The objective of „The Xenogeneses of SF” exhibition is to explore novel non-linear temporalities by proposing an imagination exercise in time about time. It is an open invitation to traverse various timelines of newly imagined histories, brimming with speculative worlds. We can imagine and explore together the modalities and material conditions that allowed such worlds to thrive, multiply, support each other, become permanent and eventually fall into ruin. We will partially try and follow such aspirations, consequences, deviations, specific to the Sci-Fi phenomenon, while highlighting accumulated side-effects that tend to spill over well beyond such speculative world building sites. We will invite you to have a deeper look at the role of Sci-Fi, outside of its solely anticipatory or predictive function, as a method of un-predicting, of dis-anticipating and non-actualizing. At the limit, SF takes as a given the fact that exteriority permeates the now and the here.
This exhibition probes something else as well, acknowledging that the known is never fully known, ordinary or matter-of-fact, if we start question the very inevitability of our current world via a specific pop inflected situational SF. It argues that the most banal reality is already an extraterrestrial one, arrived from elsewhere, distorted and ready to be revisited by a SF intensely animated by varieties of never-ever, of nowhere and not yet. We intend to open up a portal or several portals that mediate these two aspects of SF. The improbability of these worlds may be only improbable and unimaginable under the current circumstance or from the perspective of current scientific consensus, or it can take this state of things as a starting point and push it towards its outermost consequences. We want to gather such speculative worlds that are made impossible under current economic, technological and social conditions. A techno-scientific worldview that is largely dissociated from the common good and severely hampered by economic and political imperatives as well as having to face unprecedented planetary, climacteric and ecological challenges. A worldview that has been always been co-dependent and constrained in its scope and vision.
The exhibition presents various dynamics and trajectories that have started from the initial SF core communities, from a primary SF fandom, but never remained there, becoming a common concern to us all. The SF fandom is most probably the oldest organized fandom in Romania and other East European countries, and should be understood as a polymorphic encounter of common interests and transformative passions, clusters of fans, amateurs, artists, engineers, cenaclu club members, game designers, VFX artists, all spread out in time, all speculatively engaged in a imaginative effort and multifarious group-play. Involved in exchanging collective worlds that have well since crossed over beyond their initial place of origin and elaboration.
We start from the idea that wherever you are, even in the most isolated imaginable place, the very extremity of today’s contemporary world will carry you straight into SF, with third kind encounters at every step. We consider that our current reality is closely innervated by these vectors of SF, especially if we just consider those very ways in which SF might help us think and solve unsolvable contradictions, while living and inhabiting in the churn of irreversible mutations that were never tailor-made for us.
Stefan Tiron
Curators: Ștefan Tiron, V. Leac, Alexandru Ciubotariu
Participants: Cristian Drăgan, Ion Dumitrescu, Valentin Tănase, Ing. Nicolae Stăncioiu, Alin Răuțoiu, Carolina Vozian, Walter Riess, Centrul Dialectic (Mihai Lukȧcs & Bogdan Popa), Andrei Ujică, Jean Lorin Sterian, Robert Ioniță, Marius Lefterache, Dmitri Miticov, Cătălin Ghercioiu, Koter Vilmos, Irina Gheorghe, Laika, Timotei Drob, Kaps Crew, Mimi Ciora, Linda Barkasz, Silvestru Muntean, Mitoș Micleușanu, Declan Clarke, Plevna, Cocalar Cosmos, Suce Fraga.
TIMPURI NOI exhibition it is produced by Asociația Ephemair in partnership with Fundația9 and co-financed by AFCN - Administrația Fondului Cultural Național
Partners Muzeul Național de Istorie al Transilvaniei (Cluj), Goethe Institut, RBB (Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg)
With the support of: AnimEst / Animation Worksheep, Institutul Polonez București, Trepanatsii, Muzeul Jucăriilor, O7aKu Gallery, Avanpost studio
