ELAINE GAN, STEVEN LAM, SARAH LOOKOFSKY

DUMP!
MULTISPECIES MAKING & UNMAKING, 2015

A curatorial award and exhibition at Kunsthal Aarhus (Denmark), co-curated with Steven Lam and Sarah Lookofsky. Exhibition Participants: AURA; Amy Balkin et al.; Lothar Baumgarten; Mabe Bethonico; Bob Braine, Mark Dion, Alexis Rockman; Patty Chang; Peter Fend; Fernando Garcia-Dory; Jacqueline Goss; Tue Greenfort; Henning Knudsen & Anna Tsing; Donna Haraway; Dana Sherwood; Åsa Sonjasdotter; Spurse; Kidlat Tahimik; Etienne Turpin; Cecilia Vicuna; Pawel Wojtasik; and The Yes Men.

Playing with the Kunsthal's two-year exhibition theme of "Collective Making," DUMP! asked viewers to consider who constitutes the "collective" and what counts as "making."

An exhibition and a manifesto, DUMP! gathered artists, scientists, and organisms to (1) explore multispecies socialities that persist in the garbage dumps and rubble of industrialization and colonialism, and (2) contest the celebration of technoscientific fixes and relentless production that permeate contemporary discourse. An extraordinary mix of installations, videos, prints, and performative objects occupied the entire Kunsthal space (inside and outside, daytime and night time) to explore waste, contamination, and decomposition as emergent sites of collectivity or composting. Mixing art museum, natural history museum, and exploratorium, DUMP! offered twenty propositions for refusing ruination.

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Responding to the temporality of an exhibition, some DUMP! projects changed during the show's run from spring to fall: potatoes were grown then harvested; fungi were cultivated to decompose woodchips; feral deer were fed and filmed; seeds were collected. Four artists collaborated with AURA biologists and anthropologists. These culminated in a public workshop (below) and reading room for multispecies literature.

Click poster to view a larger image.
(Poster image: Bob Braine, Mark Dion, and Alexis Rockman 1992)

Click to download pdf of exhibition catalogue.
Text appears in English and Danish. With thanks to Ricarda Bross, Joasia Krysa, and Andreo Mielczarek.

Click to download and share widely "Make Kin Not Babies" sticker by Donna Haraway, as designed by Elaine Gan (2015).

For details about each participant, please visit the exhibition page at Kunsthal Aarhus.