[spectre] Epiphany Frontiers of Solitude

[Miloš VOJTĚCHOVSKÝ]

Epiphany – Frontiers of Solitude7 September 2016 to 22 October 2016
Dům umění Ústí nad Labem
September – October 2016
http://duul.ujep.cz

An exhibition and symposium created within the framework of the
international transdisciplinary project Frontiers of Solitude.

Aside from its biblical, gnostic, or metaphysical meaning, the term
epiphany also raises issues concerning the relationship between humans
and nature and the boundaries of thought, belief and epistemology. Where
does the sacred lead and where does the profane begin? Where does the
revealed come from, and what does it consist of? The idea of revelation
and its embodiment affects our relationship with the sacred, as well as
our neighbors, and also our sense of belonging to a physical world,
which we are increasingly remaking in our image. What kind of image is
it? We will need to reevaluate our technological approach to the
environment, which we understand reflexively as an inexhaustible
deposit, a source of energy, as a free reservoir for exclusively human
use.

A criticism of “disenchantment,” of the alienation of humankind toward
the biological world, is found in different areas of contemporary
science, humanities, religion, philosophy, economics and art. It is
becoming evident that this is a dangerous and complex cluster of values,
interests and assumptions, providing the elites with access to
unimaginable wealth, and sacrificing the rest of the biosphere, edging
us nearer to the environmental extreme of physical survival. The project
Frontiers of Solitude develops this discourse. The exhibition and the
accompanying program serve as an attempt to outline the relationships
among the cultural, economic, and ethical issues of the environmental
challenges we currently face. In 2015, Frontiers of Solitude launched
three separate expeditions to ecologically threatened areas of Europe.
In addition, the project has offered a series of exhibitions, meetings,
workshops and symposia. The expedition “Into the Abyss of Lignite Clouds”
took place in the Most lignite coal basin in the Czech Republic. The
participants researched the morphology and the history of this region --
a landscape that has been heavily transformed to a depth of several
hundred meters by industrial exploitation. The toxic Black Triangle,
which is defined roughly as a carbon-rich area between Sokolov,
Litvínov, Bad Brambach and Katowice, has softened its boundaries
somewhat since 1989, and, on the whole, has grown. The exhibition
presents several works that were produced by artists participating in
the project - Elvar Már Kjartansson, Pavel Mrkus,Robert Vlasak, Martin
Zet, Vladimír Turner, Julia Martin).
In this extended form, the project focus shifts to both local and global
contexts through a selection of works by several Czech and foreign
artists, whose approach resonates with issues that the project
raises:Steina Vasulka [IS], Layla Curtis [UK],, Michal Kindernay and
Paul Chaney [UK]). These works are enriched by a few contextual
interventions and artifacts, such as a selection of apocalyptic
documentary photography from the series of Ore Mountains landscapes by
Josef Koudelka (Black Triangle-1990-1994), as well as a
stage-design-like intervention by JSD - Peerless Brotherhood of the Holy
Nurture from The Universal Psychiatric Church 316a (UPSYCH) in Kuřivody.

The exhibition outlines the cross-connections among various social,
psychological, mythical, economic and cultural landscapes. The works
reflect the process of a larger-scale globalization and touch not just
upon the perspectives of geology, meteorology, energy and ethics, but
also try to penetrate into the lower depths of the demonology of the
landscape of the 21st century.

An accompanying program and an interdisciplinary symposium will be
dedicated to the problems of Art and the Anthropocene, and is scheduled
for October 19, 2016.

http://frontiers-of-solitude.org/epiphany-frontiers-of-solitude