MUSE Agorà is where scientific, poetic and philosophical narratives challenge our views of rocks, fossils and minerals, and the mountains, deserts and oceans of which they are a part.
Following the experience of Postnatural gardening. Ecological practices for interspecies care, we again challenge our practices and narratives, this time through geological collections and artistic research.
From the origins of life on earth to contemporary extractivism, a new ecology of relationships is taking shape, recognising the interconnections that bind us to matter and the relationships of continuity between the organic and the inorganic.
Through visual, textual, material, spoken and cinematic narratives, Mineral Ecologies invites us to understand the unity and interdependence of these layered histories.
Fossil specimens and rocks, such as those from the Dolomites, tell of a deep temporal dimension that is more than just human. Clays and core samples trace the ancestral history that links humans to minerals: from the origin of the first forms of life to the extraction processes in the mines.
The site-specific installation by Chiara Camoni and Il Centro di Sperimentazione (the Experimentation Centre) translates the permeability between the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms through a conviviality of shapes, colours and materials that coexist in a shared space. The exhibition’s ecosystem composes a new organism in dialogue with films by Yto Barrada, Liv Bugge and Ana Vaz, and the narrating voices of Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Regina José Galindo, Pauline Julier, Marzia Migliora, Cynthia Montier, Ophèlie Naessens, Micol Roubini and Raghad Saqfalhait.
Their research expands our understanding of the economic, historical, political and cultural dynamics that have shaped human relationships with geological matter.
Curated by
Alice Labor
With contributions by
Chiara Camoni, Yto Barrada, Liv Bugge, Ana Vaz
And the voices of
Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Regina José Galindo, Pauline Julier, Marzia Migliora, Cynthia Montier, Ophélie Naessens, Micol Roubini, Raghad Saqfalhait