Echoes of Tomorrow
19 April - 10 June 2023
Oyster Mushroom Orchestra, 2022. © De Anima and Adem Elahel
In a dreamlike universe with codes close to a documentary, Matthieu Gafsou, Alice Pallot and the De Anima collective beckon us to reflect on the living and the bond that human beings have with nature. Between macro-ecology and the observation of the infinitely small, these three artistic projects form a whole through which we can perceive the original and ultimate force of nature as it unfolds in a network - a powerful and resilient "interlinked whole".
The unraveling of the world is shown by the Swiss photographer Matthieu Gafsou in a relational and human trope. As part of the Résidence 1+2 “Photographie et sciences” in Toulouse, Alice Pallot focuses on the problem of toxic algae in Brittany ("green algae"). The highlight of her series, a video entitled "Anoxie verte" plunges us among the tiny forms of life that can endure this man-made plague.
The De Anima Collective takes us into a poetic concert of mushrooms, the result of scientific observation and a desire to break down barriers between the mediums...
Selected artists
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De Anima is a collective founded in 2019 between Paris and Brussels (FR/BE).
For the 2022 edition of Unbound (Unseen Amsterdam, NL), De Anima created the OMO (Oyster Mushroom Orchestra), an immersive photographic installation known as «bio-augmented», through which the collective establishes a dialogue between the image and the living. It focuses in particular on the mode of communication of mushrooms, which organize themselves in a network thanks to their mycelium. This network is represented by the projection of animated macrophotographs of oyster mushrooms, which are combined with a culture of mushrooms on beer grains, connected to electrodes. The mushrooms convert the frequencies of the electrical signals passing through them into sound waves. Music composed in real time by the mushrooms and orchestrated by De Anima is played through a parabolic speaker made of mycelium.
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(FR, 1995), lives and works between Brussels and Paris (BE/FR).
She developed the series Algues maudites, a sea of tears, which focuses on the toxic algae that have been proliferating for several years in coastal waters as well as in certain rivers in Britany. These algae constitute a real environmental and health problem as they generate visual, olfactory and toxic pollution. When not collected, they form clusters that start decaying and if handled or trampled, release a gas, hydrogen sulphide (H2S). This gas is highly concentrated and becomes harmful and deadly. The multiplication of these algae, a consequence of global warming and the waste from intensive agriculture, contributes to the creation of morbid landscapes, without organic life that look congealed. With Algues maudites, a sea of tears, Alice Pallot makes a sensitive documentary permeated by the notion of anticipation. She evokes the real albeit imperceptible toxicity of algae and anoxic environments to make us face up to the unpredictability of tomorrow’s world and the decline of biodiversity and its ecosystems.
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(CH/FR, 1981), lives and works in Lausanne (CH).
Vivants (2022) is Matthieu Gafsou’s latest project, in which he unveils his pessimistic view of ecology. Having always cultivated a strong relationship with the subject, in this series he questions our place in being alive, in the idea that everything is interlinked.
He puts his feelings into images through the codes of a documentary, by intervening in situ to produce allegorical images, or by carrying out plastic experiments, in particular by using petroleum on the prints, a way of saying that our environment is contaminated from all sides. But Vivants is an ambivalent series where the negative and the positive cohabit. It is a real fresco of emotions: anguish, anxiety, anger, but also joy, delicacy and love. Bursts of beauty occur through the figure of his children in particular. They attest to the positive development of his attitude to the ecological question during the creative process in which he confers an intimate and emotional dimension through photography, which then emerges as a vector of awareness.
