24.7.2023, Monday 19:00 Uhr
Extinguish all fires! by Alexander Klose
Venue:
- HFBK, Raum 214
The detection and exploitation of fossil components, namely the developments in coal and petro chemistry, have been the crucial economical factor for more than a century. With the ecological crisis and the subsequent advent of the end of fossil modernity and the unavoidable necessity to extinguish all fires, the question of the elements as the ‘elementaries’ of our energy system has returned. Wind and water have become opponents to fire, and the sun as the main energy source for all natural dynamics has started to take up a new fundamental role in different ‚solarities‘, seemingly not unlike its fundamental role in cosmologies that were in place before – or parallel and despite of – fossil modernity.
In following this thread of elemental thought for their summer school ‚Clash of the Elements‘, Chto Delat is bringing traditional and new elements back into the picture: “fire, water, wind, atoms”. I’d like to add earth to complete the components of the traditional doctrine of the four elements, and plastics, the new prima materia of petromodernity. How are these materials conceived of today, and what qualifies them as an element? Starting from some of the myths and artistic renderings of their dynamics, my talk tackles the question if we are facing a renaissance of elemental thought and tries to reconstruct some of the aspects and means that may have led to it.
The Talk is part of the project School of Emergencies at HFBK Hamburg.
Biography
Alexander Klose studied law, history, art, cultural studies and philosophy in Hannover and Berlin. He works as a cultural researcher, curator and publicist, and lives in Berlin. From 2001 to 2009, he researched on the principle of standard containers and the emergence of the logistical episteme in the 20th century. In 2017, fellow cultural researcher Benjamin Steininger, speculative designer Bernd Hopfengärtner and Klose founded the research collective Beauty of Oil. In 2020, Klose and Steininger published Erdöl. Ein Atlas der Petromoderne (English translation forthcoming 2023). From September 2021 to January 2022 their exhibition Oil. Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age, a “first retrospective of global petromodern art”, was on display at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. A second iteration of this show, entitled Petromelancholia and dedicated to contemporary artistic positions, featuring a new work by the School of Emergencies initiated by Chto Delat, will open on 1st September 2023 at Brutus Rotterdam.