Graft ( Tabebuia heterophylla), 2022
“ALLORA & CALZADILLA: KLIMA”
EXHIBITION
DATE
From June 20th 2024, to January 6th 2025
TIME
From Tuesday to Sunday: 11:00 am - 8:00 pm. Open on Monday 30th of December
SPACE
Exhibition Hall
TICKET
Dohainik
DOCUMENT
Exhibition brochure
AUDIO-GUIDE
Allora & Calzadilla: KLIMA
Azkuna Zentroa – Alhóndiga Bilbao, Bilbao Society and Contemporary Culture Centre, presents the exhibition "Allora & Calzadilla: KLIMA" featuring recent work by the collaborative duo of visual artists Jennifer Allora (1974, USA) and Guillermo Calzadilla (1971, Cuba), leading figures in the international contemporary art scene.
Curated by Fernando Pérez, Director of Azkuna Zentroa – Alhóndiga Bilbao, the exhibition brings together, for the first time in Bilbao, some of Allora & Calzadilla’s most important works from the last decade. It follows the programming theme addressed by the Centre, which highlights climate and environmental emergency through art and prompts society to critically reflect on its actions and adopt a more sustainable approach.
Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla have developed an experimental body of work that addresses the entanglements between history, ecology, and geopolitics using a multiplicity of artistic media that includes performance, sculpture, sound, video, photography, and painting.
The concept of "KLIMA", which dates back to ancient Greece, signifies an inclination towards the sun. The works in this ambitious, open-ended chronology engage with the solar orientation taken by all life forms. Each artwork in the exhibition can be thought of as a unique climate that, when brought together as a whole, creates a cosmic entanglement – travelling as far back as 4 billion years ago, all the way to the present day. This presentation highlights the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of Allora & Calzadilla’s practice, as well as themes that run throughout their oeuvre: geological time and the evolutionary history of life on Earth; the postcolonial condition, environmental justice, climate debt, geopolitics, and energy resources.
“KLIMA” highlights the importance of Allora & Calzadilla’s sculptural-performance based works to their career trajectory, a number of which will be regularly staged throughout the course of the exhibition, in collaboration with local musicians.
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“Lifespan” (2014)
The earliest work on display is “Lifespan” (2014). A rock sample, estimated to be 4 billion years old, from the Acasta River Gneiss Complex, hangs from the ceiling in the gallery space. Three vocalists, following a pre-linguistic score by the award-winning composer and long-time collaborator, David Lang subtly use their breath to move it like a pendulum—evoking, in a manner, the dynamics of wind erosion and the forces driving Earth’s transformation. The performance connects the present moment with the planet’s origins within our solar system.
“Lifespan”, 2014; Hadean period rock sample, 3 vocalists; Musical Score by David Lang; Courtesy of and Kurimanzutto Gallery
“Entelechy” (2020)
In the main gallery, is “Entelechy” (2020), a lightning-struck tree cast in coal, a material which the artists interpret as a form of buried sunlight. They sourced the scots pine tree from a forest in Montignac, France, the same location where a group of teenagers had discovered, in 1940, the Lascaux Cave by following a path famously indicated by a similar tree’s upturned roots. The only image of a human figure ever found in the cave—representing a hybrid of human and bird—serves as the basis for a vocal performance developed by the artists in collaboration with David Lang. Following a proto-linguistic score, composed of rhythmical, energetic utterances, the singers poetically attempt to ignite, through the power of their voices, the carbonized tree upon which they sing.
“Entelechy”, 2020; Coal, 5 vocalists ; Musical Score by David Lang; 4,3 x 9,5 × 14,8 m; Courtesy of and Lisson Gallery
“Penumbra” (2020)
Throughout the exhibition space is the digital shadow animation work “Penumbra” (2020). It was inspired by the legendary hikes that anticolonial poets Aimé and Suzanne Cesaire took in the Absalon Valley of Martinique with a group of artists and intellectuals fleeing Nazi-Occupied France in 1941. The work recreates the effects of sunlight passing through foliage in this verdant forest, as though the visual trace was somehow echoed thousands of kilometers away. Projected at an angle that is based on a continuous real-time simulation of the sun’s location over Bilbao, the work is complemented by a musical composition inspired by “shadow tones”: a psycho-acoustic phenomenon perceived when two real tones overlap to create the semblance of a third.
“Penumbra”, 2020; Computer generated shadow animation, synch with sun-path in real time, sound; Courtesy of and Fundação Serralves
“Graft” (2021)
Also dispersed throughout the exhibition space is “Graft” (2021), an installation in which thousands of blossoms, cast in recycled polyvinyl chloride, reproduce the flowers of a tabebuia tree as though an alien wind had swept them across the floor. The hand-painted petals from this native Caribbean tree are presented in various degrees of decomposition, from the freshly fallen to the wilted and brown. Graft alludes to environmental changes that have been set in motion through the interlocking effects of colonial exploitation and climate change. The uncanny presence of tropical tree blossoms cast in a material of petrochemical origins, stands as a potent harbinger for the immeasurable losses that continue unabated after centuries of colonial plunder.
“Graft”, 2021; Recycled polyvinyl chloride and paint, dimensions variable; Courtesy of , Galerie Chantal Crousel and Colección Isabel y Agustín Coppel
“Cadastre” (2020)
“Cadastre” (2020) is an itinerant pictorial landscape at once abstract and referential. The work, measuring 1.8 meters in height by 21.3 in length, spans the entirety of one of the gallery walls. It takes electromagnetism—one of the four fundamental forces of nature as its subject and medium. To make this work iron filings are sifted onto a canvas that is positioned above an array of electrified copper cables. When the breaker is turned on, the electrical current forces the particles into an arrangement of shapes and patterns governed by the electromagnetic field. To set them in motion, the taut canvas is continuously tapped which sends the heavy bits airborne and towards the positive and negative poles. Attraction and repulsion, strength and weakness, accumulation and dispersal are some of the tools employed to find formal resolution in the canvases. However, the rhythmic balance achieved does not mute the pulsing forces that condition the very appearance of the artwork—from stock market cycles to fossil fuel combustions. These artistic experiments with electromagnetism are in equal part an exploration of formal principles and a way of confronting the complex nexus that is the energy grid.
“Cadastre”, 2020 (Meter Number 18257262; Consumption Charge 36.9kWh x $0.02564; Rider FCA-Fuel Charge Adjusted 36.9 kWh x $0.053323; Rider PPCA-Purchase Power Charge Adjusted 36.9kWh x $0.016752; Rider CILTA-Municipalities Adjusted 36.9kWh x $0.002376; Rider SUBA subsidies $1.084) Iron filings on linen; 1,8 x 21,3 m; Courtesy of and Lisson Gallery
“The Great Silence” (2014)
View at the Auditorium is ” The Great Silence” (2014), a video work centered on the Arecibo Radio Telescope and the surrounding Rio Abajo Forest in Puerto Rico, home to the last remaining population of a critically endangered species of parrots, Amazona vittata. Allora & Calzadilla collaborated with science fiction author Ted Chiang on a subtitled script in the spirit of a fable that ponders the irreducible gaps between living, nonliving, human, animal, technological, and cosmic actors. In The Great Silence, the sun is but one of an infinite multitude of stars where, as the protagonist in the film observes, “ought to be a cacophony of voices, but instead is disconcertingly quiet. Hundreds of years ago, my kind was so plentiful that the forest resounded with our voices. Now we’re almost gone. Soon this rainforest may be as silent as the rest of the universe.” After its exhibition at Azkuna Zentroa – Alhóndiga Bilbao, “The Great Silence” (2014) will be shown at La Casa Encendida (Madrid).
“The Great Silence”, 2014; Single Channel video, sound; 16:32; Courtesy of
Azkuna Zentroa – Alhóndiga Bilbao, in collaboration with Asociación Lectura Fácil Euskadi, publishes an Easy Reading Guide for each exhibition.
Content editing through Easy Reading makes the information accessible to the diverse written and reading comprehension levels of the Centre's communities of audiences.
ACTIVITIES PROGRAMME
PERFORMANCE
Times
“Entelechy” : 18:00 pm - 18:20 pm
“Lifespan” : 19:00 pm - 19:15 pm
Dates
October, November & December: Every Thursday
January: Friday 3rd, Saturday 4th, Sunday 5th* and Monday 6th
*On Sunday 5th, January, the performances will take place: 12:00 p.m. - “Entelechy” and 1:00 p.m. - “Lifespan”
“Lifespan” (2014)
The sound performance titled “Lifespan” is a collaboration between Allora&Calzadilla and the American composer David Lang. The performers whistle and blow on a four-billion-year-old Hadean period rock hanging from the ceiling. Their breath sets the stone in motion, causing it to swing gently like a pendulum, in what is akin to a mechanical movement in poetic form. This sound activation ties the present moment to the origin of the Earth, a time when no living being gave any thought to the ecological transformation of the planet.
“Entelechy” (2020)
Together with Allora&Calzadilla, David Lang composes a sound piece for “Entelechy”, the sculpture of the tree uprooted by a storm that led to the discovery of the Lascaux cave and its prehistoric representations. For Allora&Calzadilla, “Entelech”y is a tree of pure potentiality, of sunlight converted into a reserve of energy, in which the intermingling of human voices emulates the sounds of birds.
In the sound activation of this piece, the performers interpret David Lang's original score, composed of overlapping melodies of different birds, to achieve a saturated musical score: part machine, part animal and part human. Through their energetic expressions, the vocalists seem to be trying to ignite the tree on which they sing.
"THE GREAT SILENCE" (2014) SCREENING
Within the framework of this exhibition, a monthly screening of “The Great Silence” (2014) is held in the Auditorium. A video work centered on the Arecibo Radio Telescope and the surrounding Rio Abajo Forest in Puerto Rico, home to the last remaining population of a critically endangered species of parrots, Amazona vittata.
- Space: Auditorium
- Language: Original Version (English)
- Duration: 16′ 32″
- Tickets: Free admission
- Dates:
Thursday, 19th December from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Monday, 6th January / Closing from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. & from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Allora & Calzadilla - "The Great Silence", 2014
INTRODUCTORY TOURS
Introductory tours of forty-five minutes to contextualize the exhibition.
Date: Until December 26th
Time: Thursdays at 6:30 p.m.
Duration: 45 minutes
Language: Spanish and Basque on request. On the first Thursday of every month, visit will be in Basque
Capacity: 20 people max. per visit, plus the guide
Minimum capacity: 4 people
Ticket: Free admission prior registration
FAMILY VISIT PROGRAMME
Open tour through a paper guide with activities and games around each piece in the exhibition to generate a family dialogue and encourage curious viewing and reflection on it.
Request the material at the counter in the lobby of the Exhibition Hall.
Allora & Calzadilla - "Seeing Otherwise", 1995
PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK "SEEING OTHERWISE" (1995)
Linked to the exhibition, a limited series of Allora & Calzadilla’s photographic work “Seeing Otherwise” (1995).
The image is part of a photographic series of sea landscapes, mainly shot along the coast of Puerto Rico. With an almost imperceptible digital alteration of the photograph, the sun reflection on the sea captured by the camera´s eye is redirected towards the person watching the sunset. This modification highlights what would otherwise be impossible to notice, i.e. what somebody else sees when enjoying the sunset.
The 100 numbered photographs signed by Allora & Calzadilla is on sale at dendAZ, Azkuna Zentroa´s store. Buy your “Seeing Otherwise” (1995) photograph here.
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