monks formed a procession, drumming, chanting, praying, and performed ceremonies with the objective of cursing factory owners to death.

Hokkaichi asthma sufferer. Photo: Mitsutoshi Hanaga estate

Jusatsu Kito Sodan rituals in action, 1970. Photo: Mitsutoshi Hanaga estate

Jounalist, reporter and photographer Mitsutoshi Hanaga followed their crusade to document this early example of anti-corporate and anti-government activism.

Jusatsu Kito Sodan fought for spiritual and physical retaliation on behalf of the dead, and exposed injustices in society. “The group challenged industrialists with counter-murder attempts, legally considered as an “impossible crime” that could not be prosecuted in their judiciary system.” (via)

I discovered this intervention while visiting Emergency Exit, curated by Ana Mizerit, Bojana Piškur, Zdenka Badovinac and Igor Španjol, at +MSUM in Ljubljana. The show remains open until 11 September 2022

As the feeling of anxiety takes hold, the doomsday prepper sub-culture is steadily growing. Prepping, it turns out, is a lucrative business, with its own reality shows, expos, escape vehicles and dehydrated food kits. But can you really buy your way out of major chaos and catastrophe? Is salvation a question of self-reliance, of being better equipped and prepared than everyone else? Or is it about joining forces and expertise to face together an uncertain and probably unpleasant future? Should we rely on technology or on good old survival skills?

Dunne & Raby, Huggable Atomic Mushroom: Pricilla 37 Kilotons, Nevada 1957, 2004. Photo: Bureau Europa

Bunker, France, ca. 1958–65. Photo: Paul Virilio

Theo Triantafyllidis & Kostis Stafylakis, Readiness Chamber, 2022. Bureau Europa opening Prepper Paradise. Photo: Moniek Wegdam

The questions above are only some of the interrogations that pop in your mind when visiting Prepper Paradise, an exhibition curated by Ward Janssen for Bureau Europa in Maastricht. The show asks you to consider the twofold nature of doomsday culture. It is dark, testosterone-fuelled and slightly disturbing but survivalism also comes with a certain dose of optimism and utopia. A devastated world is a world that will have to be reinvented, redesigned and rebuilt. Prepper Paradise not only explores the ethics, aesthetics and codes of prepper culture, it also investigates how artists, designers and architects look upon unpredictable futures as thought experiments.

I visited Prepper Paradise a couple of weeks ago. It features shorts films, a PDF library packed with publications to educate the aspirant prepper and, of course, design and artworks. Here is a short selection of them:

Theo Triantafyllidis & Kostis Stafylakis, Readiness Chamber, 2022

Theo Triantafyllidis & Kostis Stafylakis, Readiness Chamber, 2022. Photo: Bureau Europa

Theo Triantafyllidis & Kostis Stafylakis, Readiness Chamber, 2022. Bureau Europa opening Prepper Paradise. Photo: Moniek Wegdam

Theo Triantafyllidis & Kostis Stafylakis, Readiness Chamber, 2022. Bureau Europa opening Prepper Paradise. Photo: Moniek Wegdam

In December 2019, just before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Theo Triantafyllidis & Kostis Stafylakis organised a LARP (Live Action Role Playing game where participants physically portray characters in a fictional scenario) about the struggle between survivors of a global disaster. In their post-apocalyptic narrative, the players are split into three factions that battle for survival: the doomsday Preppers, the Boogaloo Bois (Civil War accelerationists, with far-right views, weapons and Hawaiian shirts) and the Golden Horde (in preppers speaks, they are the unprepared citizens who will be out roaming, searching, and even looting & pillaging for food and supplies following a major collapse.)

Par of the “Readiness SAGA,” this simulation of social conflict in the US weaves together real and fictional identities and scenarios into a brutal, farcical but ultimately humorous fantasy world. By fore-playing the pending scenarios of an American Civil War which strangely anticipates the violence of the 6 January assault on the US Capitol, the artists seek to dissect the dystopian fantasies of preparedness.

The installation includes footage of the LARP as well as a series of weaponry printed onto aluminium, an egg-shaped preppers’ dwelling and a firepit visitors can gather around.

Stine Deja, Last Resort: Thermal Womb, 2019. Photo: Moniek Wegdam

Stine Deja, Last Resort: Thermal Womb (detail), 2019. Photo: Bureau Europa

Stine Deja, Last Resort: Thermal Womb (detail), 2019

Stine Deja’s work explores the themes of cryonics, the freezing and storing of a body or body part immediately after death. Deja drew her inspiration from Alcor, a company in Arizona where hundreds of bodies, heads or brains, have already been frozen. Alcor charges $200,000 to preserve a body and $80,000 to preserve a head, plus hefty annual membership fees and surcharges.

Alcor freezes the bodies in thermal sleeping bags immersed into metal vacuum insulated storage spaces which are filled with liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees Celsius. The bodies are stored upside down to keep the heads chilled for as long as possible in case the cooling system unexpectedly breaks down. It is estimated that, worldwide, approximately 400 whole bodies and even more heads are immersed in liquid nitrogen waiting to be brought back to life at some indeterminate time in the future.

Now the problem is that the technology to restore a body from cryogenic suspension has yet to be developed. Some neuroscientists doubt it will ever be possible. Is cryonics snake oil for the 21st Century? Should resurrection only be available to those who can afford it? What is humanity without mortality? Can a planet, a society sustain a human population that is not only growing thanks to the advances of medicine but will also have to assist “resurrected” people?

The installation, made of five human-sized sculptures, projects the visitor into a future time where the bodies are waking up from cryogenic suspension. They are presented suspended, head-down, on a floor covered with terracotta sand like that of the Arizona desert where Alcor is located.

An animated face at the bottom of the sculpture gives each body an individual identity. The face acts as a kind of portrait panel, not unlike the death masks of Ancient Egypt that were painted in the likeness of the deceased to help their souls recognize their own body in the afterlife.

Deja’s installation reflects on a technological experiment and transhumanist promise: to escape from incurable disease or incoming catastrophe, humans only have to trust that technology will eventually be able to solve any existential crisis.

Meeus Van Dis, The Hydra – Regenerative Efforts, 2022. Photograph by J.P. Geusens

Meeus Van Dis, The Hydra – Regenerative Efforts, 2022. Photo: Bureau Europa

Meeus van Dis’ installation plays with the ambiguous role that water can take in case of a major disaster. Water can be a formidable threat, at the origin of sea level rise, floods, violent storms, etc. On the other hand, water is a precious commodity, a prerequisite for survival. That is why preppers stockpile on water bottles and water filters. The artist encapsulated both faces of water in a series of DIY survival capsules constructed from water tanks. They can withstand the impact of rising sea levels and sudden tidal waves but also act like a floating bunker.

The crafty, speedy architecture contrasts with the lavish escape dwellings that the wealthy commission as an insurance policy. Preferably located in New Zealand, lost in the middle of the U.S. landscape or the European countryside, these luxury shelters feature amenities such as heated swimming pools, golf courses and sometimes even surgical facilities.

Bunker, France, ca. 1958–65. Photo: Paul Virilio

Published in 1975, Paul Virilio’s Bunker Archeology is an analysis and photographic portrayal of the bunkers and fortifications built along the Normandy coast by Germany during WW2. At the time of its conception, the Atlantic Wall was meant to be both military equipment and a monumental visual symbol of the Third Reich. Only the latter purpose has endured. The abandoned reminders of violence led Virilio to contemplate the bunker as a phenomenon that is both a resting place and repository of crisis. Made of thick concrete, the abandoned structures are too expensive to be removed. Some remain half-buried under drifting dunes. Others even became a sign of climate change, with land erosion and sea level rise threatening to submerge them.

Today, bunkers have become one of survivalists’ architectures of choice, potentially reviving the dangers that these structures embodied.

Ted Noten, 7 Necessities: Trophy Helmet, 2013

As Triantafyllidis and Stafylakis’ Readiness Chamber caustically demonstrates, the world of preppers and survivalists tends to have a bit of a rank alpha male aura. Women are welcome to make preserves, take care of children and be the sidekick of the virile hero. In preppers’ narratives, there is no space for frills. Or for women’s specific needs.

In 2013, designer Ted Noten created a kind of ‘survival package’ to help modern women face their societal struggles. One of the seven objects in the kit is the Trophy Helmet. Acting as jewellery, archetypal totem and practical armour for feminine survival, the helmet is made from 3D printed plastic, lined with fur and reinforced with metal and gemstones. It is also equipped with radar, telescope and night vision goggles.

The semi-militarised accessory suggests a woman ready to defend herself against dangers.

More images from Prepper Paradise:

Rustan Söderling, Tannhäuser Gate (not really now not anymore), 2017

Dennis de Bel, Mountain Stronghold, 2022

Dennis de Bel, Mountain Stronghold, 2022

The Prepper PDF Library. Prepper Paradise Opening. Photo: Moniek Wegdam

The Prepper PDF Library (detail). Photo: Bureau Europa

Prepper Paradise Opening. Photo: Moniek Wegdam

Prepper Paradise Opening. Photo: Moniek Wegdam

Prepper Paradise Opening. Photo: Moniek Wegdam

Prepper Paradise, by guest curator Ward Janssen, remains open at Bureau Europa in Maastricht until 14 August 2022.

Related stories: Preppers and the YOYO (You’re on your own) culture; Absolute Beginners: making the basic goods you might need when economies collapse; The Ends of Everythings. Mental strategies to deal with the Apocalypse; The Clearing. How to live together when sea levels rise and global economy collapses, Radicalization Pipeline, etc.

Alexis Destoop, The Pits, 2022. Photo: the artist

Pélagie Gbaguidi, Hunger, 2022. Installation view at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture. Photo: Kristof Vrancken

On-Trade-Off, the co-curators of the exhibition together with Ils Huygens from Z33, is an artist collective whose members hail from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Belgium and The Netherlands. The starting point of their research is Manono, a former mining town in the southeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the early 20th century, the town was booming. Belgian colonisers built mining structures – including foundries, dams, housing and railway- to exploit the cassiterite deposit. Then came the independence of the country, falling prices for tin, civil wars and Manono became a sleepy down with a decaying mining infrastructure. Many of the residents survive today by mining for cassiterite in an abandoned quarry. Usually without adequate tools or protection.

Maarten Vanden Eynde, A Chain of Events. Installation view of On-Trade-Off. Charging Myths at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture. Photo: Kristof Vrancken

Australian company AVZ Minerals has recently discovered lithium reserves in the region. Their experts estimate that it might be the largest undeveloped resource of lithium in the world. AVZ plans to mine the area and build a plant to crush, grind and process the ores. If the authorities issue the licence, lithium production might turn the fate of Manono people around. They will get jobs and they are also promised roads, schools, hospitals, etc. The production of electric cars has turned lithium into a new kind of gold with an aura of sustainability.

Mining and processing the metal, however, AVZ at great ecological and human rights costs. Its extraction is associated with water pollution and greater difficulty for local farmers to access water, among other problems.

In spite of the riches that the lithium exploitation can bring, it is difficult to be entirely optimistic for the future of Manono. How will the resources be redistributed? How fair will the labour conditions be? What is the long-term commitment of the mining companies to preserve local ecosystems? Will history repeat itself?

Right now, mining companies scramble over the region recalls colonial times. Everyone wants a piece of the DRC. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the region was looted for ivory, rubber, diamonds and precious woods. Then came cobalt, tantalum, copper and other minerals that form the backbone of digital life. Will lithium extraction become yet another textbook case for resource curse in DRC? How long will our quest to lead a “sustainable” life be at the expense of far away communities?

These are some of the questions explored by Charging Myths. On-Trade-Off. The artists who are part of the On-Trade-Off collective do not come up with a solution to all the problems caused by extractivism in DRC but their ethos provides a critical “artistic counterbalance to the logic of exploitation, by focussing on transnational exchanges, knowledge sharing and fair practice.”

I want more exhibitions like Charging Myths. On-Trade-Off. I want more cultural events where Western and non-Western actors enter into a mutually fruitful dialogue, where African artists are not added as an afterthought to tick all the “inclusive” boxes. I also want more exhibitions where artists investigate troubling issues but do not claim that “raising awareness” is enough.

Here is a quick and subjective tour of the exhibition:

George Senga, Tshanga-Tshanga (Mille-Bêches), 2022. Photo: the artist

George Senga, Tshanga

George Senga, Tshanga (Barsin), 2022. Installation view at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture. Photo: Kristof Vrancken

Industrial ruins, artificial lakes, dilapidated neighbourhoods, women still mining cassiterite and tantalum by hand, etc. Georges Senga’s photos depict what is left of Manono, what Belgian company Géomines -which started mining there in the early 20th century- left behind when they withdrew from the area. Senga’s snapshots catch a moment hovering between the past and a future transformed by a massive extraction of lithium.

The photos of the architecture built by Géomines are particularly arresting. The ruins of the upscale neighbourhoods where the engineers and directors used to live are shot from above, echoing perhaps the kind of top-down approach mining companies have when they look at the Earth. When the company left, the army occupied parts of the neighbourhood to control ethnic conflicts. As for the working-class homes, they are photographed from the ground which gives them a more mundane dimension. Members of the local population still live in some of the homes, but most have been abandoned since the last war.

Jean Katambayi Mukendi, The Concentrator, 2022. Installation view at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture. Photo: Kristof Vrancken

Jean Katambayi Mukendi, The Concentrator (detail), 2022. Installation view at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture. Photo: Kristof Vrancken

The relics of the mining industry are a great source of inspiration for Jean Katambayi Mukendi. The Concentrator is an industrial apparatus used in the mining industry to separate commercially valuable minerals from their ores. He recreated a concentrator on a smaller scale using discarded materials found around Hasselt where he was in residency. Inside the machine, Mendeleev’s elements, formulas, portraits of chemists and scientists are shuffled like in a bingo mill.

Marjolijn Dijkman, Cloud to Ground #1 (detail), 2021. Installation view at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture. Photo: Kristof Vrancken

Marjolijn Dijkman, Cloud to Ground #1, 2021. Installation view at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture. Photo: Kristof Vrancken

Fulgurites are masses of sand that coalesce when lightning strikes the ground in places where the soil contains quartzose or silica-rich sand and sediments. Inspired by this phenomenon, Marjolijn Dijkman worked with professional electricians to “sculpt” artificial fulgurites. She used high voltage to hit soil from Belgian and Congolese mining areas to create an eerie landscape covered in delicate fulgurites. They evoke energy, a force that is as intangible as it is essential to our daily life. A force that is pervasive but which origin is increasingly the source of debates and contestation.

Maarten Vanden Eynde and Musasa, Material Matters
 [Li3], 2018 – 2019. Photo: Philippe de Gobert

The painting above is part of Material Matters, a series of compositions, each representing a chemical element from the Mendeleev’s periodic table. The chemical elements chosen are all liked to the raw materials that power our modern, Western and hyper-connected existence: iron, gold, uranium, tin, cobalt, tantalum, silicon, lithium, copper, etc.

The drawings, pictograms and symbols form a visual rebus that hints at the origin (which is often the DRC), transformation and impact of the material. The lithium painting, for example, suggests the promise of clean energy and luxury cars as well as the scarification of the landscape caused by the mining industry and the chemical processing of these materials.

The paintings, a collaboration between Congolese painter Edmond Musasa Leu N’seya and Maarten Vanden Eynde, are based on old school educational wall charts.

Maarten Vanden Eynde, Future Flora: Manono, 2019. Photo: Philippe de Gobert

Future Flora: Manono maps the vast Lithium ore reserves as well as the outlines of the mining concession of AVZ Minerals in Manono. The map takes the form of a Printed Circuit Board where local seeds and grains represent transistors and electrical components. Together they mimic a lukasa, a ‘memory board’ used in the Kingdom of Luba (now part of DR Congo) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as archives for the topographical and chronological mapping of significant events and as a means of remembering important people, places and migration routes.

The seeds act as a backup for rare endemic plant species that thrive in the presence of certain minerals in the soil. Ideally, they would be used at a later stage to restore some of the original flora when the mining activities have ended.

Dorine Mokha & Elia Rediger, Hercules of Lubumbashi, 2019

Dorine Mokha & Elia Rediger, Hercules of Lubumbashi (trailer), 2019

Congolese choreographer and dancer Dorine Mokha, whose parents worked in a mining company all their lives, teamed up with Swiss composer and musician Elia Rediger to create an oratorio piece based on Handel’s Hercules. Their musical composition, however, focuses on Congolese mines and on the environmental and humanitarian costs of the ruthless extraction of minerals by international corporations. GLENCORE is one of those global companies whose mining activities in the DRC are associated with corruption, tax evasion and ecocide. The choir of miners is thus calling for a Hercules that would save the Congolese people from extractivist and ICT corporations. Since the Hercules of Lubumbashi doesn’t come, maybe Congolese people should take the matter in their own hands?

The choir in the video is a reference to the former orchestra of Gécamines, the Belgian mining company that started the large-scale extraction of copper and cobalt in the Katanga province a hundred years ago.

More images from Charging Myths. On-Trade-Off:

Alain Nsenga, Fantasmagoria, 2022. Installation view at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture. Photo: Kristof Vrancken

Alain Nsenga, Fantasmagoria, 2022

Installation view of On-Trade-Off. Charging Myths at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture. Photo: Kristof Vrancken

Installation view of On-Trade-Off. Charging Myths at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture. Photo: Kristof Vrancken

Alexis Destoop, The Pits, 2022. Installation view at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture. Photo: Kristof Vrancken

Pélagie Gbaguidi, Hunger, 2022. Installation view at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture. Photo: Kristof Vrancken

Maarten Vanden Eynde & Musasa, What All The World Desires, 2022. Installation view at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture. Photo: Kristof Vrancken

George Senga, Tshanga-Tshanga, 2022. Installation view at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture. Photo: Kristof Vrancken

Charging Myths. On-Trade-Off is an artists-project, initiated by Atelier Picha (Lubumbashi) & Enough Room for Space (Brussels). Curators: the artists & Ils Huygens. The exhibition is a co-production of Z33 (Hasselt) & Framer Framed (Amsterdam). It remains open until 21 August 2022 at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture in Hasselt, Belgium.

Related story: Kinshasa. Always on the move.

The book helps readers understand the curious forms that disturbances in body perception can take. Some of them include the alien hand syndrome endured by people who feel that some external force is controlling the movement of their arm or hand; the phantom limb condition (including rare cases of subjects who had lost their penis and who reported phantom erections); or the condition suffered by people who believe that their body changed into the body of an animal. Completely or in part (one patient was convinced he had crab hands.)

Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Purkinje neurons from the human cerebellum, an 1899 drawing. Credit: Cajal Institute, Madrid

Alexa Wright, After Image, 1997

I was morbidly fascinated by the paragraphs on Body Identity Integrity Disorder(BIID), a condition suffered by patients who feel the need to amputate a perfectly healthy limb in order to restore their true identity. It might sound contradictory to us but some BIID patients declare that they feel “incomplete” with two arms and two legs. The disorder poses an ethical dilemma for physicians. On the one hand, physicians feel very uncomfortable with the idea of amputating a healthy limb without any medical reason. On the other, many patients will try anything to self-amputate, often risking their lives. Surgical amputation would thus minimise the harm they might cause themselves. It also has the potential to improve the quality of life of the sufferer. As the title of the documentary by Melissa Gilbert suggests, the patients feel whole once the limb they do not recognise as being part of themselves has been removed. Another term used by people who have undergone a voluntary amputation is transabled.

The book never turns into a freak show though. Chapter after chapter, Costandi methodically analyses the inextricable link between the brain and the rest of the body by tracing the historical milestones from classical neurology, and then by describing the latest cutting-edge research. He even suggests how the research is opening up new avenues of future treatments for neurological and psychiatric conditions and how it allows for the development of next-generation prosthetic limbs that will be fully integrated into their user’s nervous systems so that they feel part of the body.

Original illustration of the sensory homunculus made by medical illustrator Hortense Cantlie for Wilder Penfield

Body Am I. The New Science of Self-Consciousness is packed with remarkable scientific facts about neuroplasticity. I learnt how the brain can rewire itself and how this reconfiguration affects the representations of the body and our self-perception. Musicians, for example, have larger finger representations. And if you wear a cast for a few weeks, the cortical representations of the fingers will shrink, reducing their brain activity. That shrinkage is reversible.

Our understanding of how the brain actually represents the body comes largely from the work of neurosurgeon and cartographer of the brain Wilder Penfield. The “homunculus” drawing he commissioned to medical illustrator Hortense Cantlie for his 1950 book The Cerebral Cortex of Man is captivating and visionary. It is, however, too male-centred to adequately reflect how the female body is represented in the brain.

Research analyst Lindsey McIntosh demonstrates the rubber hand illusion experiment in which subjects were manipulated into accepting a rubber hand as their own. Photo: John Russell/Vanderbilt University

Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm demonstrate the Barbie Doll Illusion experiment in which participants took ownership of the body of a doll much smaller than themselves, 2011

The chapter on how tool use alters body representation was another gem. It seems that the representations of tools occupy a special place in the brain where they are closely associated with those of the hand. Surprisingly, this hand-tool region is intact both in people who are born without hands and in those who are born blind which indicates that the region is innate to serve an important evolutionary function. The brain treats the tool, not as an external object, but as an extension of the body, endowed with sensing capabilities.

Body Am I. The New Science of Self-Consciousness sums up the latest advances in self-consciousness and bodily awareness with a language that is both clear and engaging. Costandi’s forays into the future are also illuminating. Like when he explains how the ability to transfer the sense of body ownership could be useful for tele robotics or how a finer grasp of body representations could contribute to our understanding of the biological basis of gender identity. Or when he expresses doubts about the advent of lab-grown mini brains and about the transhumanist dream to upload the mind’s architecture onto a computer using a high-resolution mapping of all the connections existing within the brain.

I just wish I hadn’t read the horrific treatments animals are submitted to in laboratories. I knew they were basically tortured for scientific purposes. I had no idea it could be so cruel. Poor kittens, rats and monkeys. I wonder how long we will allow these practices to continues at a time when, as Costandi notes, growing evidence demonstrates that cognitive abilities once thought to be unique to humans can be identified in wide variety of animals. Including insects.