ART-PRESENTATION: Jaguars And Electric Eels
The works in the exhibition “Jaguars And Electric Eels”, describe a reality that no longer distinguishes between naturalness and artificiality but sees things as a whole and as equals. Starting with the idea of the kind of ecology that focuses not only on natural circumstances but also on the economic and socio-political situation, as well as on technological progress, the exhibition investigates an alternative interpretation of anthropology and zoology.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Julia Stoschek Collection Archive
Between 1799 and 1804 Alexander von Humboldt visited the American continent for the first time, making two expeditions. The most adventurous section of his journey was the trip down the Orinoco to the Rio Negro in Venezuela. Alexander Von Humboldt was the first researcher to point out how the forces of nature, both animate and inanimate, work together. In 1853, these first chronicles of the New World were published in a special edition entitled “Jaguars and electric eels”, an excerpt from the “Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctical Regions of the New Continent”. In the exhibition “Jaguars And Electric Eels”, at Julia Stoschek Collection in Berlin, 38 works by 28 artists evidences the search for our evolutionary roots, looking into questions of indigeneity, of hybrids and synthetic forms of life, the migration of the species, and that of our constantly changing perceptions of reality due to all kinds of different influences. Anicka Yi’s 3-D film, “The Flavour Genome” (2016), plays a pivotal role in the exhibition. Yi’s oeuvre investigates forms of life, organisms and microbiological processes. Taking her observation of the Amazon’s indigenous people as its starting point, the work investigates the role played in our perception by sensual experiences. In her film, nature is seen as a fabric composed of many different perspectives and forms of perception. Whilst plants, man, technology and animals mutate into amorphous beings, the fields of bioengineering, neurosciences and science fiction are blended together. Ryan Gander’s video “Portrait Of A Colour Blind Artist Obscured By Flowers” (2016) literally shows us how impediments to our senses of vision, smell and hearing lead to large amounts of information being complemented in our minded by imagining this missing data. As the various artists’ contributions to the exhibition illustrate, our modern life science questions both the line between naturalness and artificiality and the ontology of objects of all kinds. The different complexes of subjects move within that intermediate space between nature and art, their various systems offering new approaches to interpretation and methods of classification. Participating Artists: Doug Aitken, Kader Attia, Heike Baranowsky, Trisha Donnelly, Juan Downey, Encyclopedia Pictura/ Björk, Cyprien Gaillard, Ryan Gander, Manuel Graf, Cao Guimarães, Nancy Holt/Robert Smithson, Martin Honert, Donna Huanca, Isaac Julien, Simon Martin, Nandipha Mntambo, Ana Mendieta, Paul Pfeiffer, Ben Rivers, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, STURTEVANT, Bill Viola, Guan Xiao, Anicka Yi and Aaron Young
Info: Julia Stoschek Collection, Leipziger Strasse 60 (Entrance: Jerusalemer Strasse), Berlin, Duration 4/2-26/11/17, Days & Hours: Thu-Sun 14:00-20:00, www.jsc.berlin
