COLLAPSE IS NOT A DESTINATION conceptualizes our planet in the Anthropocene as an endangered garden with finite resources, in which our activities have a profound impact on our basis of existence. On display are works from the fields of sculpture, photography and installation. Using found materials, they offer a long-term time dimension and point to the dilemma of the capitalist growth paradigm: that the long-term effects of our short-term profitable actions are not adequately taken into account. The consequences have long been clear: ‚technical fossils‘ such as aluminium, concrete residues, plastic particles, carbon com-pounds from the combustion of fossil fuels, fallout from nuclear bomb tests, etc. can be found in sediment layers, microplastics can be detected in bodily fluids – and the man-made climate catastrophe can no longer be denied.
This development has been known for more than half a century and was described in Limits to Growth, the first report by the Club of Rome in 1972. Since then, we need to ask ourselves: Why is it still not possible for us as a collective to take countermeasures and stop the destruction of our livelihoods that has long been predicted in models? Why is it that we cannot „see“ or recognize reality?
The report pointed out that the human perspective is radically limited to what is close in time and space. Long-term or spatially distant effects do not seem relevant for decision-making, as we cannot grasp the complexity of the process and its dynamics in every- day life. At the same time, however, decisive changes for the entire process occur just there.
The title of the exhibition quotes Ugo Bardi, member of the Club of Rome and co-editor of Limits and Bey- ond: 50 years on from The Limits to Growth, what did we learn and what‘s next? from 2022: „Collapse is not a destination, it is a process“. A process that we can hardly stop with our usual way of thinking. „The crisis is that people do not recognize the problems they cause. They can do something, but they cannot per-ceive the result of their actions in a universal reality.“ (Almut Linde: Radical Beauty, 2018).
The exhibition uses artistic strategies to make viewers aware of the phenomena of complex processes and interrelationships. The two floors of the pavilion are dedicated to two major themes: Earth and electricity on the lower floor, forest and fire on the upper floor. COLLAPSE IS NOT A DESTINATION „shows“ instead of „tells“. Through the presence of the original material, the spatial and temporal distance is overcome for the moment of viewing; the implications of our capitalist lifestyle can be experienced sensually and directly.