The Crisis of the Horizon

January 19–31, 2018
Small Projects, Tromsø (Norway)
 

Artists
Agnieszka Polska, Emilija Škarnulytė, Jenny-Marie Johnsen, Simon Faithfull

The Crisis of the Horizon is an exhibition of lens-based media art including animation, photography and expanded cinematic works, exploring the way aerial views and satellite views provoked a structural modification in the regime of vision, leading to a shift in the human behavior toward the environment.

For centuries, the straight line of the horizon has been an unquestionable reference for direction and orientation, as well as the main reference in the linear perspective, a foundational paradigm of representation in art history. But the line of the horizon is blind to the curvature of the Earth.

By providing an evidence that seemed incontestable and yet contradicted the most direct perception of a linear horizon, aerial views and views from outer space proved of fundamental importance in provoking a radical shift in our ways of seeing and perceiving space. With the invention of aircrafts we have become endowed with the bird’s-eye view, which also revealed to what extent the environment had been brutalized by the human activity and by the reckless expansion of mega-metropolitan areas (Le Corbusier, Aircraft); with the development of spaceflight technologies, views of the Earth from outer space became soon available, unequivocally proving the isolation of the planet, the fragility of its balance and the interconnectedness of the planet’s ecosystems (Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot). The first images of the full Earth in colors were transmitted from the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, and watched by approximately 570 million people, in an event that shook the anthropocentric perspective and raised a collective awareness toward the environmental crisis.

If aerial views showed us that any thoughtless human practice would sooner or later constitute a local environmental problem, views from outer space went one step further, providing the evidence that there is no such thing as a local environmental problem.

Without forgetting that aircrafts and spacecrafts are also leaving massive carbon footprint behind their flights, highly contributing to inject carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the aim of this exhibition is to address the shift in our scopic regime and awareness that was produced by aerial views and views from outer space throughout history and until today.