When the atmosphere is less than perfect
with Tess Marschner, Anna Perepechai, Zeynep Şahin, Julia Perkuhn & Fabio Aranzulla
2020-23
The publication WHEN THE ATMOSPHERE IS LESS THAN PERFECT brings together the works of 29 artists who dissolve their individual authorship within this essayistic volume of images and texts, merging into a web of relations..
The conceptual guiding figure is the canary—an animal used as an early warning system for toxic gases in mines due to its sensitive respiratory system: Canary in a Coalmine is not only an accomplice but also a product of the Anthropocene. At the heart of the book lies the relationship between humans and nature, the self and other organisms and spaces—drawing on current discourses in the natural and social sciences.
Starting from the thesis that it is not only we who produce images, but increasingly images that produce us, the canary offers a critical lens—both thematically and formally—on the (post)photographic image: Just as oils, plastics, or metals permeate our bodies, so too do images infect and cling to us, structuring the material world.
2022, Artist book, 17x25cm, 110 p., risoprint, silkscreen print, ring binding
Edition: 100
(GER/ENG/IT)
Design & Layout: Carla Selva Matthes & Paul Zech, Anna Perepechai
Cover & Typography: Carla Selva Matthes & Paul Zech
Contributing Artists: Daniel Adlmüller, Fabio Aranzulla, Susanne Beck, Jane Beran, Cihan Çakmak, Luca Cinquemani, Alicia Franzke, Nancy Göring, Raisan Hameed, Livia Hanson, Tizian Hempel, Angelos Lakouras Hess, Alexandra Ivanciu, Elizaveta Kuznetsova, Susanne Kontny, aNNa Lebedev*a, Christoph Liepach, Mashid Mahboubifar, Tess Marschner, Pooya Sedighi Mournani, Vanessa Amoah Opoku, Simon M. Osten, Felix Pacholleck, Anna Perepechai, Julia Perkuhn, Jana Ritchie, Zeynep Şayin, Katharina Schreiter, Stefania Smolkina, Carla Selva Matthes & Paul Zech
In the multimedia installation WHEN THE ATMOSPHERE IS LESS THAN PERFECT, 13 artists approach the complications and potentials of the posthuman condition, which Rosi Braidotti describes as a moment of urgent transformation.
Formerly inanimate, mute or ineffective bodies and materialities become perceptible as actors in relationships and movements. There multifarious creators of changing environments have never been exclusively human: In the installation WHEN THE ATMOSPHERE IS LESS THAN PERFECT they appear as historical, timeless, invisible, productive, threatening, linguistically, gifted and collaborative co-beings and
events.
2023, MZIN, MdBK Leipzig
with Susanne Beck, Alicia Franzke, Nancy Göring, Alexandra Ivanciu, Kassandra & Apostolos, aNNa Lebedev*a, Mahshid Mahboubifar, Tess Marschner, Vanessa Amoah Opoku, Felix Pacholleck, Julia Perkuhn, Katharina Schreiter, Stefania Smolkina.