Lava-Being

The exhibition Lava-Being. Stories from the Center of the Earth featured various works by U5, including drawings on paper, an excerpt from the film The Human Crater, a model of a self-created drink called Dengue Sling, and a model of the volcanoes on the island of Java, which was created according to the plans of Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn.

 

Volcanoes are uniquely powerful. They make the land fertile yet they can just as easily destroy it. The closest we can get to them is by climbing them and maybe even seeing the Earth at work. If we regard architecture as a continuation of the Earth’s crust, then volcanoes could be said to hold up a mirror to our built structures. For the last decade Philip Ursprung (professor of the history of art and architecture at ETH Zurich) and his team have trekked to various volcanoes to investigate their impact on the surrounding area, the local economy and the culture of that region.

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The exhibition at the Graphische Sammlung takes inspiration from these trips and explores the volcano as a phenomenon. The curators – Berit Seidel, Linda Schädler and Philip Ursprung – have been on a fact-finding mission in the collection.

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How were volcanoes depicted in the past? How are they depicted today? Does the mythological figure of Vulcan still live on, is he still forging artefacts and weapons for the gods? If so, where and how? And how, if at all, do the disciplines of vulcanology, geology and art history interact?

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