John Kørner + Whisteblowers & Vigilantes + Slow Violence

This Saturday afternoon we celebrate the opening of three new exhibitions: John Kørner’s Altid Mange Problemer, the group exhibition Whistleblowers & Vigilantes – The digital rebellion and the group exhibition Slow Violence.

At the opening, which will be held outdoors if the weather permits, you’ll be able to buy the vegetarian dish of the day from Apollo Canteen, while Apollo Ba offers beer and drinks in addition to more culinaric delicacies depending on the weather. Master Fatman distributes cosmic love from the dj booth. The opening is free and open to all.

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John Kørner – Altid Mange Problemer
In the year of John Kørner’s fiftieth birthday, Kunsthal Charlottenborg will present the largest exhibition ever seen of his work. Spanning more than 1000 m2 of floor space, this retrospective places particular emphasis on the social issues addressed by the artist over the years, investigating Kørner as an important reinventor of contemporary painting.

For this exhibition Kørner will create a series of new paintings as well as site-specific immersive installation. The exhibition will also bring together a range of Kørner’s most important series of paintings for the first time ever. Thus, the show will offer an unprecedented opportunity to see the artist’s major works gathered under one roof. Read more.

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Whistleblowers & Vigilantes is a controversial exhibition that uses art, TV footage, surveillance, documentary approaches and historical documents to offer a range of perspectives on the fierce discussion concerning whistleblowers.

The exhibition showcases the activist strategies and legal positions that whistleblowers, hackers, online activists and artists use to justify their efforts in the digital rebellions – featuring Anonymous, Julian Assange, DIS, Chelsea Manning, Metahaven, Edvard Snowden and others. Read more.

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Group exhibition: Slow Violence
Artists: Maria Thereza Alves, Pia Arke, Mia Edelgart, Harun Farocki, Basia Irland, Runo Lagomarsino, Zoe Todd, Lise Autogena & Joshua Portway

The Anthropocene and climate change reflect nothing so much as industrial capitalism’s dependence on ancient sunshine.[i]

The condition of the planet is undergoing radical transformations. The massive destruction of the Earth’s ecosystems not only comprise climate change and species extinction. The extraction of minerals and other raw materials, deforestation, desertification, ocean acidification, floating plastic continents, toxic waste, monoculture-plantation, industrial farming and an accelerating global urbanization are also part of the processes that are changing the living conditions for all life on Earth.

We call it development. Progress. Growth. A development based on centuries of radical interventions into the complex and interdependent processes that constitute the life sustaining systems of the Earth.

Modernity: a permanent, dirty war on life. We have entered the endgame.[ii]

The planetary meltdown is a result of slow violence. This is a violence that is exercised in the margins of our attention, a violence that is often out of sight, invisible and whose destruction emerges with a delay. A violence not perceived as violence.

Our present is the Anthropocene; this is our time.

But this present time progressively reveals itself a present without a view.[iii]

The story of the Anthropocene, the geological epoch of our time, is a new evolutionary agenda that puts mankind at the centre of the development of the Earth and designates humans as a geological factor. It is evident, however, that it is not humanity in its entirety that has violated the planet and caused the grave transformations taking place. These violations have to do with a specific mindset, a specific practice and way of perceiving the relationship between Man and his surroundings connected to European colonialism and early capitalism.

The narrative of the Anthropocene considers the environmentally degrading consequences of industrialisation as a kind of collateral damage, an unintended harm, but the use of the term ‘climate change’ in the 18. Century tells a different story. To the colonial administers it was crucial not only to control the physical surroundings but changing the climatic conditions was also an integral part of the colonial project.

How did it become possible to consider people and the planet as inexhaustible resources to be used and abused without cost? The exhibition Slow Violence is an attempt to read the destabilization of the climate and the destruction of the Earth as a history of slow violence.

The exhibition is curated by Katarina Stenbeck and is part of the research project In Search of the Lost Future, for more information www.lostfuture.netSlow Violence inaugurates the programme Charlottenborg Art Research, a collaboration between the Royal Danish Art Academy and Kunsthal Charlottenborg.

[i] Elizabeth Povinelli ”Geontologies: A requiem to late liberalism”, 2016
[ii] Gene Ray ”Writing the Ecocide-Genocide Knot” South as a State of Mind #7, 2016
[iii] Déborah Danowski & Eduardo Viveiros de Castro ”The Ends of the World”