Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur
Museum d’art dal Grischun Cuira
Museo d’arte dei Grigioni Coira

2020

When we Disappeared. Four Video Works
29.08.2020 - 22.11.2020

Future generations will not forgive us. Their judgment will be unanimous and their position irreconcilable. They will not tell glorious stories about the conquest of the moon or the triumph of the Internet. They will look back and see exploitation of raw material, refugee crises, value destruction or the climate change. In the exhibition When we Disappeared we adopted the perspective of our descendants and looked at the present with the eyes of our future children. The videos unmask us in the eyes of those whom we have ignored. They are fragments of our legacy.

The video In the Land of Drought by Julian Rosefeldt is a cinematic interpretation of Joseph Hayden’s The Creation and shows us an era of post-Anthropocene. In the video we follow a group of scientists who are unearthing the archaeological finds of a civilisation, which has buried itself. In the video Kwassa Kwassa SUPERFLEX shows the construction of a fibreglass boat, which is used for the transport of migrants between islands in the Indian Ocean. The indicated crossing reveals how national power interests devour the yearning for a safe existence. An island that at the same time serves as a place of refuge is an overseas department of France and thus a part of Europe. In the video The Roots of Violence – San Giorgio by Yuri Ancarani the image sequences direct us to hidden locations of financial institutions. The destruction of sensitive documents becomes the symbol for an insubstantial financial sector, on which our global economy rests. Irma to come in Earnest by Julius von Bismarck leads us into the middle of the Hurricane Irma, which raged across the Caribbean in 2017. In the video we see flooded settlements and palm trees crushed by the storm. The artist translates the elemental force of the hurricane in greatly slowed down, strangely beautiful images. As a result the realisation emerges that we humans have become the largest destructive force of ecological processes.

Program:
29.08. – 20.09.: Julian Rosefeldt, In the Land of Drought, 2015 /17
22.09. – 11.10.: SUPERFLEX, Kwassa Kwassa, 2015
13.10. – 01.11.: Yuri Ancarani, The Roots of Violence – San Giorgio, 2019/ 20
03.11. – 22.11.: Julius von Bismarck, Irma to come in Earnest, 2017

Opening hoursTu-Su 10.00–17.00 Th 10.00 – 20.00