Varvara & Mar’s solo exhibition, After everyone has left for Planet B, invites us to think about what will remain after us on Planet A if we bet on Planet B.
General common sense would say that there is no Planet B, and we should focus and target all resources on fixing Earth that humanity has managed to bring to a fatal stage. We are living the geological time known as Anthropocene – the age when human activity began to influence the planet’s climate and ecosystems significantly.
Nevertheless, the super-rich, like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, choose to invest (but also obtain a big junk of public funding) in space research and speculate about the possibility of leaving for Planet B. Such naive escapism surprisingly gains attention instead of undoing the ecological damage on Earth and begins to be considered as an alternative option to the heavily contaminated and problematic Planet A. The billionaires reassure the public of their altruistic intentions for a better future while realising their power, capital, and technophilia dreams.
Why do the people like Elon Musk want to save us? And most importantly, why do they want us to believe that we need to be saved?
Varvara & Mar’s earlier work, Tree of Hands (2015), talks about Anthropocene and proposes a dystopian landscape letting the audience, through interaction, engage with it. Its’ beautifully painful scenery served as a started point for the other works and objects displayed in the exhibition.
The artists undertook a trip to La Pineda – probably the most contaminated beach in Spain – close to Tarragona’s chemical industry. This industry spills millions of plastic pellets into the sea, causing plastic pellets invasion. So far, no responsibility was taken from the polluting industries. In plastic pollution, manufacturing and transporting pellets is in second place after plastic waste. The artists’ research trip to Stroomi beach in Tallinn proved that transportation also causes considerable spills of pellets.
The sad reality is that microplastic is a part of our daily food chain. Moreover, the new fossils – the plastic glomerates – can be already found in the environment marking the geological age of the Anthropocene.
The exhibition should be viewed and experienced as a single installation that is comprised of multiple objects and installations stretched together by sound work.
In the exhibitions are used only found plastic waste and objects. All technology used is second hand one.
Varvara & Mar is an artist duo formed by Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet in 2009. Often duo’s work is inspired by the information age. In their practice, they confront social changes and the impact of the technological era.
The artist duo has exhibited their art pieces in a number of international shows and festivals, like MAD in New York, FACT in Liverpool, Santa Monica in Barcelona, Barbican and V&A Museum in London, Ars Electronica museum in Linz, ZKM in Karlsruhe, etc. Dr Varvara Guljajeva is an Assistant Professor in Computational Media and Arts at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou). Mar Canet Sola is a PhD candidate and research fellow at Cudan research group in BFM Tallinn University.
Link: http://var-mar.info/
After everyone has left for Planet B
Varvara & Mar
30/07/2022 – 10/09/2022
Kanal galerii
Photography: Varvara & Mar
