Nomeda Urbonas
Fellows & Affiliates
Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas’ Folke Stone Power Plant is being featured in the Parco Arte Vivente presentation The God-Trick, a collective exhibition curated by Marco Scotini, with whom the Center intends to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its opening. The exhibition opens in conjunction with the international conference Anthropocene Ecological Crisis and the Transformative Potential of Art.
Starting with the work of artists who have collaborated with PAV in the past or, in other words, Lara Almarcegui, Michel Blazy, the Critical Art Ensemble, Piero Gilardi, Bonnie Ora Sherk and Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, the goal of both the exhibition and the conference is to address (and, furthermore, see as an issue) one of the debates which, over the past few years, has been to the forefront of the international, contemporary art scene: the questions relating to the Anthropocene. This will be a pervasive and choral debate crossing most diverse ambits of knowledge. From science to cultural studies, from philosophy to sound practices, from politics through to the visual arts, a multitude of voices have created a complex interweaving of opinions, theories and pragmatic proposals, beginning with the urgency created by climate change and the environmental modifications of an anthropogenic matrix.
The God-Trick exhibition opens with Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas’s experiments into alternative energy, by means of the documents relating to the Folk Stone Power Plant, a project that was originally designed for the Folkestone Triennial (UK) in which an installation activated an international network of scientists.
All these works have the role of reminding us that there is nothing natural, nothing objective, nothing inevitable about the processes of capitalist accumulation, thereby encouraging us to go beyond the confines of thoughts that prevent us from seeing any alternative to the system.
Alongside the exhibition’s display area, the subjects proposed by the artists will be at the center of a second type of area, a discursive space articulated over two days of symposium, opening in parallel with The God-Trick. The aim, once again, is to discuss crucial issues head-on: how much time do we have left before the eco-systemic crisis becomes irreversible? By means of which social, political and cultural norms can we kick-start the profound transformation needed to create an equal and bio-centric society in a harmonious relationship with the eco-system of Planet Earth?
Read more in Humanities Through Material Engagement: Gediminas Urbonas on Artistic Research from Arts @ MIT.
Read more about the Folk Stone Power Plant.
Full Press Release for The God-Trick.
MIT Faculty – including Nomeda and Gedimias Urbonas who are curating the Lithuanian Pavilion – at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Read more in MIT News.
