On the Possibility of Life in Ruins was an exhibition in collaboration with Jonas Kasper Jensen and Rebecca Ann Tess at Huset for Kunst go Design, Holstebro, 2017
The artists are going to install the ruins of a modern city, which is a post-apocalyptic scenario based on their observations not only of megacities in East-Asia, but small towns in Germany and Denmark as well. As different as these places seem, they are connected through global economy, a changing world climate and the ruins of urban utopias. Picking up on the paradigm of constant circulation, the artists will create an infrastructure for its own sake, like fibre cables in an abandoned smart city with nothing to circulate. They are reconstructing the empty centre of (post-)modern cities by capturing them in traces of steel, glass and templates of urban planning. There will be a distorted grid of steel wires, reminding of 3D design mesh and contemporary high-rise architecture. Printed industrial fabric hanging from the wires will indicate both the possibility of shelter and a short cut between construction and destruction. Photographs of almost deserted semi-public space will contribute another fragment of present-day cityscapes. Sound of artificially generated plastic, metal and glass will circulate through the space, making the spectres of modern urban utopias audible, yet, also creating comfort for the visitors: You are not alone in this. Together the works form an uncanny reproduction of something quite familiar, yet, it has been stripped to its bones. It's neither a futuristic projection nor a historic survey, it's just staging the question, here and now: How life is possible in such ruins?
