The Center Pompidou-Metz brings together art and science fiction. An immersion between visions of the apocalypse and glimmers of hope.
The possibility of a poetic and fictitious flight. This is how the exhibition “The Doors of the Possible” could be defined, through the first work presented: a destitute cell, which takes the form of a Soviet dwelling, in which there is an ejection seat, with a hole in the ceiling. It’s an installation by Ilya Kabakov. Despite the totalitarian universe, a utopia is imaginable.
We live in a time of science fiction
Alexandra Müller, curator of the exhibition
The exhibition explores SF by associating literature and the plastic arts, with the idea of looking differently at the universe around us. “Science fiction is the wrong genre, the literary genre which is not afraid of the Dionysian, which is not afraid of profoundly renewing our achievements, says curator Alexandra Müller. We live in a time of science fiction: until the health crisis, we thought that our daily life would go on forever, but this crisis, which has done a lot of harm, has also made it possible to consider other curves of history, such as an ecological shift. »
The visit is structured around great novels, “Brave New World”, “Green Sun”…
The visit is dense and sinuous, with a scenography with accents of the end of the world, signed by the trio of architects Clémence La Sagna, Achille Racine and Georgi Stanishev. The experience is intended to be immersive, with picture rails that open up sometimes surprising gaps from one room to another: a way of laying bare the building – until videos have been slipped under the footsteps of visitors. It is structured around a few great novels, each accompanied by a list of other novels that can also be consulted: “Brave New World”, by Aldous Huxley (1932), “Neuromancer”, by William Gibson (1984), “Sun Green”, by Harry Harrison (1966), “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968), and “The Parable of the Sower” by Octavia E. Butler (1993).
“The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment” by Ilya Kabakov (1985).
© DR
“This exhibition could have started with Mary Shelley and the romantic movement, resumes Alexandra Müller, but it is part of something much more current: the current of new wave, born at the end of the 1950s. This generation of artists raised the question of environmental collapse, the question of postcolonialism, that of feminism, a certain distrust of algorithms and the end of belief in a bright tomorrow. »
Science fiction lovers will find something to renew their reading. And the others will let themselves be carried away by very diverse artistic proposals, among which, by design, very few virtual works: a lithium salt megalith by Julian Charrière, a city painting by the Albanian Edi Hila, former collages by Cyprien Gaillard, a large painting of cyborg bodies by Kiki Kogelnik, photographs by Zanele Muholi… This journey into imaginary worlds also offers a dive into our realities.
“The doors of the possible”, at the Center Pompidou-Metz until April 10.
