ART-PRESENTATION: Artefact 2018,This Rare Earth-Stories from Below
STUK works from within the dynamic university town of Leuven in Belgium and considers the social context art arises from as an integral aspect of its working field. STUK’s Artefact, is an exhibition and festival on the crossroads of contemporary visual arts, current events and societal challenges. Artefact presents contemporary art practices that engage with complex topics, “wicked problems”, urgent themes that unite or divide us, in a poetic, critical and experiential way.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Artefact 2018 Archive
The theme of 2018 Artefact exhibition is “This Rare Earth-Stories from Below”. The theme directs our gaze down to the stones and minerals that lie beneath the earth’s surface. The exhibition starts from the fundamental connection between man and the earth’s elements which not only ground our existence but which also make up the core elements of human biology. From this deep connection between geology and biology, a century-old cultural tradition has grown which shines through in numerous cultural practices, rituals and stories: from the simple fascination for stones and minerals exemplified in countless personal collections, to the attribution of magical and spiritual powers, to the worldly desires these materials incite in us which have led to human development and technological progress. There are 23 projects on presentation. The Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga presents “Taste of a Stone” (2016) that unfolds like a man-made landscape, a custom made museological indoor garden. An oasis of white pebbles stretches out into the room. Large locally sourced boulders and images printed on flat limestone tiles are dotted around the garden. These limestone slabs present details of surfaces that have been transformed by insects, plants or humans. Cavities and cracks appear as metaphors for the mutual transformation that an encounter provokes. For Artefact 2018 Maarten Vanden Eynde created the new work “The Power of None”, a multifaceted installation that deals with the different agencies of silicon, tracing its past, present and future potential. The work is is part of the artistic research project “Triangular Trade” in which Vanden Eynde investigates the influence of transatlantic trade of pivotal materials like rubber, oil, ivory, copper, cotton and uranium, on evolution and progress, the creation of nations and other global power structures. “Future Fossil Spaces” is part of a global reflection of Julian Charrière on the digital era, a world of increasing dematerialization that nevertheless is grounded in the material elements of the earth. The work consists of stacks of salt bricks from the Salar de Uyuni. This salt flat, the world’s largest, located in the Bolivian Andes, holds one-third of the world’s lithium reserves, and remains largely unexploited. It is likely that this place will become the main production site of this precious element as our dependence on lithium-based technology keeps growing. Justin Bennett’s audiovisual installation “Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains” (2017) tells the story of the Kola Super-Deep Borehole, the deepest man-made hole on earth – more than 12 km deep. It started as a Soviet research project during the Cold War. In addition to gathering data about the geology of the earth’s crust it formed part of Project Globus, a network of seismic listening stations which was to act as an early warning system for natural disasters as well as for monitoring enemy nuclear tests. After the fall of the Soviet Union the project was slowly wound up and the site was abandoned in 2008. The rock strata that are visible in the core samples extracted from the borehole tell the story of the formation of the earth and of ultra-slow processes that are still taking place within the earth’s crust. At the same time, the borehole and the image of drilling so deep into the earth, inflamed the imagination of evangelical Christians with an image of Hell and of Dante’s descent into the Inferno. The sounds of screams emanating from the inferno circulated on the internet purporting to have been recorded by the Russian scientists – probably a montage of horror-film soundtracks. Justin Bennett reworked these facts in a multimedia installation in which we meet Viktor Koslovsky, a geologist who worked on the project until it was shut down. Ever since, Viktor has stayed on-site, carrying on the work as much as possible. Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway’s film “Kuannersuit; Kvanefjeld” (2016) is a work in-progress, forming the first part of the artists’ long-term investigation into the conflicts facing the small, mostly indigenous, community of Narsaq in southern Greenland. Narsaq is located next to the pristine Kvanefjeld mountain; site of one of the richest rare earth mineral resources deposits in the world, and one of the largest sources of uranium. “The Intimate Earthquake Archive” (2017) focuses on man-made earthquakes that have occurred over the last 32 years in the largest field for natural gas in Europe, located in the Dutch province of Groningen. While researching this phenomenon Sissel Marie Tonn came across an overwhelming amount of data available in scientific archives: a warehouse full of core samples, rows upon rows of sand and soil tests in laboratories. Furthermore, all the seismic activity of the earthquakes is meticulously recorded, stored and published in the immense digital database of the Dutch Meteorological Institute.
Participating Artists: Otobong Nkanga, Ilana Halperin, Julian Charrière , Justin Bennett, Cecilia Jonsson, Prabhakar Pachpute & Rupali Patil, Maarten Vanden Eynde , Unknown Fields, Füsun Türetken, Lise Autogena & Joshua Portway, Susanne Kriemann, Lara Almarcegui, Sissel Marie Tonn, Milo Rau, Ursula Biemann & Mo Diener, Egill Sæbjörnsson and Kirstie van Noort & Xandra van der Eijk
Info: Curators: Karen Verschooren and Ils Huygens (Z33), STUK – House for Dance, Image & Sound, Naamsestraat 96, Leuven, Duration: 14/2-1/3/18, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 14:00-22:00, Sun-Tue: 14:00-19:00, www.artefact-festival.be
