Pierre Huyghe: After ALife Ahead / Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017

This video takes you to a former ice rink in the city of Münster in Germany. For the art exhibition Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017, the artist Pierre Huyghe has created the piece “After ALife Ahead”, an installation that consists both of bio- and media-technology and architectural de- and recornstruction.

Pierre Huyghe: After ALife Ahead / Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017. Münster (Germany), June 10, 2017.

This is an excerpt, the full-length film is available below.

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Complete video (6:51 min.):

Info text:

For Münster’s Skulptur Projekte 2017, Huyghe has developed a time-based bio-technical system in a former ice rink that closed in 2016. This involved bio- and media-technological interventions and required extensive architectural de- and reconstruction. All the processes taking place within the very large hall are mutually interdependent: some of them are determined by the HeLa cell line, in a constant process of division in an incubator. Among its various effects, the cells’ growth triggers the emergence of augmented reality shapes. Variations in a Conus textile pattern change the spatial configuration: for example, the opening and shutting of a pyramid-shaped window in the ceiling of the hall.

By digging into the earth, Huyghe transforms the ground into a low-level hilly landscape. In some spots, concrete and earth, layers of clay, styrofoam, gravel debris, and Ice Age sand are found as far as a few metres underground, interspersed with leftover surfaces. This space is inhabited, for instance, by algae, bacteria, beehives, and chimera peacocks.
Biological life, real and symbolic architecture and landscapes, visible and invisible processes, and static and dynamic states are all fused into a precarious symbiosis.

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