NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS
by LISE AUTOGENA & JOSHUA PORTWAY

09.10.21 - 18.12.21

The exhibition Nothing Beside Remains by Lise Autogena & Joshua Portway is a reflection on the passage of time, the perishability of power and the anatomy of ruins in a world where the uncontested rule of man over nature is facing decline.

The exhibited works investigate our perspectives as humans on the collapse of complex systems: from romantic poems telling the story of imperious rulers and their fallen empires, via self-organising ant colonies to the risk of total ecological collapse.

Taking a cross-disciplinary approach, the artists present the audience with visualisations of complex data sets, a recreation of the suicidal, but strangely ritualistic phenomenon of an ant mill and the slow flooding of Regelbau 411’s bunker calibrated according to the rate at which the global sea levels are rising. 

Thus, the works essentially address the issue of the altered timescales introduced by the concept of the Anthropocene. How to relate to questions of power and finality, when viewing human history in relation to planetary processes and an unfathomable future? How does it affect our self-perception, when hours, days, weeks and years no longer suffice as measurements of time?

Regelbau 411’s bunkers constitute a leitmotif for the exhibition, the ruin standing as a symbol of the slow negation of everything permanent: the desert of time blows in from the vast beaches at Oddesund, where everything meets us as scattered fragments on their way towards final dissolution.

UNTITLED (SUPERORGANISM) (2021)

The work Untitled (Superorganism) depicts the aftermath of an “ant mill”, a natural phenomenon affecting some species of army ant. Suggesting a ritualistic suicide, a hieroglyph from an alien conciousness, or a fragile monument at risk of disappearing at the slightest breath, the work evokes associative connections to the ruins of past ages and bygone civilisations.

During an ant mill entire colonies of ants spontaneously walk in an endless circle until overcome by exhaustion and, eventually, death. As a natural phenomenon, the ant mill is a side-effect of the self-organising structure of ant colonies, resulting from a flaw in the ingenious system of pheromones that govern the complex social behaviours and hierarchy of the colony.

Seen in relation to popular ideas from ecology and complexity theory, the work questions our concept of ”nature”, and how we perceive the relations between ourselves as individual agents and the systems we are embedded in.

26.81187215 ML/HOUR (2021)

From the ceiling of the bunker water is dripping to the floor. These are not random drops, but based on careful calculations. The work 26.81187215 ml/hour is a kind of hourglass: the frequency of the droplets is calibrated according to the speed at which the world’s oceans rise as a result of global warming. Thus, the bunker is slowly flooded at the same rate as our planet.

In art history, the hourglass is a well-known symbol of the passage of time, the transience of everything (vanitas) and of death (memento mori). But in the bunker, time does not just run out: the water gradually accumulates, thereby reminding us of man’s lasting impact on Earth.

26.81187215 ml/hour can be seen as a reflection of human perishability in an Anthropocene context. Once human time runs out, the remnants of our life on Earth will continue to circulate for millions of years as plastics embedded in rock fossils, radioactive materials in the Earth’s crust, even as preserved sewers under fallen metropolises. Nothing beside will remain.

Lise Autogena (DK) and Joshua Portway (UK) are based in London and have worked together since the early 1990s, developing site-specific works and large-scale installations. Working in a cross-disciplinary field, Autogena & Portway investigate the impact of complex systems on human beings and our
surroundings through art, technology and science.

Photo credit: Mikkel Kaldal.

Opening: 9 October 2021, 2-4 pm
Exhibition period: 9 October– 18 December 2021
Opening hours: Every day from 10.00 to 17.00. Admission to Regelbau 411 is free.

The exhibition is curated by Matilde Best and Simon Thykjær.

The exhibition Nothing Beside Remains is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, the Augustinus Foundation, the foundation Færchfonden, the Obel Family Foundation, the Lemvigh-Müller Foundation and the Nordic Culture Fund.