Shaken Grounds. Shifting Skies, MAXXI | Museo nationale delle arti dell XXI secolo, Rome
Art as a Seismography of Precarious Presences, October 22-27, 2024
Videogallery of MAXXI, Museo nationale delle Arti dell XXI secolo, Rome, Italy
Even before the Anthropocene, disruptive geological forces were compelling artists to reflect on the fragility of existence and the origins of their age. Such events raised fundamental questions about where to ground reason when the conditions of life could shift so radically. Natural disasters—like the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in southern Italy—have long served as focal points for both scientific inquiry and artistic reflection. According to the myth of Rome’s founding, Aeneas entered the underworld through the trembling Phlegraean Fields—now Europe’s largest illegal toxic dump—to seek guidance on where to settle after his long journey. On the other hand, the major eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE was associated with the sudden threats posed by the Iron Age, a period marked by austerity and wars that prompted a range of artistic responses.
Today, areas prone to seismic activity are influencing artistic research and expression in a different way. While such places once connected people to a polytemporal worldview, they now bear the weight of new, man-made pressures. Global warming, groundwater extraction, resource mining, clean energy technologies, and waste disposal are all increasing the strain on the Earth’s crust, resulting in human-accelerated earthquakes. This almost incomprehensible, yet undeniable phenomenon highlights the complexity of the ecological crisis, revealing disturbing new entanglements between humanity and the environment.
The artist collective Shaken Grounds revisits the continental margins of southern Italy, exploring the intersections of natural seismic activity and anthropogenic environmental damage through an interwoven mesh of artistic experiments. They recognize that the trembling of the earth, once regarded as one of Gaia’s natural forces, is now being driven by human interference as well. Art, as research and practice, excels in detecting and expressing the changing relationship between humanity and our evolving, technologically influenced, and highly damaged geological environment.
In the course of the symposium "Shaken Grounds. Shifting Skies - Art as a Seismography of Precarious Presences", October 22-27, 2024, the artistic research collective and guests will present a combination of talks, performances and screenings that incorporate process-oriented video imagery. Audience talks will offer space for questions about how film, performance art, and geology intertwine within artistic research.
///
Program, October 22-27, 2024
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
5:00 p.m. Welcome, Francesco Stocchi (MAXXI Artistic Director) and Irene de Vico Fallani (MAXXI Head of Guidance and Development Department)
5:15 p.m. Introduction and screening: Shaken Grounds, Shifting Skies, Nikolaus Gansterer, Mariella Greil, Peter Kozek, Lucie Strecker
6:00 p.m. Zoom intervention: Seismosentience, Andrea Pagnes
6:30 p.m. Lecture: “Strata of Artistic Research,” Alexander Damianisch
7:00 p.m. Audience talk moderated by Alexander Damianisch
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
11:00 a.m. Screening and exhibition: Shaken Grounds, Shifting Skies, exposition of artistic research film scenes
3:00 p.m. Resonance I: Summary of the previous day, discussion and close viewing: Nuée Ardente, Nicolas Freytag, Peter Kozek, and Lucie Strecker
5:00 p.m. Welcome and introduction, Mariella Greil and Peter Kozek
5:15 p.m. Screening: Shaken Grounds: Scenes in Between
5:30 p.m. Talk and screening: Traces of Volcanic Attitude, Helga Franza
6:15 p.m. Performance lecture: “Rituals of Resonance,” Mariella Greil and Peter Kozek, with Victor Jaschke
7:00 p.m. Audience talk moderated by Alexander Damianisch
Thursday, October 24, 2024
11:00 a.m. Screening and exhibition: Shaken Grounds, Shifting Skies, exposition of artistic research film scenes
3:00 p.m. Resonance II: summary of the previous day, discussion, and close viewing: Framing—Sensing, Victor Jaschke with Peter Kozek, Nikolaus Gansterer, and Mariella Greil
5:00 p.m. Welcome and introduction, Nikolaus Gansterer and Lucie Strecker
5:15 p.m. Video screening: Vulcanalia, VestandPage (Verena Stenke and Andrea Pagnes) and Nicola Fornoni
5:45 p.m. Impulse lecture: “Earth’s Unrest: The Interplay of Magma and Quakes,” Valerio Acocella
6:15 p.m. “Translecture on Shaken Grounds”, Arno Böhler and Nikolaus Gansterer
7:00 p.m. Audience talk moderated by Alexander Damianisch
Friday, October 25, 2024
11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. Screening Exhibition at the Video Gallery
Saturday, October 26, 2024
11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. Screening Exhibition at the Video Gallery
Sunday, October 27, 2024
11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. Screening Exhibition at the Video Gallery
///
A documentary of the symposium will open on November 7, 2024, at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Rome and will be on display until November 28. It will also be part of the group exhibition Imagine Climate Dignity: Artistic Collaborations, being held in February 2025 at the Künstlerhaus Vienna.
Supported by the Austrian Ministry of European and International Affairs, the Austrian Cultural Forum, Rome, the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Support Art and Research, the Angewandte Performance Lab (APL), and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). The research proposal PEEK AR 780 has been co-authored 2022 by Nikolaus Gansterer, Dominika Glogowski, Mariella Greil, Peter Kozek and Lucie Strecker.
www.maxxi.art/events/terreni-scossi-cieli-in-movimenti
Downloads
