A City Beyond promotes novel ways of looking at our urban environment with the focus on cooperation. The exhibition speculates on new urban forms of collaboration between human and non-humans by understanding these entities as dependent on each other and mutually beneficial. The concept was promoted by the biologist Lynn Margulis who argued for a non-hierarchical understanding of Evolution and the interactions between different organisms as symbiotic[1].
With more than half of the world’s population living in urban environments, the city of tomorrow demands inclusion and mindfulness to survive. The effects of this growth extend beyond the limits of urban areas, contributing to a global climate crisis endangering all species alike. The landscapes that emerge from this exhibition are a combination of real and fictional narratives that intersect and feed each other through transdisciplinary exchanges, offering novel forms of coexistence.
The works exhibited imagine the future co-habitation of this planet through sharing, collaboration and interspecies communication. Mythology is used as a narrative tool for accessing ancestral knowledge while speculating on a possible future. Circular processes are translated into metamorphing forms, which accept change as a life-process and foster resilience by accepting the technological sphere in which they are embedded.
The exhibition A City Beyond marks the start of the one-year-long project Co-Habitations project that looks into the question of how human and more-than-human[2] species want to live together in 100 years.
Curated by Martina Huber and Violeta Burckhardt
March 14 to May 27, 2023
Opening: March 14 from 6 to 8 pm
Walkthrough with the curators from 6:30 to 7 pm
RSVP: welcome@weareaia.art
With: Isabell Bullerschen, Pedro Wirz, Marc Lee, SUPERFLEX, Violeta Burckhardt, Architecture for Refugees, Mira Hirtz, Studio Eidola.
Isabell Bullerschen, Ipseria, 2023.
Courtesy of the artist.
[1] “Symbiosis” comes from the Greek words “sym-” meaning “together,” and “-biosis” meaning “living.” The term was first coined by Swiss botanist Simon Schwendener in 1877 to describe the relationship between lichens, which are composite organisms made up of a fungus and an alga or cyanobacterium living together in a mutually beneficial partnership.
[2] The concept of more-than-human stems from the work of various scholars, including anthropologists, ecologists, and philosophers. Notable contributors to this concept include Donna Haraway, who coined the term “naturecultures” to describe the entanglement of human and non-human entities, and Bruno Latour, who emphasizes the agency of non-human actors in shaping our social and ecological systems.
SUPERFLEX, As Close As We Get, 2022. As Close As We Get, 2022 is realized in collaboration with DTU Sustain and By & Havn. The project was supported by the Danish Art Council. Photo: Lars Hestbæk
