Zu sehen bis 17.3.2024 Sonic Acts, Looiersgracht 60, Amsterdam
Im Rahmen der Biennale Sonic Acts
Lukas Marxt - Searching for reflections in the toxic field of plenty
A series of gathered works that speak to a site of Marxt's continued fascination – the Salton Sea, a shallow, landlocked, highly saline body of water on the southern edge of California. Blighted by catastrophe, the Salton Sea has been in a constant state of rapid natural transformation due to colonisation, nuclear and atomic weapon testing, recreational development, tornadoes, flooding, agriculture, and toxic dust storms. Currently, the area is being scouted for lithium mining and is projected to become a dust bowl within the next 20 years.
The videos in the exhibition space are accompanied by sculptures, archival, found and historical artefacts, including parts of the ‘Fat Man’, the codename for the atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. Fragments of the dummy bomb were unearthed by Marxt in the desert around the former Salton Sea Test Base, a now abandoned site where atomic bomb ballistic testing took place.
At the Looiersgracht 60 arts space, the featured artists seek to give form to the ongoing environmental crisis by examining the unexposed histories of contamination, bodily landscapes, and postnatural ecosystems.
With works by Lukas Marxt, laschulas collective, Anika Schwarzlose and Elena Khurtova, and touche—touche
About the 2024 Biennial Sonic Acts
Drawing inspiration and namesake from David Abram’s 1996 book, the Biennial aims to startle the senses out of its usual ways. Exploring the participatory nature of perception, The Spell of the Sensuous focuses on the fluid exchange between the senses and the sensuous Earth.
2024.sonicacts.com/exhibition/searching-for-reflections