Permafrost. Forms of Disaster at MO.CO. Panacée

Artists: Deniz Aktaş, Ozan Atalan, Nina Beier, Dora Budor, Rochelle Goldberg, Eloise Hawser, Max Hooper Schneider, Nicolas Lamas, Pakui Hardware, Michael E. Smith, Laure Vigna

Exhibition title: Permafrost. Forms of Disaster

Curated by: Vincent Honoré (Exhibition director), Caroline Chabrand (Curator), Rahmouna Boutayeb (Projects manager, assisted by Taddeo Reinhardt)

Venue: MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, France

Date: February 1 – August 30, 2020

Photography: Marc Domage / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier

The Permafrost exhibition presents itself as a changing landscape, transforming the art center into an immersive experience. The artists offer artworks, improbable relics and hybrid objects, linked to natural, social or political disasters resulting from global climate change. Visitors are confronted with the vulnerability of a changing world.

Conceived as a metaphor for current or imminent crises, the thawing permafrost serves as the anchor of the exhibition. It is explored as a complex phenomenon, carrying at once danger and potential.

Permafrost explores more specifically how these current systems (ecosystems, capitalist systems and symbolic systems) adapt and transform in an uncontrollable and unstable morphogenesis.The works engage in the creation of the now as the future and generate a reality and a science-fiction. They also ask the question: which symbols, forms and myths will still exist when known systems collapse, landscapes crumble, and cycles go out of sync ?

The artists in Permafrost appropriate and invent different aesthetic, formal and narrative regimes. In blurring the boundaries between distant past and near future, geological eras and production chains, they seek to develop aesthetic systems that meet the challenges of our time, that are forms of resistance.

Resonating with the 16th Istanbul Biennal The 7th continent, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, Permafrost brings together installations, sculptures, videos and drawings, many of which were co-produced by MO.CO. Panacée and the Istanbul Biennal. A rich program consisting of meetings, symposiums and screenings will accompany the exhibition.

Eloise Hawser, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Eloise Hawser, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Eloise Hawser, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Eloise Hawser, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Ozan Atalan, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Deniz Aktaş and Nina Beier, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Nina Beier, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Dora Budor, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Dora Budor, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Nina Beier, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Nina Beier, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Rochelle Goldberg, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Rochelle Goldberg, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Rochelle Goldberg, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Rochelle Goldberg, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Michael E. Smith, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Michael E. Smith, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Max Hooper Schneider, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Max Hooper Schneider, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Pakui Hardware, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Pakui Hardware and Laure Vigna, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Pakui Hardware, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Pakui Hardware, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Pakui Hardware and Laure Vigna, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Laure Vigna, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Laure Vigna, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Laure Vigna, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Nicolas Lamas, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Nicolas Lamas, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020

Nicolas Lamas, exhibition view, Permafrost. Forms of Disaster, MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier, 2020