Armin Linke’s Prospecting Ocean and Blind Sensorium–Timeline preview

For a long time the reactions of Earth to our human actions remained unnoticed, but in recent times with the protest movement Fridays for Future climate crisis has moved into public consciousness. The thought exhibition Critical Zones—curated by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel with Martin Guinard-Terrin and Bettina Korintenberg—invites us to deal with the critical situation of the Earth in various ways and to explore new modes of coexistence between all forms of life.

The exhibition is not intended to be a gallery of art works, but rather a participatory think tank, a “thought exhibition” (Peter Weibel) that aims to stimulate and exchange ideas with all visitors. For this reason, the ZKM has initiated Down to Earth, an Activation Program of the exhibition for observing new Earthly Politics. The activation program offers, among other events, guided tours, workshops, artist talks, discussion rounds and film screenings.

The exhibition Critical Zones includes the main film of Prospecting Ocean (2018), a two-channel video installation by Armin Linke in collaboration with Giulia Bruno and Giuseppe Ielasi, commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy.

For the activation program Down to Earth Armin Linke, in collaboration with Giulia Bruno, Mevis & van Deursen with Line Arngaard and Kati Simon, developed Blind Sensorium. Il paradosso dell’Antropocene–Timeline preview (2020), produced in collaboration with the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.

The interactive timeline is a digital adaptation of the video installation Blind Sensorium. Il paradosso dell’Antropocene (2019)—a synthesis of more than ten years of fieldwork by Armin Linke and his collaborators Giulia Bruno and Giuseppe Ielasi. Using both photography and film, they have produced a visual anthropology of the politics of climate change. Linke and his team have followed and interviewed scientists, politicians, and activists and have gained access to laboratories, data centers, and political negotiation rooms—sites of resource extraction and critical locations for the Earth’s ecosystems. The resulting film presents an image of the entangled relations, the deadlock between politics, science, economics, finance, culture, and the logic of technological innovation. 

This long-term project resulted in a 103-minute film accompanied by a 17-meter-long timeline—including videos, sound, photographs and text—visualizing and deepening the scenes and topics of the film. On the tablets, additional footage serves as footnotes and researchers react with short lectures to the different issues presented in the video installation. The digital translation presents selected episodes of the main film and the associated timeline, with a commentary by Armin Linke.

Launched on July 9, 2020, Blind Sensorium. Il paradosso dell’Antropocene – Timeline preview can be visited at 
timelinepreview.blindsensorium.net

Armin Linke in collaboration with Giulia Bruno and Giuseppe Ielasi
Blind Sensorium. Il paradosso dell’Antropocene –Timeline preview

Produced in collaboration with the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.

Concept: Armin Linke, Giulia Bruno
Design: Mevis & van Deursen with Line Arngaard
Programming: Line Arngaard with the kind help of Tomas Celizna
Production coordination and textual work: Kati Simon

Armin Linke’s fieldwork began with the Anthropocene Observatory project at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin, a cooperation with Territorial Agency (John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog) and HKW curator Anselm Franke. The next chapter of this research, Prospecting Ocean, was an exhibition project commissioned and produced by the TBA21–Academy in partnership with the Institute of Marine Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISMAR) and curated by Stefanie Hessler. Prospecting Ocean emerged from Linke’s long-term Anthropocene research and his participation in three expeditions to the Pacific Ocean with TBA21–Academy’s exploratory program The Current, curated by Ute Meta Bauer.

The video installation Blind Sensorium. Il paradosso dell’Antropocene has been commissioned and produced by Fondazione Matera-Basilicata 2019 as part of the Matera European Capital of Culture 2019 program and realized with the support of Fundació Sorigué (Lleida, Spain), TBA21–Academy, Montura/Tasci Srl, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin. 
blindsensorium.net

Armin Linke is represented by galleria Vistamare / Vistamarestudio, Pescara / Milano. 
arminlinke.com