Ars Electronica Exhibition
Esch-sur-Alzette, the cross-border area in the south of Luxembourg, is in transformation: a former steel industry region will transform into a center for future-oriented knowledge and innovative creativity. Esch2022 — European Capital of Culture invited Ars Electronica Export to become part of this transformation through curating an exhibition in the Möllerei. The exhibition will invite visitors to explore art as a tool for us humans to understand and envision the future.
The exhibition
The Möllerei is starting point of our story and a monument of a world order in transition. This former steelwork is transforming itself into a place for culture and art. The surrounding industrial area right on the border of Luxemburg and France is becoming a new district, a place for people. It is about transformation and change. These are the attributes that Ars Electronica is highlighting in the exhibition IN TRANSFER – A New Condition. It approaches these concepts and wants to explore what the nature of change is. What are the issues compelling us to change as a society and which ones are in urgent need of change? What are the mechanisms that drive change, why is it prevented, by what means can it be accomplished? And what role can art play in this?
photo by masharu, 2022
If we take a brief look at the daily press, it quickly becomes clear how great the everyday complexity of existence has become and what contradictions result from it: the cruel war against Ukraine initiated by Russia, the increasingly dramatic climate change, the pandemic, the issue of exclusion and minorities, the question of distribution, energy, and resources; also, the question of culture in the digital realm, the digital transformation and ethics for artificial intelligence. The dramatic need for action inherent in all these issues, together with the elementary and existential dimension of these challenges, requires a renegotiation of the present that makes commonality and collaboration indispensable. The difficulty of responding to these contradictions reveals social tendencies that polarise and exclude. How can we recognise change not as compromise, provocation, or personal limitation, but as quality, skill, and empowerment? Can art play a role in this? Certainly not in the sense of overall responsibility. But art can try to offer a space, an alternative, a neutral place, in which change in its contradictory complexity can be experienced. Art and culture can thus represent an offer to society, an artistic, social laboratory in which reality and the future are simulated. In this way, it offers a space of experience that takes on the issues that force us to make fundamental changes, but which also has the quality of being a guide for change itself.
In the exhibition IN TRANSFER – A New Condition, we present artists operating in the space where art, technology and society intersect, artists who are always in the places where transformation is happening. In the exhibition, visitors will meet a generation of artists who, as citizens of this world, wish to contribute a perspective that can help us make farsighted decisions.
photos by masharu, 2022
The Museum of Edible Earth
“Geophagy” is the scientific name for the practice of eating earth and earth-like substances such as clay and chalk. Eating earth is an ancient practice and is an integral part of many cultures all over the world. The Museum of Edible Earth is a cross-disciplinary project with a core collection of earth samples which are eaten for several reasons by different people across the globe. It invites the audience to physically question our relationship to the environment and the Earth as well as to review our knowledge about food and cultural traditions. The project addresses questions like: What stands behind earth-eating traditions? Where does the edible earth come from? What are the possible benefits and dangers of eating earth? What engagement are we as humans establishing with our environment and non-humans? The Museum of Edible Earth consists of more than 400 samples originating from 34 countries, for example many types of clay, such as kaolin and bentonite.
Eating earth is not recommended by food authorities and is at your own risk.
Artwork Credits & Acknowledgement:
Founder: masharu; Project management (2020-2022): SasaHara; Photo and video (2021-2022): masharu, Anna Zamanipoor, Luuk Van Veen, Jester van Schuylenburch, Jhalisa Rens; Graphic design (2021-2022): Olga Ganzha, Jhalisa Rhens, Luuk Van Veen; Web and database design: Raphaël Pia, William Ageneau, Marina Pankratova, Andrew Revinsky, Pan Vanitcharoenthum; Product design: Basse Stittgen
The Museum of Edible Earth is supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL, Stichting Niemeijer Fonds, Pauwhof fonds and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Tijl Fonds. The work of masharu is supported by the Mondriaan Fund.
