PRESENTATION: Back to Earth
“Back to Earth” is a multi-year project that invites over sixty leading artists, architects, poets, filmmakers, scientists, thinkers and designers to respond to the environmental crisis. With the support of partner organisations and networks, these collaborators are devising artistic campaigns, protocols and initiatives. Interdisciplinary at its core, “Back to Earth” manifests throughout all of Serpentine’s onsite, offsite and online programmes, sharing its resources in order to amplify ongoing projects or campaigns around the climate emergency, as well as to develop new ones. “Back to Earth” considers ecology as embedded in everyday practices and agencies.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Serpentine Gallery
Evoking responses to the climate emergency and spotlighting a multitude of durational perspectives from across the globe, “Back to Earth” reflects how we can learn from diverse experiences to create change. Brian Eno has created a new sound and light installation emerging from his research into generative compositions and Agnes Denes presents her flag “The Future is Fragile, Handle with Care”. Artist Tabita Rezaire/Amakaba and architect Yussef Agbo-Ola/Olaniyi Studio present an installation exploring our relationship to medicinal plants. They have designed a temple as a multisensory space for audiences to remind themselves of the healing powers of plants. The temple is constructed using materials recycled from Serpentine’s previous exhibitions and adorned with specially woven panels that will be reassembled into a building in Amakaba, Rezaire’s centre for agroecology in French Guiana. This installation is presented in collaboration with Palais de Tokyo, Paris. A new wallpaper by artist Carolina Caycedo envelops the exhibition space, collaging satellite images of waterways that have been shaped by human intervention across the Americas. Further highlights include a series of earth and clay forms by Dineo Seshee Bopape. The artist’s movements and breath are translated into sound pieces by animist and shaman Catitu Tayassu in a collaboration that explores methods of reengaging with our bodies, lands and ancestors. Research-based design studio Formafantasma present a manifesto for exhibition-making that minimises carbon emissions, alongside many other artist’s designed posters. Artist Giles Round’s intervention features mirrored surfaces and forms based on the satellites that survey environmental changes to maximise natural daylight and reduce the need for artificial lighting. A new film commission, “The Family and The Zombie” by Karrabing Film Collective, is premiering in the UK to explore the significance of connection to land and in Indigenous communities. A unique smell score by artist and researcher Sissel Tolaas evolves through the space and over the course of the exhibition, drawing on the emotional power of our sense of smell to address the need for change in response to the climate emergency. Expanding beyond the exhibition space, the gallery shop has been transformed through a collaboration between design and experiential futures company Superflux and designer Ghazaal Vojdani. They present a shop for the future that aims to gather knowledge from a group of advisors, offering visitors a selection of books and products that reflect alternative models of consumption in a changed climate. During the course of “Back to Earth”, Cooking Sections present new CLIMAVORE elements of the menu on offer at The Magazine in collaboration with Benugo. The new ingredients Cooking Sections embed in the menu continue to have a focus on regenerative aquaculture and agriculture. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s Pollinator Pathmaker at North Flower Walk in Kensington Gardens and online at www.pollinator.art is ongoing for the next two years. This uses a data-led algorithmic method of planting to focus on the needs of pollinators in the UK. Along with external partners, a methodology for recording and monitoring pollinator patterns is being developed.
Participating Artists: Agnes Denes, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Brian Eno, Carolina Caycedo, Cooking Sections, Dineo Seshee Bopape and Katy’taya Catitu Tayassu, Formafantasma, Giles Round, Karrabing Film Collective, Sissel Tolaas, Superflux and Studio Ghazaal Vojdani, Tabita Rezaire/AMAKABA and Yussef Agbo-Ola/OLANIYI STUDIO
Photo: By earth, sea and air we came, video, 18 minutes, Adham Faramawy, 2021. © Serpentine and the artist
Info: Curators: Sarah Hamed, Rebecca Lewin, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Lucia Pietroiusti, Kostas Stasinopoulos, Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens / The Magazine Café / Serpentine North Gallery, West Carriage Drive, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 28/6-18/9/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.serpentinegalleries.org/
