As an artist with a long-standing focus on ecological issues, Tomás Saraceno, born in Argentina and based in Berlin, combines the qualities of a visionary artist and a maverick scientist. His large-scale solo exhibition, "Complementarities" is set to debut at the Red Brick Art Museum on March 22. Curated by Yan Shijie, the exhibition will showcase nearly a hundred works by Saraceno, marking his most extensive solo exhibition in the Asian region in recent years.
Saraceno's work embraces interdisciplinarity and interconnectedness across ecosystems. This exhibition poses the question, how might we attune to collaboratively imagined futures, grounded in principles of collective care and hope as practiced and maintained by some communities, and to the radical interconnectedness of all beings with whom we share this "damaged planet," both living and nonliving. From spider/webs to humans, gravitational waves to particles of dust, and from the terrestrial to the atmospheric, Saraceno collaborates with local communities, scientific researchers, and institutions around the world; rethinking dominant threads of knowledge in the Capitalocene era and aiming to seek out a more equal balance of human, techno and biodiversity, for eco-social justice.
Towards a New Era: Aerocene********
The exhibition features the screening of a documentary titled _Fly with Pacha, into the Aerocene, _a film by Aerocene* directed by Maximiliano Laina and Tomás Saraceno. In the Andean culture, Pacha is a superior energy that organizes and harmonizes all inhabitants in the Cosmos. Fly with Pacha, into the Aerocene is a collaborative, ongoing movie, a message, a sculpture, a journey around the sun with Pachamama, a space-time towards an era of complementarities. Initiated in 2017, with additional archival fragments dating from 2006 onwards, this project is an ongoing dialogue with the communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc.
With these communities a performance was co-organized in solidarity with Kollas Indigenous Peoples, protecting their ancestral lands from lithium extraction, for eco-social justice in the name of the peoples of the Global South. Faced with the worsening of the climate crisis and the urgency of the energy transition, the message that rose from the January 2023 meeting was: "In complementarity we take care of the water. We no longer want to be a sacrifice zone."
Part of the film also documents the flight of an aerosolar performance over the vast salt flats of Salinas Grandes, Argentina in January 2020. The flight of Aerocene Pacha rose using only the air and the sun, completely free from fossil fuels, batteries, lithium, helium, and hydrogen, becoming the most sustainable flight in human history. This journey set 32 world records, recognised by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), with Aerocene pilot Leticia Noemi Marques who flew with the message "Water and Life are Worth More than Lithium" written with the communities. As stated by sociologist Maristella Svampa, "In this aerocenic 21st century, in which ancestral, feminist and ecological struggles must be our greatest sources of inspiration, we will have to redefine and think about a horizon of just transitions, which point to an alternative system of social relations and links with nature."
In this context, Aerocene's flight brings urgent messages to certain multinational companies and governments that transcend geographies: certain companies and decision makers continue to develop at the expense of local communities, often in the Global South, as patterns of power have shown since colonization began more than 500 years ago. The energy transition is having an unequal impact on the world.
As part of the exhibition, visitors will also have the opportunity to enter the Cloud Imagination, Aerocene Community Room, where they are invited to draw upon the ocean of air and contribute to a growing repository of cloud-based knowledges at cloudcities.org, activated by an interactive tool for pareidolic ecologies. This inter-generational artwork is made with and for the communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc, and uses a new eco-social, economic model, towards a cosmovision beyond private property. Participants are also invited to take home a newly produced Chinese edition of the Aerocene Newspaper, highlighting articles from the Aerocene Newspapers I and II; download the Aerocene App and float the rivers of the wind towards an ethical re-alliance with the environment; read The Declaration of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc Basin as a Subject of Rights; or view the Aerocene Backpack and Aerocene-based prints 'Live(s) on Air' and 'Recording Aerosolar', strengthening a DIT (Do-It-Together) ethos fostered by the Aerocene Community.
Press release courtesy Red Brick Art Museum.
Hegezhuang Village
Cuigezhuang Township
Chaoyang District
Beijing
China
www.redbrickartmuseum.org
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