黑料不打烊

With the traditional methods of knowledge acquisition 鈥� the natural sciences on the one side and the humanities on the other 鈥� mankind has reached a limit. The indivisible concatenation of industrial metabolism, climate change, urbanisation, soil erosion and the extinction of species, as well as a new social (self)consciousness have shown: The rapid reformation of cause and effect, means and end, quality and quantity requires a new approach to the world which is not governed by postmodern discourse but material interconnections and processes 鈥� from the accumulation of plastics into artificial islands in the ocean, to the particularity of a speck of dust on its way from the Sahara to the Brazilian rainforest. A new sense of amazement at the wonder of planet earth is required: What can we do, how can we know 鈥� and to what extent are the two connected? With what means, methods and senses can we encounter the world of our own creation?

In A REPORT, an extensive program of events in conclusion to the Anthropocene Project, the HKW will be exploring precisely these questions. The core of the program is the long opening weekend with A Matter Theater and exhibitions by Adam Avikainen, The Otolith Group and the Anthropocene Observatory. A Matter Theater explores and negotiates knowledge and perceptual practices: international artists, theorists and scientists localise the effects of human activity within the dynamic structure of material cycles and earth states, geo-historical events and planetary techniques. However, A REPORT includes more: The four volume publication 鈥淭extures of the Anthropocene: Grain Vapor Ray鈥� takes the materiality of the world by its word 鈥� in the form of the Particular (Grain), the Volatile (Vapor) and the Radiant (Ray): A selection of historic texts from Hippocrates to Borges, an archive of reflections on objects and their transformation, commented on and extended by contemporary authors. The book forms the material and theoretical framework for A REPORT and will be presented here for the first time.