BRANKOPOPOVICBLOG: Architecture of Fear

Architecture of Fear
02.10 to 31.12.2011
http://www.z33.be

Architecture of Fear explores how feelings of fear pervade daily life in the contemporary media society. The cause of fear seems interchangeable and constantly fluctuating. Shifting from one thing to the next, often relating to invisible or indirect phenomena’s (terrorism, viral diseases, pollution, financial crisis), anything has the ability to become a potential threat. Rather than an immediate emotional strategy for survival fear is becoming a constant low level feeling in the background that gives rise to a new global infrastructure based on security, prevention and risk-management.

Architecture of Fear brings together a selection of international artists and designers that reflect in different ways on the society of fear, ranging from registration and critical research, to exploring its emotional, social and spatial mechanisms.

Artists: Bureau D'Etudes, De Geuzen, Floris Douma, Laurent Grasso, Ilkka Halso, Susanna Hertrich, Charlotte Lybeer, Jill Magid, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Tracey Moffatt, Trevor Paglen, Marie Sester, Kin Wah Tsang and Els Vanden Meersch.

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy 'Soft Rains #6'

Soft Rains #6.
The artists’ inspiration for this work was the film Blue Velvet by David Lynch, which uses an idyllic suburban village with its green gardens and white picket fences as a setting for a story about man’s most obsessive and dark excesses. http://www.mccoyspace.com/

Ilkka Halso 'Museum of Nature'

Finnish photographer Ilkka Halso’s photographic series ‘The Museum of Nature’ intelligently challenges how we can imagine the natural environment of the future. This collection of images capture a series of man-made structures that enclose nature, protecting it like a relic of the past. Using images of landscapes and 3D digital manipulation, this photographic collection captures a future vision of nature as a rare display. http://ilkka.halso.net/

Ilkka Halso, Museum I (The Museum of Nature), 2004

lkka Halso, Roller coaster (The Museum of Nature), 2004

Charlotte Lybeer 'The Villages'
http://www.charlottelybeer.be/

From 2003 to 2008, young photographer Charlotte Lybeer spent extended periods of time in gated communities and contemporary theme parks to document how these places neatly designed around a central theme managed to give an illusion of safety and dream lifestyle.

Trevor Paglen
http://www.paglen.com/

Laurent Grasso, 1619, 2007

This sculpture, a geodesic sphere based on the model of Buckminster Fuller, refers to the shape of the receiving stations of the Echelon network, a global surveillance system.

Susanna Hertrich, Prostheses for Instincts, 2008.
http://www.susannahertrich.com/

Susanna Hertrich, Prostheses for Instincts

Ideas and prototypes try to establish how fear as a primitive emotion can be linked to abstract data on contemporary disaster scenarios, such as financial risks, health issues, natural disasters or the menace of terror. Through electronic simulation, some prostheses are able to create physical and mental sensations (goose bumps, chills, increased state of alertness) similar to the ones we experience in instinctive anxiety responses.