Planetary Consciousness. New Realities.

Planetary Consciousness. New Realities.

April 21st 2023 – May 31st 2023

“Arsenal” Gallery Power Plant

Artists: Ernest Borowski, Hubert Czerepok, Eternal Engine (Martix Nawrot, Jagoda Wójtowicz), Andrei Isakov, Krystyna Jędrzejewska-Szmek & Paulina Mirowska, Ivan Svitlychnyi, Anastasiia Vorobiova, Dominika Wolska, Jakub Woynarowski

Research team: Zuzanna Sękowska, Eliza Urwanowicz-Rojecka, Jakub Wróblewski

Project assumptions have been inspired by the planetary consciousness category – in reference to a theory by sociologist and globalisation theorist Roland Robertson, author of the global consciousness notion (Robertson 1992, 2020). A change of direction towards the world-universe relationship is a major challenge social sciences and humanities have been struggling with. Nonetheless, for purposes hereof, planetary consciousness references the planet Earth as a whole: exploited, misused, neglected, gradually brought to the brink of annihilation – and yet approached with ever-greater subjectivity, empathy and concern.

Swift technological progress, a leap into the metaverse, propping reality up with technology resolves no old issues on the one hand while offering new opportunities on the other, yielding questions regarding new realities. These in turn are an opportunity for proving unknown potentials and emphasising new relationships with the Planet, possible and imagined alike.

Consequently, a locally, glocally, or even globally-based point of view will no longer be sufficient in terms of describing or rendering new realities. Hence the turn towards the planetary level, one wherein the planet Earth as a whole becomes a reality subject to speculation in terms of form and shape, of the past, the present and a future imagined. Man apart, who else is the causative actor and agent in the face of our Planet’s current and future condition?

Ever more frequent questions revolve around the integrity of creating expansive virtual projects in general, and the ethic of focusing on artistic experience in times of war and great energy and humanitarian crises in particular, given the natural disasters and climate migrations of today and tomorrow, and the looming shadow of potential struggle for water and food. The ecological dimension of processing augmented worlds is pointed to ever more frequently, the ethic of expanding multimedia spaces questioned, the latter involving energy-related encumberment and capacity as well as psychological and sociological matters – how man functions as in society and community, at the intersection of the transmedia and real worlds.

Our immersion in technology has become a fact long ago – our existence involves an entanglement in algorithms and providing “invisible labour” (Świrek, 2018). Yet as proven by recent months, the transmedia have become part of the realm of culture not only as a form of entertainment or convenient alienation and escapism destination, but also space for alternative communication, an environment of generating new forms of artistic expression. The transmedia allow a backup of places to be created alongside efforts to register models of cities and objects, to document tangible heritage and support remembrance – while sustaining the active transfer of experience (of war and mass annihilation). Furthermore, virtual space and digital activities may morph into weaponry, active and extraordinarily efficient.

The Planetary Consciousness. New Realities. exhibition explores more than a solipsist or opening virtual reality dimension. Focusing on new potentials, it also references classic cultural and historical motifs – concepts such as social consciousness, global map positioning, ways of perceiving the world-planet and developing its holistic imagined image, in rational and irrational categories alike. What kind of beliefs, certainties and ideas will ultimately evolve in the area, moulding the way we think, the patterns and standards we tend to follow? What vectors and media will eventually target, deliver and/or develop them?

The environment of the “Arsenal” Gallery Power Plant in Białystok has become a point of departure for our narrative and thought experiment. The historical power station building carries baggage of cultural symbolism – an incarnation of triumphant era of industrialisation, a symbol of progress, proof of civilisation and everything it has brought. Material, physically present and 3D-scanned, the edifice has become a point of intersection and interconnected activity, a meeting point for physical and immaterial reality. It will also become an interface for successive attempts at processing the trauma of modernness and everything that civilisation has done to the planet.

The project showcases the potential of XR – extended reality – as a resource of new techniques in the field of art, used ever-more frequently in parallel to the more “classic” and “traditional” media, such as video or installations. In exhibition space, they play the role of media communicating planetary consciousness-associated media. Do they have additional potential?