Presentation by the curators Bénédicte le Pimpec and Isaline Vuille, together with the artists Uriel Orlow and Riikka Tauriainen, of the exhibition project darker and darker grows the landscape (la possibilité d'une île), as guests at the Corner College exhibition Cold. War. Hot. Stars. The Iron(y) Helmet of the Intellect.


The three islands of the north are blocked with ice;
The finest theories refuse to make sense;
It is said somewhere a lake has collapsed
And dead continents rise back to the surface
-- Michel Houellebecq, The possibility of an island, 2005





The exhibition darker and darker grows the landscape (la possibilité d’une île) was organized last July by Bénédicte le Pimpec and Isaline Vuille at BAC – Bâtiment d’art contemporain in Geneva.

Most of the artists presented in the exhibition proceed by long-time investigation, whether in archives or on site, use anecdotes and details in order to set up new narratives. By focusing on human’s relations to nature and science, through the prism of botany, entomology, zoology and, more broadly, the natural sciences, they operate a change of focus and doing so they reveal wider contexts, they describe specific socio-political or historical situations.

After a short presentation of the exhibition project by the curators, Uriel Orlow will elaborate in a performance-lecture on his installation Grey, Green, Gold that enlightens a correlation between the history of a native South African plant and Nelson Mandela’s struggle against Apartheid. On her side, Riikka Tauriainen will do a performance-lecture updating on her research for her piece Contact zone that links together an Arctic expedition to the history of a major company and a science-fiction short story, and develops towards feminotopias and women travel writing.