Hypernatural Forces: Exploring the Intersection of Nature and Technology at Kokerei Zollverein – Ruhrkunst 07/23

Cinzia Campolese: Set-Rise-Sun

© Dirk Rose / Zollverein Foundation

July 10, 2023

“Hypernatural Forces” at Kokerei Zollverein – Ruhrkunst 07/23

Zollverein, once the most modern colliery in the world, today a world heritage site overgrown by wild vegetation, is a symbol of change and transformation. An inspiring area to reconnect nature and technical progress today and to illuminate it artistically with innovative media. In its second edition, the “New Now” festival for digital arts invited ten media artists to create new works with a local reference in order to stage them effectively in the bunker-like ambience of the mixing plant.

The exhibition’s welcoming committee is made up of five robotic puppies who do nothing and can do nothing but flinch excitedly when approached. In view of contemporary technological possibilities, the pack of AATB seems to have fallen out of time – a dying species. The windowless upper levels are brightly colored and up to date. In the niches around the funnel throat, psychedelic digital chimeras of flora, fauna and electronic scrap thrive, fantasy organisms in a continuous mutation process, embedded in soundscapes. Microbes from contaminated industrial floors inhabit the wall and floor as a projection and sculpture. Someone also does something with coal, places a climbing wall next to an ant farm or visualizes data streams from exhibition visitors. There is no question that the artists are pursuing ambitious research approaches, but they are not immediately apparent in the audiovisual implementations. The works illustrate ideas, rarely stand alone. Except for Cinzia Campolese’s LDC screen, which appears to be gleaming white to the naked eye and which reflects the image of a rising and setting sun in the surface of water in front of him – a simple and highly poetic aha effect. Or Stolzes & Rütten’s opera arias, blaring neophytes who have unabashedly settled on the industrial site, come to stay. People don’t matter anymore.

So what are we seeing here? This gap is closed by the interactive audio walks by the intermediary professionals from the Körperfunk collective, who not only provide background information on the location and works, but also encourage small visitor performances with and in front of the art. And above all: keep asking questions that sharpen perception and build bridges. Clearly, with a playful approach, the digital mush takes shape.

Hypernatural Forces | until 6.8. | Mixing plant, coking plant Zollverein Essen | 0201 246 81

Claudia Heinrich

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