Premonition

Le lieu unique, Nantes, France
October 21, 2018 – January 6, 2019

“Premonition” was commissioned for the exhibition “Descending from the liquid horizon” at le lieu unique, Nantes, curated by Kati Ilves.

“The artist and theorist Hito Steyerl has found data to be the new tool for survival, which, considering the choice of vocabulary, will place us at the dawn of a new epoch. Terms like data “farming” and “harvesting”, “mining” and “extraction” are all rather pastoral, allowing the current era to be defined as Data Neolithic and place us – the current inhabitants – in a state of transformation. The recent dystopian sci-fi trilogy Hunger Games created a post-apocalyptic high tech realm, where people of the lower classes hunted and gathered for survival while using developed platforms for communication. Mixtures of the archaic and contemporary are symptomatic of the current day: we are farming, harvesting, mining and excavating again for new material, partially out of fear and uncertainty, but also because these activities were built into our genetic survival kits millennia ago. “Excavating” the past describes Laura Põld’s practice as well. She used archaic materials, such as clay, reeds and wool, in a pottery-based installation. Her site-specific work takes architecture into consideration: the former LU biscuit factory building is rich in architectural layers and Põld works from its red brick wall. Blending this specific aesthetics with ancient warrior masks and warfare-related objects, Põld’s created zone blends the dichotomies of the archaic and contemporary, domestic and public, and war and peace. Her works could serve as a monument of the in between, pregnant with speculations, references and prophecies.” – Kati Ilves

Photos by Kristina Õllek