This year for the first time the island nation of the Maldives will be represented at the 55th Venice Biennale. Under the title “Portable Nation - Disappearance as work in progress”, the curators' concept considers“ Maldives ”as a conceptual placeholder  and“ Pavilion ”as a methodological vessel for reflecting on climate change. Conceived as an aesthetic device for a political discussion about changes in the global ecosystem, the project is designed as an international platform.

 

Under the title “We don't need a weatherman”, a line from Bob Dylan's song Subterranean Homesick Blues (1965), which became the slogan of the militant group “Weatherman Underground Organization”, curator Maren Richter has selected four artistic positions - Ursula Biemann, Christoph Draeger / Heidrun Holzfeind, Oliver Ressler and Klaus Schafler - for the Maldives Pavilion. The five artists are concerned and preoccupied with political and economic power constellations or the asymmetry between the West and the global South along the axis of the invisible / visible.

 

The discussion in the Secession is a contribution to Klaus Schafler's project “Hacking the Future and Planet”, which, based on his book of the same name, addresses mechanisms of weather making (example of the Olympic Games in Beijing 2008) and geoengineering (large-scale interventions to change the climate), which in their ambivalence raise a number of questions. The most central of all questions: Who can and must “rule” the climate in the future - it is assumed that this must not be local, just like the exploitation of resources and the emission of CO2.

 

In the Secession, Klaus Schafler and Maren Richter will discuss spatial policy, resources and spaces for action with Peter Mörtenböck, Helge Mooshammer and Oliver Ressler.

 

The book "Hacking the Future and the Planet", edited by Klaus Schafler will then be presented.

 

Klaus Schafler (Ed.), Hacking the Future and Planet, 158pp, Folio Verlag Vienna Bolzano 2013

ISBN 978-3-85256-611-5

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