“First we had Nature.
And then came the Environment.
Environment is the smoke humanity has put on Nature…
The term Environment has been hijacked by the forces
that are manipulating the world…for the basest of
motives: to maintain profits and power.”
(Gustav Metzger)

The environment is the circumstances, objects, or conditions by which one is surrounded. Is this ‘one’ also connected to these circumstances, objects, or conditions? Or rather - separated? If so, can we fix this severe conceptual and discursive error of the great divide and come together in a common organism, the liveliness of which can only be experienced through the interaction of its participants?

Our ideas of nature are culturally determined by rationalism and technical control remains the primary driver with regard to the construction of nature. And yet, what if a linear cognizance of culture is a purple screen for nature on which anything blue and green would be subject to removal? Perhaps, we should rethink reality, including our surroundings, beyond its objective characteristics, by perceiving it as a non-linear process of undefined laws and physics. And perchance by the elimination of the instrumental-rational approach, the tremendous harm to both human and non-human communities can be undone.

When perceiving the heterogeneous time in our contemporary view of nature, we might leave behind the utopian time and space and the conservative viewpoint. The change of perspective may not only deconstruct the dualism of human/non-human but furthermore explore a fresh look at the coexistence in the rather darker socially constructed co-habitat.

Artists
Kata Bitowt, Michael Dietrich, Oke Fijal, Jonas Hammerer, Kenneth Constance Loe, Martina Jole Moro, Julija Pociūtė, Jennifer Posny, Alfredo Ledesma Quintana, Paulius Šliaupa, Martyna Šulskutė

Curated by
LT.art Vienna

Jury
Margit Busch, Gedvilė Tamošiūnaitė