Exhibition - Think Economia

Exhibition

Economia Exhibition

Baltan Laboratories presents the online Economia Exhibition that consists of multiple art installations and video works, inviting visitors to critically explore how to invert the paradigm of unlimited growth and reclaim economy as we see fit. The exhibition consists of three themes: Nature’s Economies; Shifting Value; and Re-Designing infrastructures. In November we will present the themes in three video exhibitions.

#Nature’s Economies

Could our economy be a reflection of nature, a closed system that grows, thrives and dies? What if new economies take inspiration from self-regulatory mechanisms that are typical of natural ecosystems?

With Wither, a rainforest that is disappearing before our eyes, Thijs Biersteker helps us to imagine the immense extent of the current deforestation of the Amazon. Viral Nature – HereNowArcadia by Martina Taranto is a living material that grows and eventually decays. The geology of Silvia Noronha’s future, Shifting Geology speculates about the impact of human activity on the Earth.

Join the video exhibition on November 5th.

#Shifting Value

Shifting the notion of value implicitly changes the economy, since value is the measure of benefit. Can this shift in perception, besides saving us from an environmental crisis, also improve our well being and make us more fulfilled?

The Always Trust Me installation by Gijs de Boer plays with the concept of trust, an important concept for the way we have organized our economy. Cassandra’s Building Climate Futures video explores how speculation could change the future starting from the recent oil price crises. In Outside, inside my nature Alessandro Cugola and Gianmarco Causi wonder about the concepts of inside and outside and explore the blurring and changing boundaries between these two poles.

Join the video exhibition on November 12th.

#Re-designing Infrastructures

Sometimes changing a complex system is not about starting from scratch but rethinking its mechanisms. Could redesigning the building blocks of our economy trigger a bigger change on a societal level?

The chatbot Isabot from Ottonie von Roeder, helps you to invest your money to speed up the automation of your daily job. Memories of Stream City by Stephane LAB shows a fictional world in which all infrastructures are commons and inhabitants behave like birds. With Immeasurable Range, Boey Wang reinterprets measurement from a subjective perception. The four measuring tools question our rigid understanding of space.

Join the video exhibition on November 20th.

Selected works

Thijs Biersteker

Wither

A slice of rainforest disappearing at the Amazon deforestation rate.

As the world is forced to slow down in lockdowns due to Covid-19, there is a 71% acceleration of deforestation happening in the Brazilian rainforests. Bringing us onto a hard to imagine 2.560 m2 of ancient rainforest that is lost each second. Every flickering of a leaf marks the loss of 250m2 of rainforest. Each second ten leaves disappear. #Nature’s Economies

Thijs Biersteker creates interactive awareness installations about the world’s most pressing issues today.

Martina Taranto

Viral Nature - HereNowArcadia

A composite material, fertile and able to host life made to grow into living botanical sculptures

A linear conception of time and life is what lies behind all processes of human creation. Nature’s artifacts never become ruins or waste.‘Viral Nature’ proposes a composite material, 84% organic, able to host life. ‘HereNowArcadia’ is the sculptural adaptation of the ‘Viral Nature’ mix, demonstrating how close we are to living integrated with the ecosystem. #Nature’s Economies

Martina Taranto is an artist, designer, and innovator with an interest in futures built on synergies.

Silvia Noronha

Shifting Geology

How will human activities affect the future of the earth’s geology?

Materials that result from environmental contamination evoked by man are emerging. Polluting gases and chemical wastes are interacting with the earth’s ecosystem and becoming part of nature. Through a science-based artistic process, this work is a speculation about the next geology. #Nature’s Economies

Silvia Noronha studied Glass and Ceramic at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design, and Conservation and received an M.A. in Textile and Surface Design at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin.

Gijs de Boer

Always Trust Me

There are many ways to win your trust, but bluff is the quickest.

Next to the temple façade of a traditional bank, an ATM looks modest. Boring even. Gijs de Boer is fascinated by things that seem designed to look undesigned. Inspired by sampling and citing methods from pop culture, he copies a seemingly neutral ATM incompletely, leaving clues to reveal its modernist mask. ‘Always Trust Me’ tests if you can trust an honest bluff. #Shifting Value

Gijs de Boer (NL) is an artistic researcher, educated as a designer and philosopher. He studies modes of relating to things. His work borrows methods from trend forecasters, pop artists, posthumanists, and his friends.

Chiara Di Leone, Anastasia Noga, Laura Cugusi (Cassandra Collective)

Building Climate Futures

The creative power of value to construct the future in real time.

On the twentieth of April 2020, the price of oil went negative for the first time in history. This sudden oil-price shipwreck visualized how deeply entangled the present and the future are. The video ‘Building Climate Futures’ investigates how to acknowledge this “creative” power of value and link it to the creative power of art in imagining different possibilities for the future. #Shifting Value

Cassandra Collective investigates the roles of institutional practices, technologies, design strategies, and social systems in ensuring the future habitability of Earth.

Alessandro Cugola, Gianmarco Causi

Outside, inside my nature

Shifting inside and outside, allowing us to reconsider our fragility and nature.

Inside and outside define the thresholds of our perceptions and our way of being. The video shows rendered boundaries on the scale of the body, the perimeter of our living space, and the dimension of our consciousness. While exploring the shift of these definitions, ‘Outside, inside my nature’ questions how we perceive and determine our territory. #Shifting Value

Gianmarco Causi and Alessandro Cugola are architects based in Brussels, with a focus on exhibition and installation design. Cugola’s work experiments with the possibilities that architecture gives, exploring the meanings and sensations space are able to create or absorb.

Ottonie von Roeder

Isabot: Investing in a post-labour future

A chatbot that helps you to invest your money in order to speed up the automation of your own job.

Ottonie von Roeder wonders about the obsolescence of human labour and how targeted financial investment could accelerate a post-labour future. She will present a chatbot that helps you to decide how to invest your money in order to speed up the automation of your own job. #Re-designing Infrastructures

Ottonie von Roeder is a designer working in the field of critical and social design, design research, and education. She applies speculation and playfulness to question existing socio-political systems.

Stéphane LAB

Memories of Stream City

Stream City: the transient flying city where inhabitants behave like birds.

‘Memories of Stream City’ is a short fictional documentary that tells the experience of four Streamers who lived in Stream City: the flying city where inhabitants behave like birds. Unlike earthbound urban spaces, this aerial city is transient and its infrastructures are common to be used by all inhabitants. #Re-designing Infrastructures

Stéphane LAB is a future-oriented design researcher who considers design as a medium to search, materialize, and navigate the complex uncertainties and opportunities of futures.

Boey Wang

Immeasurable Range

Hacking measuring tools to reinterpret measurement from a subjective perspective.

Humans have always relied on tools to enforce knowledge and shape their surroundings. Measurements function as the fundamental standardizing concept of human production and life in terms of uniformity and efficiency. Boey Wang hacked four measuring tools, reinterpreting measurement from a subjective perspective. He also produced a film with personal stories about measurement. His project questions our rigid understanding of space and encourages us to embrace the fluidity of the world. #Re-designing Infrastructures

Boey Wang is a designer exploring the possibility of shifting perception and attitude as an alternative methodology of solving challenging problems.

Fictional Journal

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