The Four Cardinal Points are Three: South and North

Curated by Amilcar Packer.

With the participation of Anita Ekman, Arely Amaut & Colectiva Radio Apu, Denise Ferreira da Silva & Arjuna Neuman, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Ayrson Heráclito, Mauricio Iximawëteri Yanomamɨ, Runo Lagomarsino, Emma Malig, Ana Mogli Saura, Sérgio Pukimapɨweiteri Yanomamɨ, Ventres da Mata Atlântica, Carla Zaccagnini, Raúl Zurita; with drawings from the Claudia Andujar Collection, and objects from Musée de la Mine et de la Potasse in Wittelsheim and Musée de la Régence in Ensisheim.

We are situated before the Atlantic, namely, both before and facing 1492. The number, not the date. We settle into the encryption, codification, coefficient, or even algorithm of the first great global synchronization. 1492, contemporary with the Doomsday Clock's midnight—and Trinity’s*—marks the moment when a meteorite composed of olivine and hypersthene, the Ensisheim** Thunderstone [Pierre du tonnerre d’Ensisheim], traverses the earth’s atmosphere, just before Allende, a carbon-based meteorite older than our solar system, falls near a Pueblito of the same name, in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1969, just before another Allende (Salvador), or rather his body, falls inertly in the Moneda, in 1973. Allende (the Pueblito) is located about 889 km from ground zero of the Trinity Site, in Alamogordo (New Mexico), where the explosion of a bomb named The Gadget marks trinitite’s year zero, the origin of nuclear planetary synchronization. 

The Four Cardinal Points are Three: South and North is an essay. More a trial than a test. More notes than text. We could say it’s an assemblage, collage, composition, configuration, kaleidoscope, juxtaposition, conjugation, image, constellation, cosmovision. We could say a dream and an invitation. Out of habit we say exhibition.

—Amilcar Packer, September 2022.

*Trinity is the code name of the first nuclear test conducted by the United States’ armed forces.
**Ensisheim is a town located in southern Alsace.

​Free shuttle from Basel: Sunday, October 16, at 11am, departure from SBB Süd Station—Meret Oppenheim Strasse. Return to Basel at 3pm. RSVP and press contact: Richard Neyroud, r.neyroud [​at​] cracalsace.com.

The exhibition is supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Brazil, and IASPIS—Swedish Arts Grants Committee.

CRAC Alsace is supported by Ville d’Altkirch, Collectivité européenne d’Alsace, Région Grand Est and DRAC Grand Est—Ministère de la Culture.

CRAC Alsace is certified as a Contemporary Art Center of National Interest by the French Ministry of Culture.