Three new exhibitions will open the 2021 season at maat | Fundação EDP

Three new exhibitions will open the 2021 season at maat

A new chapter at maat will bring important topics relating to our collective future to centre stage, investigating the complexities of the social, environmental and geopolitical principles that define the present era. These exhibitions will be open to the public on april 5th 2021.

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X is Not a Small Country - Unravelling the Post-Global Era

X is Not a Small Country — Unravelling the Post-Global Era is an exhibition that explores our current post-global condition by observing the processes of de-globalisation and geopolitical realignment at different scales – territories, cities, infrastructures, platforms, bodies and objects – that have, in many cases, been accelerated and distorted in rapidly-evolving cycles of flux and revision during the current pandemic.

Twelve years after the global financial crisis exposed the flaws of globalisation, what was once a euphoria of interconnectivity has led to a more complex condition. Trade wars, refugee crises, growing nationalism, Brexit – and, now, a global pandemic – have disturbed and reorganised the transnational flow of people, ideas and resources in an increasingly confusing way.

The title of the exhibition refers to an iconic 1934 poster by Henrique Galvão (“Portugal is not a small country”) that promoted the then-nationalist government’s idea of Portugal as a “pluricontinental” nation whose overseas possessions were not colonies but rather integral parts of sovereign territory. The ways in which many of these former colonial relationships have now been upended formed a starting point for the show.

Curated by Aric Chen, with Martina Muzi, the exhibition includes nine newly created projects by international practitioners working across the fields of design, architecture and art who investigate, articulate and critique the current convoluted state of the world from multiple geographic perspectives.

Whether through engaging a performative intervention on the US-Mexico border, accessing an archaeology of mass objects traded between China and India, travelling digitally through the devastating effects of oil extraction in the Niger Delta or immersing oneself in the intertwining of migration, disenfranchisement and post-colonial capital on the outskirts of Lisbon, the exhibition’s  landscape of post-global observation is defined not by utopian notions of freedom and agency but rather by the fluctuations in access and restrictions.

The show includes a special presentation of studio Rael San Fratello’s Teeter Totter Wall, winner of the 2020 Beazley Design of the Year Award.

The visual identity and graphic project developed by Joana Pestana, with Max Ryan, reflects the challenge of articulating the complexities of the global order through the use of different data sources drawing upon different planetary phenomena and the seeming randomness of colliding systems at scale.

X is Not a Small Country will be accompanied by an editorial collaboration with e-flux Architecture presenting original pieces of fictional writings that expand on the show’s themes.

With projects by Bard Studio (Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty), Bricklab (Abdulrahman Hisham Gazzaz and Turki Hisham Gazzaz), Ibiye Camp, Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen, He Jing, Liam Young, Paulo Moreira (with Chão - Oficina de Etnografia Urbana and José Sarmento Matos), Rael San Fratello (Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello) and Wolfgang Tillmans.

 

 

Earth Bits - Sensing the Planetary

Earth Bits – Sensing the Planetary is a data-driven installation developed by the research and interaction design studio Dotdotdot that unpacks the complexities of the climate science measuring humankind’s carbon footprint through graphic and digital content, animated videos and an interactive station.

The four sections of this unprecedented work, developed with the scientific support of the European Space Agency (ESA), International Energy Agency (IEA) and EDP (Energias de Portugal) Innovation, together demonstrate how the mundane flux of human outputs is vitally connected to the bio-systems of the Earth’s resources and outline the causes and effects of their resulting rapid depletion.

These four moments represent a progressive journey through interconnected ranges of phenomena, scales and perceptions. Starting by contextualizing the topic through a visualisation of the changing patterns of electricity consumption in Portugal over the 2019–2020 biennium, the installation opens with a 12-metre-long graphic mural that meticulously illustrates the mechanisms for harvesting and extraction that power nearly every action in our daily lives.

Presented in a separate immersive audio-visual environment are two interfacing components. The first is the “CO2 Mixer” — a multi-user interactive console with an animated graphic interface designed to identify the environmental impact of individual human actions as measured by their carbon footprint. By inputting individual values, i.e. choices, through controllers in categories like Nutrition, Mobility, Housing, the animated interface renders their compound effects at different territorial scales. It also allows consultation and comparison of the qualitative and quantitative data surrounding the negative impact of industry practices and consumption trends, as well as computing the effects of different global policies and action formulated to counteract predictions of climate warming. A data sonification programme especially devised for the installation connects interactions with the console to a musical landscape that mirrors the measured degrees of negative or positive impact. The second interface is a video compiled with data sourced from the ESA Copernicus programme of sentinels that scan and monitor the Earth. Through original satellite imagery and data, this cosmological vantage point offers a view and explanation of the historical correlation between rising anthropogenic GHG emissions and the increasing environmental occurrence of phenomena like floods, droughts and wildfires. 

Earth Bits is a two-year project. Its second phase will launch in March 2022 with additional and updated content. It is made possible by the continued partnership with Novo Verde and ERP (European Recycling Platform) Portugal.

This project inaugurates maat Explorations, a programme framework launched in 2021 that features an ongoing series of exhibitions and public and educational projects which delve into the multifaceted subject of environmental transformation from various scholarly and experimental vantage points.

In partnership with: Novo Verde and ERP (European Recycling Platform) Portugal

 

AQUARIA - Or the Illusion of a Boxed Sea

The exhibition Aquaria – Or the Illusion of a Boxed Sea reflects on the possibilities and new questions that arisewe could come up against when rethinking our relationship with the marine world. Aquaria are devices that organise and represent marine life; they are complex systems which, in the paradigm of modernity and urbanisation, embody the transformation of nature into culture, with the help of of technology and capital. This separation of culture as an entity divorced from the organic-natural world stems from scientific and rational attempts to categorise and organise. However, these sorts of constructs that divide culture from nature are no longer convincing in the context of a new climate regime which appeals to new narratives that go beyond the hierarchies built around mankind and its exploration of resources and bodies.

Curated by Angela Rui, the exhibition path unfolds through 11 installations by artists, designers, filmmakers, composers and researchers, each offering different points of view to emphasise how the ways of understanding the marine environment were once envisaged and how they should be reconsidered today.

As part of the exhibition, a newly commissioned film by Armin Linke, shot entirely behind the scenes at Oceanário de Lisboa [Lisbon Oceanarium], examines the multidimensionality of aquatic architecture, in which the wonders of nature are displayed through hidden, well-orchestrated technology.

Historical documentation from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day establishes a dialogue with the contemporary pieces, contextualising Western-based positions and thematic insights into institutional policies, naturalistic displays, the links with the great World’s Fairs, scientific expeditions and colonial and extractive activities with regard to other geographies.

Looking at the nature of aquaria and the distinct relationship between technical spaces and scenes, the setup designed by 2050+ examines the notions of interface and threshold by showcasing two categories of spatial devices: an industrial system of displays to accommodate the research material and a fluid sequential layout to orchestrate the artists’ installations. The installation acts as an exploded aquarium, where hierarchical relationships are neutralised.

The visual identity and graphic project developed by Studio òbelo aims to unsettle the viewer’s gaze by generating rousing a self-reflective awareness of the ambiguities of perception, taking the Necker cube figure (1832) as a point of departure and conceptualising the aquarium as a series of impossible cubes.

Includes projects by Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Julien Creuzet, Simon Denny, Marjolijn Dijckman & Toril Johannessen, Michela de Mattei, Alice dos Reis, Eva Jack, Joan Jonas, Armin Linke, Superflex and Stef Veldhuis.

25 Feb 2021