25 Sep 2020

OVERVIEW EFFECT at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade

The term Overview Effect was coined by Frank White in 1987 to describe the cognitive shift reported by a number of astronauts on having looked back from Space at their home planet Earth. The question is, do we need such a distant point of view of the planet we occupy, as a 'crew of the Spaceship Earth' to use Buckminster Fuller's metaphor, to realize that this 'spaceship' is slowly running out of 'fuel' and that the crew is in need of 'oxygen'?

This project seeks to address the issue of the environmental justice that can only be approached through an analysis of the inseparable links between climate change and other forms of injustice related to gender, race, corporate imperialism, indigenous sovereignty, and the importance of decolonising and de-anthropocentrizing the planet in order to reshape an inclusive mindset akin to a multispecies world.

The curatorial strategy will explore alternative exhibition-making formats and responds to the rhizomatic idea of ECO_LABS where six realms represent distinct sub-themes, all of them interconnected:

1 - GENDER, RACE AND THE COLONIAL TRACE
2 - WATERTOPIAS
3 - THERE IS NO EDGE! (LAND ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMATICS)
4 - LEARNING FROM INDIGENISM
5 - BEYOND ANTHROPOCENE (POST-HUMANISM, ANIMISM AND MULTISPECIES WORLD)
6 - BACK TO THE FUTURE (FUTUROLOGY AND SPECULATIVE REALISM)

Each ECO_LAB will take on the role of a think-thank for art and knowledge production related to the sub-themes we derived from the overall concept, within the whole methodological approach to the development of the exhibition. The ECO_LABS will thus create a dynamic and revolving structure that builds on the transversality used as key way of thinking and also establish trans-disciplinary approach from different disciplines such as arts, humanities and social sciences.

SUSTAINABILITY GUIDELINES

The exhibition will put in focus the artists and artistic positions that have a respectful attitude towards the environment in response to the hubris (hybris) characterising our current society, as we strongly believe that art must contribute to the public debate on the politics of sustainability, developing creative proposals that — both in form and content— put forward alternative forms of working fairly with the environment and to collaborate towards a more sustainable future for everybody.

To this end, and with the purpose of ensuring that the project is consistent with this approach, a number of sustainability guidelines were established in order to take care of the carbon footprint of the whole project and to develop it in an ecological manner.

Due to the outbreak of coronavirus, the project will take place in two stages. The first part and the launch of Overview Effect will happen from October 2nd 2020 and it will comprise a group of outdoor installations in the sculpture park of the Museum, murals, site-specific interventions by artists in different urban and rural areas, activist projects in collaboration with local environmental initiatives and local communities, workshops with the artists and educational programmes, as well as lectures (keynote talk by Professor Timothy Morton) and panel discussions with a limited number of people at the Museum and partner institutions, or online, until the launch of the second part, an exhibition with more than 50 artists that will be held at the main building of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade from June 19th to September 20th, 2021.

Artists participating in the first stage: Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan, Tomas Colbengtson, Regina Jose Galindo, Markus Hiesleitner, Kinga Kielczynska, Elena Lavelles, Tea Makipaa, Mary Mattingly, Anna Moreno, Branislav Nikolic, Mirko Nikolic, PSJM, Marielle Videler, Tanja Vujinovic, and Skart.

All of the artists taking part in the first stage will either present new works or conceptually connect their outdoor projects with the works that will be shown in the exhibition at the Museum in 2021. Besides them, the list of artists taking part in the exhibition includes:

Ravi Agarwal, Maria Thereza Alves, Vasco Araujo, Amy Balkin, Luna Bengoechea, Ursula Biemann, Tania Candiani, Juanli Carrion, Carolina Caycedo, Cian Dayrit, Dirk Fleischmann, Nina Galic, Asuncion Molinos Gordo, Kitti Gosztola, Lungiswa Gqunta, Tue Greenfort, Michaela Grill, Igor Grubic, Christina Hermauer & Roman Keller, IC-98, Ingela Ihrman, The Institute of Queer Ecology, ISUMA, Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Tamas Kaszas, Juyon Kim, Jacob Kirkegaard, Diana Lelonek, Ernst Logar, Nemanja Milenkovic, Amor Munoz, Kevin Michael Murphy, N55, Michael Najjar, Nils Norman, Fernando Palma, Marjetica Potrc, Minna Rainio & Mark Roberts, Vera Stevanovic, Robertina Sebjanic & Gjino Sutic, Thomas Thwaites, Adrienn Ujhazi, Marie Velardi, Juan Zamora, and Bo Zheng.

In addition to this and in order to work from a global perspective that may encompass a planetary vision, the project involves a transnational network of collaborators and partners that will further explore the themes and problems that are the main agenda of this initiative. Therefore, several organizations and museums such as Museum Sztuki, Lodz; Pori Art Museum; Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno (CAAM), Las Palmas; MUCA-Roma and Casa del Lago UNAM, Mexico City; Pilchuck, Seattle; ARTPORT_making waves, Frankfurt; ARTSail, Miami; Society, Work and Politics Institute (SWOP), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; and Bozidar Jakac Art Museum, Kostanjevica na Krki, amongst others will join the network, focusing on local problematics and equipping the project with the capacity of re-imagining a new integral ecological consciousness.

Going beyond the binary relations of utopias and dystopias and the point after which the present and future became the same temporal symbolic dimension, the project can help visualize the multiplicity of possible scenarios, as art's capacity to produce new knowledge and experience of the world might envision that change of the paradigm. This change will only be possible through a posthuman point of view where transdisciplinarity, multispecies coexistence and post-anthropocentrism will lead the way for the new post fossil capitalism era.

The project has been supported by: The Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia, Heinrich Boell Stiftung, Open Society Foundation Serbia, Telenor Foundation, ERSTE Foundation, Danish Arts Foundation, Accion Cultural Espanola (AC/E), Pro Helvetia, Mondriaan Fonds, Frame Contemporary Art Finland, Iaspis, City Council of Madrid, CanariasCrea, Oesterreichisches Kulturforum Belgrade, Goethe-Institut Belgrade, Embassy of Switzerland in the Republic of Serbia, Canada Council for the Arts, etc.

For more information about the activities of the Overview Effect project please follow our website www.msub.org.rs