[EN] Various Artists shows ‘toxiThropea’ at the exhibition ‘Deadly Affairs’ at Extra City.

toxiThropea researches the tense and toxic relationship between Humans and Nature. It imagines future scenes where our world’s resources are depleted and humans are few or nearly extinct. It depicts our environment beyond the end of its self-healing capacity with our role reduced to retreat and witness the aesthetic simulations of our dying intoxicated habitat. The work that is part the exhibition ‘Deadly Affairs’ is laboriously produced using mainly fossil energy, reflecting our economic productivity and resulting in dystopian and ethereal landscapes that expose our inability to maintain our only biosphere. The work is reminiscent of a time where chemical processes continuously change the state of nature, and where man is no longer involved. Its aesthetics conceal the fragility and the amount of energy these works require to be kept ‘alive’.
toxiThropea is part of Água com Gás, an on-going research project that examines a number of water-related topics such as the privatization of water supply, pollution, the depletion and salination of water sources. This research results in a variety of concepts and creations that are generated by different Various Artists.
Various Artists is a Brussels based arts collective with 24 fictional members. Within Various Artists most of the activity is concentrated around practicing duets, where a primary actor is combined with a secondary player. A thematic, or a skill is provided by the former, and can be repeated until exhaustion. The collective is a Gesamtkunstwerk where all research topics and artistic practices of its 24 members come together in collaborative installations or projects.

Deadly Affairs addresses environmental injustice by bringing into view the externalities (contamination of humans and non-humans) inherent to the logic of capital accumulation. It traces the exploitation of labour, land and resources from within Europe to a space outside of its borders, focusing on how the privileges Europeans presently enjoy, and the rights granted by certain forms of citizenship, are only possible because of abuses that take place outside the confines of its jurisdiction. It does so by using the trope of toxic trades and toxic destruction, and the slow, unspectacular violence that characterises it—a violence that is often difficult to grasp, visualise and represent, since the relationship between cause and effect can be easily eluded.

Deadly Affairs is curated by Antonia Alampi, research curator Caroline Ektander, and assistant curator Zeynep Kubat.
Participating artists are Boris Anje, Valentino Bellini & Eileen Quinn, Don´t Follow the Wind, Jessika Khazrik, Daniel Lambo, Hira Nabi, Franziska Pierwoss, Natascha Sadr Haghighian & Ashkan Sepahvand, Neda Saeedi, Susan Schuppli, Adrien Tirtiaux and Various Artists.
nadine supports Various Artists in his research Agua com Gas and co-runs the project space n0dine.

[NL] Groepsexpo Deadly Affairs met ‘toxiThropea’

toxiThropea onderzoekt de gespannen en giftige relatie tussen de mens en de natuur. De installatie stelt een  toekomstscène voor waarin de hulpbronnen van onze wereld uitgeput zijn en de mensen weinig of bijna uitgestorven zijn. Het verbeeldt onze wereld voorbij het einde van zijn auto-genezend vermogen, waarbij onze rol gereduceerd is getuige zijn van de esthetische simulaties van onze stervende bedwelmde habitat. toxiThropea maakt deel uit van Água com Gás, een onderzoeksproject dat water gerelateerde onderwerpen onder de loep neemt, zoals de privatisering van de watervoorziening, vervuiling, de uitputting en verzilting van waterbronnen, etc. Dit onderzoek resulteert in een verscheidenheid aan concepten en creaties die door Various Artists worden gegenereerd.

Deadly Affairs werd gecureerd door Antonia Alampi, onderzoekscurator Caroline Ektander, en assistent curator Zeynep Kubat. nadine ondersteunt Various Artists in hun onderzoek Agua com Gas.

[FR] Various Artists montre ‘toxiThropea’, une exposition collective dans le cadre de Deadly Affairs, Extra City.
toxiThropea illustre la tension et les relations toxiques entre les humains et la nature. Les artistes imaginent des scènes futures dans lesquelles nos ressources sont épuisées et où les humains ont quasiment disparu. Une description de notre environnement à la limite de sa capacité d’autoguérison, notre rôle se réduisant à nous retirer et à assister aux simulations esthétiques de notre habitat intoxiqué, en train de mourir. Les œuvres qui composent l’exposition “Deadly Affairs” sont laborieusement produites en utilisant de l’énergie fossile, reflétant notre productivité économique et donnant à voir des paysages dystopiques, éthérés, qui montrent notre incapacité à maintenir notre unique biosphère.