THE CRISIS OF THE HORIZON

19.-31. January 2018

'The Crisis of the Horizon' is an exhibition of lens-based media art including animation, photography and expanded cinematic works, exploring the way aerial views and satellite views provoked a structural modification in the regime of vision, leading to a shift in the human behavior toward the environment.

ARTISTS
Agnieszka Polska
Emilija Škarnulytė
Jenny-Marie Johnsen
Simon Faithfull

Exhibition dates: 19.01 - 31.01.2018

Curated by Vanina Saracino

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For centuries, the straight line of the horizon has been an unquestionable reference for direction and orientation, as well as the main reference in the linear perspective, a foundational paradigm of representation in art history. But the line of the horizon is blind to the curvature of the Earth.

By providing an evidence that seemed incontestable and yet contradicted the most direct perception of a linear horizon, aerial views and views from outer space proved of fundamental importance in provoking a radical shift in our ways of seeing and perceiving space. With the invention of aircrafts we have become endowed with the bird’s-eye view, which also revealed to what extent the environment had been brutalized by the human activity and by the reckless expansion of mega-metropolitan areas (Le Corbusier, 'Aircraft'); with the development of spaceflight technologies, views of the Earth from outer space became soon available, unequivocally proving the isolation of the planet, the fragility of its balance and the interconnectedness of the planet’s ecosystems (Carl Sagan, 'Pale Blue Dot'). The first images of the full Earth in colours were transmitted from the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, and watched by approximately 570 million people, in an event that shook the anthropocentric perspective and raised a collective awareness toward the environmental crisis.

If aerial views showed us that any thoughtless human practice would sooner or later constitute a local environmental problem, views from outer space went one step further, providing the evidence that there is no such thing as a local environmental problem.

Without forgetting that aircrafts and spacecrafts are also leaving massive carbon footprint behind their flights, highly contributing to inject carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the aim of this exhibition is to address the shift in our scopic regime and awareness that was produced by aerial views and views from outer space throughout history and until today.

With works by Agnieszka Polska, Emilija Škarnulytė, Jenny-Marie Johnsen and Simon Faithfull.

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Vanina Saracino is an independent curator and film programmer currently based in Berlin. She is the co-founder of OLHO, an international curatorial project about contemporary art and cinema initiated in 2015 in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, also shown at the Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi (Venice, 2017). Since 2013, she has curated monthly selections of artists' films on the experimental channel ikonoTV, being also in charge of collaborations and projects with museums and institutions worldwide. With ikonoTV, in 2015, she initiated Art Speaks Out, a yearly exhibition project on the environment and climate change, also shown at the Istanbul Modern Museum (2015) and within the UN Climate Change Conference (Marrakesh, 2016).