Category: Art, design,…

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The Institute of the Cosmos: Museum and Timeline

www.cosmos.art

Emma Willard, The Temple of Time, 1846.

The museum occupies a central place within the cosmist worldview as an institution dedicated to the preservation, conservation, and restoration of the past. It is a singular place in human society where a broken appliance, a damaged picture, a ceramic shard, or an unfinished poem are not discarded, but systematically preserved and maintained. The cosmist museum is encyclopedic and nonviolent. As a collection of everything, its mission is to restore life, not take it. Nikolai Fedorov writes that the museum is related to the school and the observatory. The ancestral memory it preserves in the form of artifacts, botanical specimens, animal and human remains is mirrored in the constellations of the stars. The museum is related to ancient temples and the knowledge it transmits is astronomical. According to Fedorov, the museum will be the site of resurrection once museological technologies of restoration are radicalized to restore life. “If a repository may be compared to a grave, then reading, or more precisely research, is a kind of exhumation, while an exhibition is, as it were, a resurrection.”[1]

The museum of the Institute of the Cosmos is comprised of an infinite number of rooms. Each room contains a permanent exhibit. We invite you to visit Room #12, containing an exhibition by Arseny Zhilyaev, signed by the algorithmic artist Robert Pasternak. The room presents a suite of sculptures devised by Robert Pasternak in the distant future, in an attempt to understand its origins, which are closer to our present time. Based on satellites, rockets and space stations developed during the early days of space exploration, these sculptures can be downloaded and printed on a 3D printer. 

More rooms will open in the near future, with projects by artists and curators including Victor Skersis, Jonas Staal, Ahmet Ögüt, Iman Issa, Pierre Huyghe, Bahar Noorizadeh, Nikolay Smirnov, Liam Gillick, Maha Maamun, Emilija Škarnulytė​, Oleksiy Radynski, Boris Groys and others.

The Timeline of Russian Cosmism is a chronological mapping of key developments in art, literature, poetry, science, politics, technology, philosophy and numerous other fields, as they pertain to cosmism. Researched and edited by Anastasia Gacheva, Marina Simakova, Arseny Zhilyaev and Anton Vidokle, the timeline traces the influence of cosmist thought on culture and society, starting with the sighting of the comet 3d/Biela, which triggered the global panic of the 1820s, to the present day. The timeline is ongoing: more entries will be added expanding its content as we move into the future and rediscover the past.

[1] Nikolai Fedorov, The Museum, its Meaning and Mission, originally published in 1906

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Aby Warburg: Bilderatlas Mnemosyne

Exhibition
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Sep 4–Nov 30, 2020

In the 1920s, the historian of art and culture Aby Warburg (1866-1929) created his Bilderatlas Mnemosyne tracing recurring visual themes and patterns across time, from antiquity to the Renaissance and beyond to contemporary culture. His approach provides inspiration for today’s visually and digitally dominated world. At HKW all 63 panels of the Atlas will be recovered for the first time from Warburg’s original images.

Aby Warburg with Gertrud Bing and Franz Alber in front of Warburg’s panel design, Rome, Palace Hotel, May 1929

Aby Warburg studied the interplay of images from different periods and cultural contexts. He designed the Mnemosyne Atlas to provide a pictorial representation of the influences of the ancient world in the Renaissance and beyond. In its last documented version, the Atlas consisted of large black panels on which Warburg placed photographic reproductions of artworks from the Middle East, European antiquity and the Renaissance, alongside contemporary newspaper clippings and advertisements. In the years leading to his death in 1929, Warburg and his closest colleagues Gertrud Bing and Fritz Saxl experimented with the form and function of the Bilderatlas. Their goal was to present a publication designed for discussion among experts as well as the broader public. During the course of its creation, the Atlas developed into an instrument of cognition.

Aby Warburg, Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, panel 39 (recovered, detail) | Photo: Wootton / fluid; Courtesy The Warburg Institute

Warburg’s method set new standards: it consisted in rearranging canonized images and looking at them across epochs. His project traversed the boundaries between art history, philosophy and anthropology and was fundamental for the modern disciplines of visual and media studies. Today, his use of visual memory provides inspiration and alternative routes through a reality dominated by visual media.

The exhibition at HKW restores the last documented version of the 1929 Atlas almost completely with the original images. In collaboration with the Warburg Institute in London, the curators Roberto Ohrt and Axel Heil have located most of the originals, some partly in color, 971 images from the 400,000 individual objects in the Institute’s Photographic Collection to show all 63 panels of Warburg’s unfinished magnum opus for the first time since his death. In addition, 20 unpublished large-scale photographs of panels that were previously only accessible in the Warburg Institute archives will be shown: Most of them made in autumn of 1928, they originated from the previous versions of the Atlas and are presented as large prints of the original black and white negatives.

Aby Warburg: Bilderatlas Mnemosyne | Exhibition view | © Silke Briel / HKW

The Warburg Institute

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100 objects to represent the world

Peter Greenaway / Saskia Boddeke

In 1997 two spaceships were launched from Cape Kennedy containing material to represent life on earth. The ambition of the project was to make hypothetical contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence. The choice of material was subjective to an American, scientifically educated, 1970s community, with paternalistic attitude towards the rest of the world. But who consulted us? We were not asked to make a contribution and we must do something about this falsification, especially now as we approach the end of the second millennium, when everyone is making lists and taking stock of what has been achieved.

With a mixture of irony and seriousness, the filmmaker, artist and director has chosen to put together his own shopping list called 100 objects to represent the world. After presenting this 100 objects in an exhibition at Vienna’s Hofburg Palace in 1992, Greenaway now brings the objects to an audience instead of bringing the audience to the objects: in a completely new and theatrical setting, light, sound, voice and music will be part of a modern opera – a prop opera. The importance of the prop should not be underestimated in our own materialistic and icon-producing world. Can you imagine a Chicago Gangster Film without a gun?
But the objects to represent the world are not inanimate but are presented in a mixture of Machiavellian, galactic toy store and Faustian dream space.

The opera set is an installation that can be contemplated on stage also before and after the performance.

The 100 objects are presented in a sequential narrative by Thrope the Misanthrope, who guides us and Adam and Eve (two silent, naked actors) to show what mankind has really learned during the past millennium: from the comforts of domesticity and sentiment, through the delights and torments of sex, power and money, to the tragedies of war, disease, loss and death. This journey is to be traveled in 70 minutes, structured by Thrope’s spoken discourse. His dramatic performance is accompanied by the soundtrack of Jean-Baptiste Barrière (engineered at IRCAM Paris), making him a teacher, a pedant and persuader, a charlatan and preacher.

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Total Space

Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich – Exhibition: 23.10.20 > 20.06.21

Dive in, experience, participate! In museums across the globe, elaborate stage sets and expansive installations spellbind visitors. Today’s exhibition halls are filled with light shows, slides and huge toadstools, all designed to meet the needs of the thrill-seeking society. Which new experiences do these playgrounds enable young and old to make and how do they change the museum experience? Total Space provides an up-to-date overview of current developments and reflects on this trend. Innovative installations, digital environments, and interactive stations devised by inter-national designers create a multi-layered world of experience that can be explored with all the senses. A lawn-fitted library invites visitors to explore the exhibition theme in greater depth.

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Chronophotography

The chronophotography is a set of stop-action photographs of rapidly moving things in order to study and measure the motion. Pioneers of this technique included artist Eadward Muybridge (1830-1904) and scientist Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904).

Marey-wheel photographs of unidentified model with Eadweard Muybridge notation.
Thomas Eakins, Motion Studies, Philadelphia, 1884
The Library Company of Philadelphia
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Memento mori

Memento mori means “remember that you are going to die” and is a formula of medieval Christianity. Expressing the vanity of earthly life, it refers to the “art of dying”, or Ars moriendi. It induces an ethic of detachment and asceticism. It is close to another Latin locution: “Sic transit gloria mundi” (“Thus passes the glory of the world”).

Its origin dates back to Greco-Roman antiquity, when a slave stood beside a victorious general during his triumph (parade) to remind him of his mortal condition. The phrase “Hominem te esse” (“You too are only a man”) was also used.

This vision of the human condition gave rise to many artistic representations.

Antonio de Pereda y Salgado  (1611-1678)
Allegory of vanity, 1634,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Vanity still life, Anonymous, 17th century
Vanity still life, Anonymous, 17th century
Vanity, or Allegory of Human Life – Philippe de Champaigne, 1644
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Joseph Cornell miniatures

Although he rarely ventured far from New York, Joseph Cornell was able to create intricate worlds of his own from the solitude of his basement. In this episode of Anatomy of an Artwork, discover Cornell’s enchanting Soap Bubble Set, a perfect example of the artist’s miniaturized realms constructed from everyday ephemera. With symmetrically laid out clay pipes, glasses, maps and organic detritus, Cornell built a vast referential network of found items that encapsulated his many interests from across the arts & sciences.

Planet Set, Tête Etoilée, Giuditta Pasta (dédicace) 1950. Joseph Cornell (1903-1972)
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Graphic Time

Graphic Time is a series of abstract clocks. These kinetic objects are graphic interpretations of functional time pieces. A diversity of prints, perforations and colours create a combination of movement and ever changing compositions. Paper, laquered stainless steel, clockworks. Graphic Time was initially developed for the solo exhibition ‘Blend’ at The Aram Gallery in London. The project is supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL.