to slip, to slide, to glitch

Duo Exhibition by Larisa Crunțeanu & Sonja Hornung
Contributions from and events with Mareike Bernien & Alex Gerbaulet, Barbara Marcel, Ann Oren, Naomi Rincón-Gallardo, Tama Ruß, Nikola Stoyanov
In curatorial collaboration with Katharina Koch & Sylvia Sadzinski

3.6-12.7.2024, Alpha nova & galerie futura, Berlin

In an expansive installation with video works, textiles, text and sculptural elements, to slip, to slide, to glitch explores moments of control, disruption, destruction and restoration in the production of landscapes through so-called green capitalism. Disruptions or glitches, as can be found, for example, in faulty satellite images of open-cast mines, are understood to refl ect interruptions in the landscape more broadly, with deep-seated implications for bodies (of humans, animals, plants and water) on the ground.

Larisa Crunţeanu and Sonja Hornung’s artistic research takes as its starting-point (post-) mining landscapes in East Germany and Romania. Together, they investigate how the desire for an ecological and just transformation collides with ongoing, profi t-driven extraction processes. Who benefits from the desire for change and restoration, and how does this repeatedly negatively impact people and ecosystems?

A series of large-scale textile cyanotypes and hyper-coloured fake plants – species used to recultivate former mining landscapes – transform the gallery space into an imitation of a forest. In a video work embedded in the installation, two exploratory protagonists move through (post-)industrial coal mining landscapes in Lusatia and the copper mining region in the Apuseni Mountains, searching, marvelling, and observing. Transformed into skeletons, the artists refer to the toxicity of the scenarios and processes at play, while simultaneously destabilising their own physicality in relation to “artificial nature”. These elements are contextualised by text-based works.

to slip, to slide, to glitch blurs notions of nature and artificiality, because landscape is always partly produced by humans: here, either through the projected imaginary of full restoration, or through actual neglect. Hyper-coloured algal blooms and orange waters infused with ferric sulfates become the spectacular symptoms of enduring ecological disaster. At the same time, the project is dedicated to the productive power that arises when we do not see “natural” and “artificial”conditions as two separate entities, pointing towards the need to recognise practices that might embrace the wounds of the world, and take responsibility to care for the world as it is.

Photo credit: Ivonne Thein

Further read about the research behind the exhibition: to slip, to slide, to glitch:Navigating Uneasy Landscapes in INSERT magazine