Page 25 - "he 2020 Guggenheim issue of World of Art Contemporary Art Magazine

compensate for the adventure of modernity. Currently, fixed objects into a backdrop for surprising juxtapositions.
scientists are developing models in, broadly, two versions. Among the case studies are a look at high-tech indoor
The first, ’Half Earth,’ is based on E. 0. Wilson’s 2016 farming in the Netherlands; large-scale precision farming
manifesto. It implies a drastic separation between an almost in the US; a machine designed to measure photosynthesis;
pristine nature on the one hand and human habitation and fish farming on land. As Koolhaas notes in the
and cultivation on the other. The second, ’Shared Planet,’ exhibition text: ’’Can we prove that Rene Descartes could
proposes a more intensive mixing of all our territories. only have invented his mathematical methodology because
Both approaches imply radical changes in food production, he was living in the hyper-orthogonal landscapes of the
ideology, and agricultural techniques. They will also require Netherlands-dedicated to produce vegetal and artistic
the intense collaboration of all spheres, and all political abundance in increasingly artificial ways? Can we treat the
factions that are barely on speaking terms today-and the ocean like a new countryside?
collective mobilization of tools and technologies that have Can we prove that Japan is the site where demographics of
been spoilt by their unquestioned dominance.” aging will mobilize robots to sustain ’life’ in the countryside;
that certain corporations now operate revolutionary
Level 6: Cartesianism structures that accidentally invent a ’new architecture,’
The street grid, an imposition of mathematical abstraction focused on machines not on humans; that plants no longer
on varied terrains and unruly human affairs, has been seen need daylight or earth (and a lot less water) to grow, that
as the hallmark of urban rationalism. In this section, at the they can influence and take care of each other better than
top of the museum’s spiral, the exhibition explores such our current monocultures allow them to, showered with
Cartesian rationalism in the countryside. Large hanging pesticides; that nuclear energy is not a finished chapter, but
panels featuring images and projections are paired with that fusion is around the corner; that all these phenomena
contemporary agricultural equipment from the field and lab. create new dreamlike images, promises, and conditions...”
Throughout, robotic sculptures roam the ramp, turning the
Caption: NEW NATURE - Highly artificial and sterile environments are employed
to create the ideal organic specimen. Today’s glass houses contain all the
Installation View: Countryside, The Future, Photo: David Heald © Solomon R. essential ingredients of life but none of the redundancies: sun, soil, and water
Guggenheim Foundation; Image: Laurian Ghinitoiu courtesy AMO are emulated, optimized, and finally automated. Photo: Luca Locatelli

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