Energy at the Threshold of the Visible World
Angewandte
Interdisciplinary Lab
This exhibition is part of Klima Biennale 2024
Energy is a scientific concept,
but also part of discourse and deeply related to power structures. To borrow the term from Donna Haraway, it is part of the
‘natureculture’ of the modern world; it can be studied historically while it is part of natural complexity and a description
of a scalar physical quantity that can be measured, transformed and transferred. Entangled in the physical and the political,
thermodynamic and metabolic, geologic and corporeal, extractive and renewable, landscapes and bodies, energy remains a part
of the modern world that is particularly abstract and obscure.
Visualizations
of energy, past and present, are critical as they translate scientific research and data into other fields, displaying the
entanglements of energy. They have the potential to become signs, by bringing together the signifier, the signified and the
perceiver. In such images, scientific knowledge and aesthetics go hand in hand, and energy enters the threshold of the visible
world.
Already in the 7th century, Isidore of Seville suggested the entanglements of energy, when he wrote that the words
color and ‘calor’ (heat) come from the same root in his Etymologies. In the 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell’s insights on
the nature of electromagnetic waves showed the difference between light and heat to be a wave’s frequency. It is possible
to consider the relation between aesthetics and energy, and ask: what color is energy today, for this society and culture?
This exhibition brings together the historical visualizations of energy along with the work of artists and architects reflecting
on the colors, images and representations of energy.
With works by Hubert Dobler, Exikon, Barbara Kapusta, Mathias Kessler,
Galo Patricio Moncayo Asan and Michael Wang.
The exhibition was conceptualized and organized by Tülay Atak and Bernhard
Sommer with Galo Patricio Moncayo Asan, Malgorzata Sommer-Nawara, Florian Zeif and Daniil Zhiltsov, and with graphic design
by Annija Česka.
Related event: In conjunction with the exhibition, the symposium building Environments: Architectural
Theory beyond a Changing Climate will take place on 3 May at Auditorium, Vordere Zollamtsstr. 7
This research project
is funded by the INTRA program of the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
With special thanks to: Prof. Reinhold
Krobath (Holztechnologie), Univ. Lekt. Gerhard Brandstötter, Tilman Fabini, Sami Mandee, Marian Stein
Exhibtion
Opening: 03 May 2024, 19:00
Lecture Constructing Climates by Michael Wang
Response by Baerbel
Mueller
3 May 2024, 17:30
Running: 04 May 2024 – 29 May 2024
Opening hours:
Mon–Fri:
11:00–18:00
Extra Saturday: 4 May, 10:00–18:00
Energy At the Threshold of the Visible World
Angewandte
Interdisciplinary Lab
Events
Lecture Constructing Climates by Michael Wang Response by Baerbel Mueller
03. May 2024 - 17:30
Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab, Georg-Coch-Platz 2, 1010 Wien
Opening
03. May 2024 - 19:00
Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab, Georg-Coch-Platz
2, 1010 Wien
Duration
04. May 2024 - 29. May 2024
Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab, Georg-Coch-Platz 2, 1010 Wien
