Apocalypse and World Salvation

26 | 11 | 2020 - 31 | 12 | 2021

Sponsered by Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst Baden-Württemberg | Fränkel Stiftung | Sparkasse Bodensee | Architektenkammer Baden-Württemberg | Exploration Architecture | Arava Institute for Environmental Studies | Die Blaue Blume e.V.

Our expectations of the future have rarely been so defined explicitly by the idea of collapsing worlds as they are currently. In addition to concerns about climate and biodiversity, anxieties about the end of a human-dominated world are growing as artificial intelligence threatens to take control of the human species.

At the same time, however, there are also doubts as to whether the current zeitgeist is really being described accurately through the invocation of apocalyptic fears and ‘end time’ ideas and talk of the narrowing future horizon. There is much to suggest that the Silicon Valley and Fridays for Future generations have a significantly different view of world events than those that preceded. Architects, for instance, design local and global utopias for climate-friendly and socially acceptable survival on the planet.

With the annual theme "Apocalypse and World Salvation", the focus will be on current end-time scenarios and narratives, possible future horizons and the aesthetics of related political movements. A lecture series on art and cultural history will focus on the historical dimension of artistic disaster prediction. In a group exhibition and an accompanying series of student-curated and devised events, current artistic engagement with end-time fears and impending global disasters will be contrasted with possible rescue scenarios and utopian refuges. 

The focus is on three themes: 1. climate rescue, 2. utopian habitats and architecture, and 3. considerations of new species.

Photo credits: Karen van den Berg

Starting from the question of what a space might look like that allows us to enter a realm between apocalypse and world salvation, acting as a kind of time lock between past, present and future, Kateřina Šedá came across the famous computer game series Fallout. This game creates a post-apocalyptic world after the global nuclear war. Among the iconic spaces of this game are the so-called vaults - shelters and bunkers built before the catastrophe to enable the survival of humanity and its technology. Based on this gloomy gaming world, the idea was born to transform the White Box exhibition space into such a safe or bunker. Thus, on the one hand a common apocalyptic scenario is conjured up. On the other hand, the walls of this grey safe room are also covered with children's drawings. The motifs for this were created by ten-year-old students of the Czech school ZUŠ HRANICE in a workshop with the artist. Šedá used this powerful visual material to compose room-filling wall drawings, which were then transferred to the walls of the white box by students of Zeppelin University in a two-week painting action.

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive public program of lectures and workshops with the participating artists and student curated events. In addition, a lecture series, a concert, a film program and public discussions are dedicated to the topic.

02.02. – 27.04.2021
Lecture Series on the annual theme

with Prof Dr Jan Söffner (D ) | Prof Dr Karen van den Berg (D) | Prof Dr Pierre Cassou-Noguès (F) | Dr Philipp Kleinmichel (D) | Prof Dr Kirsten Kramer | Dr Joachim Landkammer (D) | Prof Dr Maren Lehmann (D) | Michael Pawlyn (GB) | Oliver Ressler (A) | Dr Esther Schomacher (D) | Prof Dr Pinar Yoldas (T/USA)
Program overview of the lecture series

26.11. – 16.12.2020
Silent Apocalypse

Interventions at the ZF Campus, curated by students of the course "Curatorial Practice"

09.11. – 23.11.2020
Participatory painting action

Students transfer Kateřina Šedá's drawings on to the walls