Invisible Forces- Exhibition Opening and Artist Talk

Erich Berger    Mari Keto    Martin Howse

19 October- 8 December 2019, Fri - Sun 2-6 PM
Opening 18 October 2019, 8PM
Artist Talk 19 October 2019, 5PM

Local Area Network (LAN). Workshop with Martin Howse: 13 Oct and 10 Nov 2019 

Our planet is not only made up of earth and rocks, but also of a number of invisible forces that influence and shape the form and viability of life. Radiation is not just a by-product of the atomic age, but something that exists in the background of almost every environment. In this exhibition, the work of Erich Berger and Mari Keto is presented along with a workshop and forensic exhibition by Martin Howse to open a dialogue between contemporary culture and deep (geological) time and psycho-geophysics.

 Erich Berger and Mari Keto's works examine the questions of toxic and radioactive waste in our world today. Inheritance is a precious family heirloom and consists of jewellery, which are radioactive and therefore rendered practically and symbolically unwearable. Together with an electromechanical device to determine the remaining radioactivity, the jewellery is stored in a concrete container which is build to endure over a vast amount of time. With these items the story goes that each time the jewellery is handed over from one generation to the next, the ritual of measurement determines if the jewellery can finally be brought in use and fulfill its promise of wealth and identity or if it has to be stored away until the next generation.

Open Care proposes a speculative future where individual families take responsibility for radioactive waste. The piece includes an electroscope for measuring radioactivity, an electrostatic charger and a storage disc for a small amount of nuclear waste, to be passed down form generation to generation. By rendering the huge timescale of radioactive decay into more meaningful units of lifetimes these work open the question of collective care and responsibility from a fresh perspective.

Martin's Howse's workshop and forensic exhibition, Local Area Network (LAN), is a transdisciplinary, speculative investigation of local fields and particles, energetic exchanges, towards the hacking and re-routing of circulations and networks at all stacked levels of local geological, environmental and technological "Umwelten".

LAN intervenes within the co-existent realms of algorithmic entities, of the structures and infrastructures of computation, and communication with the non-human entities of the earth (mycelium and microbes).



With the generous support of: