Incertae sedis II (Turn Male to Mate), 2025
Resin, clear resin and iron
162 x 135 x 242 cm

Incertea sedis III (Female Adulthood), 2025
Resin, clear resin and iron
215 x 158 x 76 cm

Multivisceral abdominal resection with BiClamp®️ knife 220, 2025
Silicone
245 x 440 cm

Partial liver resection using BiClamp®️ knife 220, 2025
Silicone
410 x 225 cm

Heart Transplant Surgery: ‘No Room for Anything Less Than Perfection’, 2025
Silicone
205 x 377 cm

is like living in two different planets, 2025
Wax
180 x 230 cm

i have an empty sit next to me, 2025
Wax
170 x 180 cm

my heart is pounding the idea of u coming, 2025
Wax
155 x 185 cm

Produced by Frankfurter Kunstverein

Kindly supported by the Zabludowicz Collection

Courtesy Agnes Questionmark

Agnes Questionmark lives and works in Rome and New York. Her reflections revolve around the questions of how bodies are read when they differ from social norms, and what it means for the individual when their body becomes the object of medical interventions and of biopolitical or legal regulation. Agnes Questionmark points to the power of a purely medical gaze, which fixes subjects, assigns genders and pathologises difference. By appropriating and transforming clinical imagery, her art becomes an act of self-empowerment—beyond binary categories of male and female, healthy and ill, human and non-human, fragile and resilient.

Agnes Questionmark’s art takes shape in performances, sculptures, installations and video works, and the starting point of her practice is her own body. Early experiences led the artist to question social expectations and notions/judgements of body and identity. As a child she was under constant medical observation and pharmaceutical treatment. Her body, as Questionmark states, did not fit into any category or into a societal norm of what a body should be. It did not function as it was expected to. And so the artist, at first within a male-assigned identity, began to explore other forms and categories through which to think and represent her own body. The question of the labelling of health and pathology, between self-perception and external perception, became the vanishing point of her reflections and inquiry.

She asked what reality is, searching for concepts with which it might be represented and described. Theories on photography by Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin provided an essential foundation. Over the years, the artist developed her alter ego. In her performance TRANSGENESIS, in which she embodied an oversized octopus for 8 hours a day over 23 days, she celebrated her own transformation and rebirth as Agnes Questionmark.

Octopuses are a guiding figure in Questionmark’s work. They stand for motherhood, as these intelligent sea creatures die in order to nourish their offspring with their own bodies. And they possess not just a single brain, but neural centres in each of their tentacles, enabling them to experience the world around them simultaneously.

For Questionmark, it is about transformation—about bodies that are not dualistic and socially constructed, but embody an in-between state, thereby empowered to assume a new identity and to transcend the old self. The question mark in her name symbolises this very conviction: that the self is not a fixed state, but a continuous flow of shifting perceptions, thoughts and emotions in dialogue with the world.

For the exhibition Anatomy of Fragility, the artist has created a large-scale installation: three life-sized sculptures and six wall objects. The starting material is imagery of open-heart, liver, and stomach surgery, with the surgeons’ hands reaching deep into the inner body. Questionmark distorts these images both digitally and manually, overlaying them with silicone or pouring wax across them like a thick skin. Pigments fuse with the material to form organic landscapes that evoke the appearance of sliced body tissue, and the tactile presence of silicone and wax recalls flesh and inner bodily spaces. In this way, visceral images emerge that grant an intimate view of the body’s vulnerability. In addition, the room is immersed in a soundscape: muffled heartbeats, the rush of blood, the sound of flowing and pumping, beating against the body’s surface from deep within.

At the centre of the space stand three life-sized sculptures: hybrid beings, somewhere between aliens, mythological water figures and fish. Their blue exterior appears cool, their surface wet, as if they had just emerged from the water or had only just been born. For Agnes Questionmark, water is the primal site of transformation, the place of becoming and passing away—the oceans as the origin of all life, or the amniotic fluid of the womb. Her sculptures and installations embody hybrid figures that resist clear categorisation, oscillating between human and animal. Or like a seahorse, this extraordinary delicate water creature where it is the males who carry their young. What is strange, what is other, what society often regards as monstrous, becomes in Questionmark’s work an image of openness and possibility.

The hybrid creatures of Agnes Questionmark cannot be assigned to any species or territory. Underwater or on land, organic or artificial, born or unborn, they embody states of in-betweenness. In this suspension, they point towards a posthuman idea of existence: a world in which bodies are no longer defined by hierarchy, identity or fixedness, but through entanglement, multiplicity and mutual dependency.

Questionmark’s experiences and sensibilities resonate with Donna Haraway’s philosophical notion of ‘tentacular thinking’, with Rosi Braidotti’s idea of the “nomadic subject” and with posthumanist thought. Posthumanism rejects a fixed concept of the human and broadens the focus beyond the human species, considering animals, technologies and the environment as significant agents that shape the world. At its core lies the question of relationships between humans and the many non-human beings, in ever-new constellations, free from hierarchy.

Questionmark makes use of the aesthetics of surgical interventions and biotechnological procedures. In her works the body is opened, made permeable and transformed. Yet while medicine and technology often serve, for the artist, as instruments of standardisation and control, she employs the very same aesthetic means to render these power structures visible. The gaze upon the body itself becomes a political act: who is permitted to shape it, who is being shaped?

For Questionmark, fragility and pain are the preconditions for transformation. Her hybrid beings unite pain with hope, monstrosity with care, disgust with beauty. She and her figures create images of a future in which humanity does not appear as a rigid norm, but as an open process—shaped by individual desires and longings. Agnes Questionmark invites us to rethink the body—as process, as possibility, as fragility that becomes strength.

Agnes Questionmark (*1995 Rome, IT) is an artist working across performance, sculpture, video and installation. Recent long-durational performances include CHM13hTERT (2023), presented in a public train station at SpazioSERRA, Milan (IT) and TRANSGENESIS (2021), presented by The Orange Garden and Harlesden High Street in London (UK). Her work has been shown at the 60th Venice Biennale (IT); Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva (CH); MAXXI Museum in Rome (IT); 14th Gwangju Biennale (KOR); Malta Biennale, Valletta (MLT); König Galerie in Berlin (DE); Fondazione Mario Merz in Turin (IT). Her first Italian solo show was presented at SPE – Spazio Performatico ed Espositivo Dello Scompiglio in Lucca (IT) 2025. Additionally, her writing has been published with NERO Magazine and presented at the ICA Foundation in Milan (IT). 2025 she participates in the 18th Quadriennale di Roma (IT).

Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) are a collective of artists from London who work at the intersection of science, technology and art. With their installation Distortions in Spacetime, they take visitors on a journey into the darker corners of the universe and on a sensory encounter with the formation of a so-called stellar black hole. The immersive, audiovisual artwork creates images that translate astrophysical research and findings into a visual allegory.

Marshmallow Laser Feast are internationally recognised for their close collaboration with scientists, resulting in artworks that expand the perception of nature through immersive technologies. In 2021, they were invited by the Frankfurter Kunstverein to participate in the exhibition The Intelligence of Plants with their work Treehugger: Wawona.

Today, astrophysics have ever better ways of allowing our gaze to penetrate into the depths of the cosmos. However, the data and researchers’ mathematical calculations often remain inaccessible to laypeople. MLF use their art to attempt to translate the level of abstraction of mathematical theories into images for the general public. Distortions in Spacetime is dedicated to the formation of gravity, dying stars and black holes and relates these to our physical presence.

A stellar black hole is created when a huge mass of matter such as the core of a large dying star collapses. In the final moments of this collapse, matter is compressed to such an extent that its density goes to infinity. This extremely high density creates a point within the black hole at which the curvature of space-time is infinite and the laws of physics as we know them no longer apply: time stands still and gravity becomes so strong that not even light can escape its gravitational pull. The energy that forms this black hole unleashes a supernova explosion that fires the elements of life—carbon, oxygen, silicon, sulphur, calcium and iron—into space. Cosmic explosions give rise to the very elements from which new planets, our Earth, all living beings, plants, animals and ultimately us humans have emerged.

Visitors enter into a completely mirrored cube. A frenzy of images of flowing and swirling coloured atoms and sounds unfolds around them like in a cosmic opera. The installation’s technology captures people’s bodies in real time and models them into galactic explosions and compressions. The outlines of people’s bodies are imprinted on the particle clouds and cast the shadow of their presence into space.

What the animation Distortions in Spacetime can convey is a sense of wonder in the face of the bigger picture and the overarching structure of which we are a part. A sense of larger connections arises, as astronauts experience when they look at the Earth from space. They report a feeling of wholeness when they see the planet in all its beauty from afar, without political boundaries, and are captured by a deep understanding of the vulnerability of life on Earth.

Humans have always developed religious interpretations, myths and scientific theories to explain the origin of everything—including the universe itself before the Big Bang. The theoretical model of our time goes back to Einstein’s theory of relativity: in the beginning there was pure energy, there was no time, no space, everything was at the same time, at one point. Until the Big Bang created everything, the universe, the fundamental forces, the stars and ultimately the Earth and mankind. How can we understand this immensity? How can we comprehend what our sensory organs are not focussed on?

Our concept of reality depends on how our body is structured in order to perceive the world. Scientific research that explores the essence of nature reveals a wide range of realities that are often beyond our perception. Art does this too, but it brings it all back to us by enquiring into the meaning of knowledge and making it relatable in images.

The essence of what makes us human lies in the depths of space-time. The artists’ collective takes up the challenge of sensorially combining an examination of the nature of the universe with our own existence.

Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) is an artist collective based in London (UK) that creates immersive experiences by combining art, film, and Extended Reality, expanding human perception and exploring our connection to the natural world. MLF collaborates with interdisciplinary experts from art, programming, engineering, poetry, and chemistry to develop custom software and hardware systems. MLF has exhibited internationally at institutions such as the Barbican Centre, London (UK), ACMI, Melbourne (AU), Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media – YCAM (JP), Phi Centre, Montreal (CA), and the Istanbul Design Biennial (TR). The collective is known for award-winning works such as We Live in an Ocean of Air (2018) and In the Eyes of the Animal (2016), with the latter receiving the Wired Audi Innovation Award for Innovation in Experience Design. TreeHugger: Wawona was shown at the Frankfurter Kunstverein in 2021 and won the Tribeca Storyscapes Award for Innovation in Storytelling and the Best VR Film Prize at the VR Arles Festival (FR). MLF’s work has also been featured in leading publications such as The Guardian, New Scientist, Wired, The Times, and Creative Review.

Since the beginning of mankind, Homo sapiens have endeavoured to understand their relationship to the world as a structure of meanings. Where do we come from? How do we relate to the other living beings that inhabit the planet with us? How are we part of an infinite universe? Spiritual beliefs and myths, but also scientific observations and the resulting world views change over time and are an expression of how we humans interpret our relationship to the world.

We are increasingly exploring and penetrating the world. We decipher connections, we organise, quantify and name. We have created ever more complex instruments to do this. We find methods, formulate verifiable theorems and establish causalities between cause and effect. Researchers describe the world as it is, both physically and biologically. They use science to formulate terms and concepts and constantly achieve verifiable results. They decode the world and follow methodical procedures that open up immense possibilities for action. In this way, we make the world available to us. But science does not set itself the task of asking about the meaningfulness of life.

And what does art do? Art leads everything back to us. It asks about the meaning of knowledge for us. Artists are concerned with perception, or rather, with the nature of experience itself. How we perceive, visually, linguistically and aesthetically, but also how the experience of life takes place as an existential experience of “being in the world”. And art can transform our relationship with the world through narratives, through images and sounds, through poetry, into an experience of resonance.

Both science and art have their origins in intuition, imagination and conjecture. While scientists have to create evidence, artists can proceed more freely and make associations and imagination the material of their narratives. The meaning of existence and the experience of transcendence can hardly be found in science. We humans have to find them within ourselves. And we often create symbols to do so.

The Presence of Absence highlights matter as a presence into which life imprints itself. Energy and life are potent yet transient. The interplay between life, energy and matter is a central theme of the exhibition.

The exhibition will spatially juxtapose exhibits that translate the abstract concept of the “presence of absence” into an expanded realm of thought from both artistic and scientific perspectives. Works by significant contemporary artists will engage in dialogue with scientific exhibits from geology and astrophysics, including casts from Pompeii, footprints of prehistoric humans from the Laetoli site in present-day Tanzania and replicas of prehistoric cave paintings.

The curatorial narrative explores the astrophysical phenomenon of black holes. Concepts of expansion, time and the infinite cosmos challenge our understanding. Simultaneously, they provoke questions about our identity and origins. Our planet hovers somewhere between the boundless and the eternal. For a fleeting moment, the window of our lives opens, revealing the unique experience of our existence through our bodies, senses and minds. Each exhibit, in its own distinct way, engages with this existential exploration of being and humanity across the dimensions of space and time.

With this exhibition, we also trace the origins of art as a fundamental human desire to express abstract ideas. Why did Homo sapiens, tens of thousands of years ago, carve animal figures and abstract geometric shapes into the walls of deep caves? Why did they create images of things that were understood by others as symbols, serving as a connection to higher, non-manifest, spiritual realms? Why did Homo sapiens, unlike other species, develop a need for transcendence?

One of the countless stories and myths that moved us is recorded by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, written around 77 years AD, shortly before he met his death in the fiery ash rain of Pompeii: the myth of Butades of Sicyon, the Corinthian potter, and his daughter. The story goes like this: the young girl loved a young man who had to leave for a long journey. As the separation approached, the girl drew the outline of her lover’s head against the wall where the light of the fire fell. The father, moved by her plight, filled in this shadow image with colour and made a clay imprint of the outline, which he then fired. According to Pliny’s myth, art arises from the desire to capture the transient and fleeting; to preserve it out of wistfulness and longing, absence and memory, but also out of love and through beauty. This parable is touching because it embodies such fundamental feelings.

The outline, the stone wall and the fire—doesn’t this remind you of the earliest cave paintings and engravings found by palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists on every continent? Were these the origin of art at the dawn of humanity?

The oldest evidence is attributed to the Blombos Cave in South Africa, dating back 140,000 years. With the migrations of Homo sapiens, cave art spread across every continent. Despite such incredibly extended time periods, this early art exhibits similar techniques and motifs. These seem to have been passed down from group to group, from generation to generation, long before the physiological evolution of the larynx and brain suggested the emergence of language and writing.

For tens of thousands of years, humans—early artists—created images of animals, human figures and abstract signs. Did they grapple with the same questions and ideas that modern humans do?

The cave paintings of the San people in South Africa and Botswana, or those from the Magdalenian culture of the Stone Age in Europe, served as a readable visual language for early humans. They depicted the experienced environment while also representing the spiritual cosmos of these ancient people. The stone walls, where humans created their paintings, far from the outside world and deep in the darkness of the earth, were more than just canvases. They were like a skin that separated this world from the other. Negative forms and imprints of human hands have been found in caves on every continent. These suggest the magic of contact, the touch of a hand on the surface of the rock as a gateway to another world. Leaving a handprint may have been part of a sacred act of connection with an invisible beyond—a transcendental experience. It is evidence of the primordial human need and eternal quest for a deeper relationship with a reality beyond the individual.

Awe in the face of nature. The feeling that there is more than we know. The striving to understand, to perceive through both our senses and our minds the eternal structures that reveal the order of everything in this universe and ourselves as part of it.

Since the dawn of humanity, people have gazed at the night sky. “Mathematics is the language in which the book of the universe is written”, said Galileo Galilei. It is a way of assigning meaning to symbols that can then be read and understood by others. Mathematics is a universal language of human thought, and mathematical rules reflect the order found in all natural processes, whether it’s the Fibonacci sequence or Einstein’s equations. This makes mathematics the purest form of expressing universal principles. Music follows precise mathematical structures, the growth of plants, the sequence of tides and every form of existence can be described by mathematical equations. Yet, there remains so much that humanity does not yet understand. Time and again, the power of the human mind will strive to push these boundaries.

What is the origin of all matter on earth and in the infinity of the cosmos? What effects do natural events create that reshape the earth and affect people’s lives with their power? And how do people deal with the existential need to face eternity in their finiteness? What myths and images do they create in order to connect with the spiritual? Is art a way of immortalising oneself in time? The exhibition is dedicated to these questions, which have been driving the human imagination from prehistoric times to the present day. Ever since we humans have existed on earth, we have created stories, symbols and signs to give form to our feelings, thoughts and knowledge, to leave traces in time and perhaps to connect with eternity.

We experience the miracle of reality through the senses of our body. This consists of the elements of exploding stars in space: the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood and the carbon in our cells. In fleeting moments, we connect with eternity and give traces of existence a material form. Art is one way of doing this.

I would like to thank Claudio Parmiggiani, Indigo and Mayo Bucher, the sons of Heidi Bucher, Toni R. Toivonen, Petra Noordkamp, the artists of the Marshmallow Laser Feast collective and Lawrence Malstaf, as well as the institutional lenders, Dr Gabriel Zuchtriegel and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, Prof Dr Fabio Martini and Dr Lapo Baglioni of the Florentine Museum and Institute of Prehistory “Paolo Graziosi”, the Natural History Museum Vienna, the LWL-Museum of Natural History in Münster, Nicolò Stabile, founder of the initiative Il Cretto è casa mia of the survivors of the earthquake in the town of Gibellina, as well as the photographer Giuseppe Ippolito, the VR creator Alberto Stabile and the writer Giovanna Giordano. I would like to thank the Italian Consulate General for its patronage. I would especially like to thank Prof Dr Andreas Mulch, Director of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt, and Prof Dr Luciano Rezzolla from the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the Goethe University Frankfurt for a time of joint thinking and working.

Franziska Nori
Director Frankfurter Kunstverein

WHY CO-CREATIONS?

Bending the Curve is the latest in a series of exhibitions (Trees of Life – Stories for a Damaged Planet 2019/2020, The Intelligence of Plants 2021/2022) in which the Frankfurt Kunstverein collaborates with international natural science research institutes and contemporary artists to systematically examine various aspects around the issue of socio-ecological transformation and the changing relationship between humans and nature.

This exhibition arises from the realization that global biodiversity has been declining at an alarming rate for decades. To halt or reverse this downward trend, it is essential to know what can be done, but even more crucial to engage in effective action. Katrin Böhning-Gaese offers a succinct summary of the complexity of the crises: “Climate change determines how we live, species extinction determines whether we survive in the future.” Bending the Curve is born out of hope and conviction to advocate publicly for a still possible transformation.

Katrin Böhning-Gaese and I have remained in continuous dialogue since the exhibition Trees of Life, our first collaboration with the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research. We share a deeply felt urgency to not let up, to inspire people to commit to the preservation of the beauty and diversity of life on this planet; each through their competence and their networks. Therefore, we decided to tackle this exhibition together and embark on this path with numerous artists, scientists and developers of transformative approaches.

Katrin Böhning-Gaese’s perspective is that of a profound connoisseur of biodiversity connections. In addition to her work as a scientist and as director of the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center and as the recipient of the German Environmental Award in 2021, also her involvement as an expert in political advisory bodies and international forums make her an expert in the fight for the preservation of biodiversity.

The Frankfurt Kunstverein sees itself as a cultural forum at the heart of society where artists and experts from various fields can exchange ideas with different civil society actors, leading to a public discourse and challenging political action using the means of art and visual thinking.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF ART AND SCIENCE

For years, the curatorial work of the Frankfurt Kunstverein has stood for exhibitions that recognize the visions of science and art equally. From the perspective of both, major social themes are consistently examined and questioned in depth.

Science is a system for observing and categorizing causal relationships and regularities. It is methodical and process-based and subject to rules to make these insights comprehensible. Science can analyse the past but also develop outlooks. It creates models based on existing evidence, data and information. Bending the Curve is the result of extensive information that spans future scenarios. Here, scientists introduce existing knowledge into public discourse so that social and political action can be discussed in a different way, topically, time and again, and aligned accordingly.

Art also generates knowledge. A knowledge that expands the realm of information and factuality to include the experience of feeling. In this way, art develops transformative power: for individuals, as contemplation and, therefore, as a private act; and, beyond that, for communities, as a symbol. Art can examine reality with entirely independent methods and represent reality in an unfamiliar and different way. It creates images and narratives that can subversively alter the world of human imagination.

Thinkers and scientists such as Donna Haraway, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Frédéric Lenoir, Stefano Mancuso, Andreas Weber and many others convey to us that this transformation does not happen through intellect, through knowledge of macroecological aspects or modelling alone. They tell stories of individuals, of individual beings they observe and get to know. They speak of connections between species and forms of communication. It is possible to read in them a kind of ode to love for all living things and the realization that life is so terribly fragile, so terribly ephemeral and so terribly unique. Not everyone is able to view fellow beings with empathy. I am convinced that the ability to empathize with and respect all living things is part of the transformation, and a so-called Deep Leverage Point. When we exert control over other beings and disregard their right to life, this leads to questions of ethics and responsibility. And this also leads to questions of power structures. The arts already make a significant contribution to this awareness.

A work becomes art when the artistic investigation is more than an objective statement, and at the same time, refers to more than subjective experience.

The exhibition Bending the Curve does not intend to perpetuate the swan song of the planet through dystopian narratives but instead follows the voices of art and science that show concrete ways in which each individual, as well as companies, political actors and society as a whole, can pursue the restoration of ecosystems and biodiversity.

KNOWING, ACTING, CARING FOR BIODIVERSITY

First, some thoughts on the subtitle of the Bending the Curve exhibition, which we chose over the course of two years of research as a programmatic statement: Knowing, Acting, Caring for Biodiversity. It became an essential prism for the curatorial work that determined the underlying stance and selection of exhibits. The works of the invited artists represent more than mere symbolic references. We made the selection to present exemplary projects and initiatives that have actively committed to socio-ecological transformation.

After all, people around the planet have set forth to become part of the change. Most exhibits in Bending the Curve were created with the attitude and idea of co-creation: with other people, but also with non-human beings. The invited artists seek ways to overcome the exploitation of planetary materials and beings. They cooperate with them, know their characteristics and behaviours, and engage in dialogue with them. They pursue changed, paradigmatic perspectives by attributing “agency”, or the power to act, to non-human life forms and acknowledging them. In doing so, they chart a new path to place humans as part of a whole, where fellow beings are no longer seen hierarchically (or less so). The artists and scientists are part of the rooting of this new, and at the same time old, thought substrate. Their works and methods indicate what changed action and prioritization of values can look and feel like. They bear witness to knowledge, action and a deep care for, and taking care of the departure from human anthropocentrism towards the idea of transformative naturecultures (Donna Haraway, 2008).

Short-term thinking, thinking in terms of government and electoral cycles, maximizing growth and annual financial statements and the exploitation of communities and landscapes, have come under great pressure. There is a battle of worldviews underway, where global communities are demanding thinking and action that is socially and ecologically just and intergenerational. The consequences of the climate crisis and species extinction will affect everyone equally; humans, animals, plants and entire ecosystems, regardless of political or cultural affiliation. And here we are all called upon, as civil society and as the human species, to engage in our immediate environment in transformed, more conscious and responsible action.

Will we achieve this goal together? What does it mean to break with the familiar and reinvent it? How does change work, what does it look like?

What we have experienced in the many months of research, countless conversations and encounters with artists, researchers, scientists, new material designers and social scientists is that a fundamental transformation towards changed action is indeed already underway. New knowledge is developing in countless places, giving rise to initiatives, laboratories, studios and cooperatives, as well as international research projects and startups.

BENDING THE CURVE – FURTHER POSITIVE APPROACHES TO FEASIBILITY

The title of the exhibition pays tribute to the concept of Bending the Curve of Biodiversity Loss. The conservation biologist Georgina Mace coined this phrase in her eponymous text in Nature Sustainability in 2018. Building on this work, David Leclère and an international network of roughly 60 scientists and 46 institutions have developed the first comprehensive models of different future scenarios. We were able to enlist Leclère for collaboration and thus open up another resonance space in the cultural world for this crucial endeavour. In his text contribution, he presents the work and goals of the Bending the Curve initiative.

The proposed courses of action of the Bending the Curve initiative are voices from the natural sciences calling for change directed at civil society, politics and the economy. As accompaniment to socio-ecological transformation, an international, interdisciplinary debate with countless positions, focusing on the necessity of a great mindshift is taking place in the social sciences. At issue are beliefs and orientation patterns that locate societies and individuals in the world and lead to changed practices. Publications such as Uwe Schneidewind’s Die Große Transformation: Eine Einführung in die Kunst gesellschaftlichen Wandels (2018, The Great Transformation: An Introduction to the Art of Social Change), Maja Göpel’s The Great Mindshift: How a New Economic Paradigm and Sustainability Transformations go Hand in Hand (2016), Paul Hawken’s Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation (2021) and Karen O’Brian’s You matter more than you think: Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World (2021) are just a few that show a positive habitus of feasibility already in their titles.

SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATIONS

Often overlooked in natural science and economic contexts is that socio-ecological transformations must also be accompanied by cultural transformations, not just material ones. What are always negotiated together with the demand for a more responsible use of natural resources and fellow beings are possible models of economic systems. Naomi Klein’s publication This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate from 2015 can be mentioned as one representative example here. Debates on sufficiency and post-materialism, however, exclude those who do not belong to the affluent classes and world regions and therefore cannot afford to continue to abstain. Calls for renouncing growth must be made with a view to solidarity and include different perspectives.

Under pressure is the hierarchical imbalance, the exercise of power, and thus the use, the objectification of disenfranchised beings. At issue is a new relationship, more of a collaboration and coexistence of humans with other humans and also non-human beings and between different systems. Power relations, class structures and shifts in outdated hegemonies between the global North and South demand new interpretations of history. There is a struggle for narratives that reflect the respective location of a society and its historical experience. A change in relationships is required. “Care”, “ “healing”, reciprocity” and “repair” are but a few terms for a changed attitude.

Change arises from historical examination and manifests itself as a collective demand for care, healing processes, equality and solidarity. It affects cultures and communities that in the past have suffered from colonial injustice, violent conflicts, cultural theft, displacement and oppression. And it affects the exploitation of landscapes that were once places of significance and cultural identity for the people living there.

CHANGED PERSPECTIVES AND FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE

How do we break with the duality of “culture vs. nature”, with enlightenment, and attempt new ways of being in the world? Can old and sometimes lost knowledge be revived? Can economics be practised beyond industrial utilisation and capitalist exploitation? The promise lies in connecting old and new knowledge and applying it in adapted form to the specificity of each place and context – a form of knowledge that arises from its situational anchoring: situated knowledge (Donna Haraway). This idea fundamentally questions the notion of knowledge as an objective, universally valid and neutral reality. Knowledge is thus understood as a dynamic quantity, not as an absolute reality. It emerges through individuals and groups at a particular historical moment, in a specific place, with a specific experience.

The economist and social scientist Enrique Leff defines the environmental crisis as a consequence of the crisis of Western thinking. To break the dominance of prevailing knowledge views and to promote a knowledge dialogue, an engagement with different cultures is necessary. This includes not only different languages and cultures but also different ideas and definitions of human communities, nature and the corresponding mutual dependence.

Increasingly, indigenous, non-Western conceptions of nature are being conveyed, actively remembered or newly discovered. They are being recognized and are expanding scientific designs in biodiversity research. There are not only two basic types of concepts of nature (scientific or mythological), but a heterogeneous variety. Many artists and scientists are participating in this fundamental shift. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Dr. Teresa Ryan, Dr. Max Liboiron and Elizabeth A. Povinelli with the Karrabing Film Collective – to name just a few –  represent changed principles that practise a reconnection of local knowledge with natural sciences in different cultural contexts. Data, information and quantifying factual knowledge are increasingly supplemented by the dimension of emotion to include an existential experience of connectedness.

Examples can also be found in agriculture. Faced with climate change, soil erosion and water scarcity, agriculture faces enormous challenges on a global scale. In addition to more sustainable bio-economies, numerous projects have emerged that use traditional methods such as agroforestry and permaculture as viable paths for future-oriented action.

If reality is a cultural construct based on an imagined relationship between a subject and its counterpart in the world, we are currently faced with the challenge of once again redefining ourselves.

What we are experiencing today is the struggle for new collective narratives. Transformation can also be seen as an opportunity. Along with knowledge and accountability, responsibility and a sense of justice are skills of the future. Solidarity and empathy, curiosity and encounter. Perhaps they come together in the idea of care. Care can arise from fear of the consequences of a major threat and motivate us to accept responsibility. It has the power to generate meaning and (re-)establish a bond with what is paramount.

Franziska Nori, Director Frankfurt Kunstverein

Franziska Nori and I met at a workshop on the New Senckenberg Natural History Museum in early 2019. Franziska deeply impressed me with her speech. She said “art can open up new perspectives” and ideally “creates ‘sublime moments’ that have transformative character”. Since then, we have maintained close communication, especially regarding the exhibition “Trees of Life”, developed in collaboration with Senckenberg nature museum, and the exhibition “The Intelligence of Plants”. Why do we collaborate? Why do I, as a biodiversity researcher, find it exciting and meaningful to collaborate with the director of an art institution? And what role do “sublime moments” play?

Biodiversity on our planet is under dramatic threat. In the first Global Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), published in 2019, it was scientifically established that of the approximately 8 million species on Earth, 1 million species are threatened with extinction. There is a particularly high level of endangerment with over 60 percent of palm fern species, 40 percent of amphibian species (such as frogs, toads and salamanders), and almost 40 percent of coral species. Furthermore, the populations of many species are declining dramatically. The Living Planet Index, which reflects species’ abundance, shows a decline of over 60 percent over a 50-year period. In Germany and Europe, we observe declines primarily in species of agricultural landscapes, i.e. fields, meadows and pastures, with a nearly 60 percent decrease in bird species over a 37-year period.

In addition to species, also natural ecosystems are disappearing and being converted into human-used and often degraded ecosystems. Half of all ecosystems have already been significantly altered. In the last 30 years, the extent of natural forests has decreased by an area equivalent to twelve times the size of the Federal Republic of Germany. In Germany, only 4 percent of previously extensive peatlands remain as conservation areas.

Changes in biodiversity have consequences for nature’s contributions to people. Biodiversity is the foundation of human life: almost everything we humans use is made available through biodiversity. Material contributions from nature include air to breathe, clean drinking water, food, building materials, energy, fibres and medicines. Regulatory contributions include pollination, seed dispersal, natural forest regeneration, climate regulation and the formation of fertile soils. Finally, biodiversity provides a wide range of non-material contributions: beauty, relaxation, recreation and mental health, spirituality, home and identity. The loss of biodiversity also affects the contributions of nature. According to scientific consensus (IPBES Global Assessment Report 2019), all but three of the 27 subcategories of nature’s contributions are declining; the only contributions increasing are areas for food and animal feed cultivation, energy crops (e.g. oil palm) and materials (e.g. cotton). Ecosystems are clearly managed for short-term human productivity.

What are the causes of biodiversity loss? There are five major direct drivers, the so-called “Big Five” of biodiversity loss. First is land use, primarily agriculture. Agricultural land is currently being massively expanded, especially in tropical countries, leading to the destruction of natural ecosystems such as forests, savannas, grasslands and wetlands. In Germany and Europe, the decline of species in agricultural landscapes is mainly due to intensive agricultural practices, including high use of fertilizers and pesticides, large-scale monocultures and the disappearance of hedges, trees, streams and fallow land. Second is the exploitation of species, mainly affecting the oceans; over 35 percent of commercially exploited fish stocks are currently overfished. In addition, climate change, pollution and the introduction of non-native, so-called “exotic” species are significant drivers.

However, behind these direct drivers are indirect or deep drivers that cause changes in land use and species exploitation. These include demographic and socio-cultural changes, such as population growth, increasing per capita consumption of natural resources and a shift toward a more meat-based diet. Other factors include economic and technological changes, changes in institutions and governance, conflicts and epidemics. These factors include increasing prosperity and the institutional and technological capabilities for global supply chains.

From a scientific perspective, it is clear that the loss of biodiversity and its contributions to humanity are already affecting the health, wealth and well-being of many people today. With further declines in biodiversity and its contributions to people, an even larger population is at risk. But what can we do to initiate a turnaround, to halt further biodiversity loss, and ideally, promote biodiversity again?

At the forefront of measures are international agreements, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, established at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 and subsequently signed by 196 nations. At the 15th Conference of the Parties in Montreal at the end of 2022, known as the World Biodiversity Summit, new targets were agreed upon. These include the goal to effectively protect 30 percent of land and marine areas by 2030, restore 30 percent of degraded land and marine areas by 2030 and promote sustainable land and forest management and fisheries. The great strength of these agreements is that they are international agreements that nearly all countries on earth have agreed to. Unfortunately, there are no legal instruments to enforce these goals: The International Court of Justice does not address these issues, and there is no world police force. Nevertheless, all countries on earth have a moral obligation to implement these goals, and it is the responsibility of civil society and the media to demand their enforcement.

International science-policy interfaces also play a central role in biodiversity conservation. The relevant international interface between science and policy for biodiversity is the aforementioned IPBES. It is the equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was established many years ago for the topic of climate. The IPBES assesses the state of knowledge and action options for individual world regions and also globally. A key finding of previous reports is that the protection and promotion of biodiversity cannot be achieved through isolated measures. This means that the establishment of protected areas or the reduced use of pesticides, while good and necessary measures, will not be sufficient to preserve biodiversity. Instead, a socio-ecological transformation is demanded, defined as a fundamental system-wide transformation of society as a whole, including politics, law, economy, science and civil society (IPBES Global Assessment Report 2019).

In addition, there are thousands of scientific publications that have examined the impact of humans on biodiversity and the consequences for ecosystems and people. Biodiversity models play a particularly important role in these publications. These models work similarly to the more well-known climate models: they are parameterized and validated with existing data and established relationships, then used to create alternative future scenarios. These scenarios offer alternative futures that predict a positive development, stabilization or further decline of biodiversity depending on the measures taken. A particularly comprehensive and ambitious study by David Leclère and co-authors from 2020 concludes that with a package of three sets of measures, we can stop the decline of biodiversity by 2030 and achieve an increase in biodiversity by 2050. The packages of measures are: 1. large, well-managed protected areas plus ecosystem restoration, 2. productive but sustainable agriculture and forestry, and more trade, and 3. changes in our consumption and dietary behaviour toward less food waste and, for countries like Germany, a more plant-based diet. This study shows, an increase in biodiversity is possible! This is very positive news. We need positive images and stories for the future.

When addressing changes and measures, it is helpful to distinguish between shallow and deep leverage points in the system (Meadows 1999, Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System). Shallow leverage points address parameters, such as the toxicity of pesticides. Deep leverage points address thought patterns and paradigms on which the system is based. Measures taken to protect biodiversity have so far focused more on shallow leverage points, such as establishing protected areas. Measures targeting deep leverage points, on the other hand, are very rarely applied. Admittedly, these deep leverage points are very difficult to access. Nevertheless, approaches to deep leverage points, thought patterns and paradigms have enormous potential to bring about truly deep and sustainable, long-term changes toward better human-nature relationships.

This is where art comes in (among other things). The experience of “sublime moments” can shake a person’s thought patterns so deeply that it can create a willingness to fundamentally question and perhaps even change their own attitudes, preferences and behaviours. This is the reason (or at least one of the reasons) why I collaborate with Franziska Nori as a biodiversity researcher. Deep leverage points in a system are virtually inaccessible to natural scientists, but they may (perhaps) be reached through art.

However, initiating a turnaround in the conservation of biodiversity remains a huge challenge. The design of socio-ecological transformations is complex and complicated. The good news, however, is that everyone can contribute to the necessary transformations. To make the number of possible measures manageable and concrete, Friederike Bauer and I have developed a catalogue of ten measures in our book Vom Verschwinden der Arten: Der Kampf um die Zukunft der Menschheit  (Böhning-Gaese and Bauer 2023, Vom Verschwinden der Arten), which we consider to be the ten most effective based on our collective experience. Each measure addresses different sectors of society:

1. Protect 30 percent of the Earth, with 30 percent of that under strict protection by 2030 (politics and conservation). By 2030, at least 30 percent of the Earth’s surface should be effectively protected (not just on paper), up from the current 17 percent on land and 8 percent in the ocean; 30 percent of that, meaning 10 percent of the total area, should have minimal human intervention – as wilderness. These areas can then serve as arks of biodiversity for the future. …
2. Globally increase the share of organic farming to 25 percent by 2030 (politics and agriculture). Organic farming promotes biodiversity. Currently, it accounts for around 9 percent in Europe and only 1.5 percent worldwide. Expanding organic farming, both in Europe and in the global South, benefits the health of nature, crop plants and animals and therefore, human health.
3. Gradually reduce harmful subsidies for nature by at least $500 billion annually by 2030 (politics). Currently, exorbitant sums are spent on promoting fossil fuels, environmentally damaging agriculture and fisheries. These funds must be redirected to support biodiversity-friendly measures such as rewilding and organic farming, and to mitigate social hardships. …
4. Establish global reporting requirements for companies and the financial sector regarding their impact on biodiversity by 2030 (politics and businesses). Such reporting requirements make the negative (and positive) impact of the economy on nature visible and measurable. This is likely to lead to a change in business thinking, a redirection of investments and new business models. Because: There is no business on a dead planet.
5. Increase the share of Green Bonds financing conservation from the current 3 percent to 30 percent by 2030 (financial sector). Currently, Green Bonds primarily focus on climate protection, such as wind and solar power. While this is fundamentally important, we need more financial products that channel funds into the preservation of nature, biodiversity conservation or organic farming.
6. Radically reduce meat consumption to a maximum of 300 grams per person per week, with a maximum of 100 grams of red meat, preferably from pasture-raised animals (everyone). Currently, around 70 percent of arable land worldwide is used for animal feed, rather than directly serving human nutrition. Reducing meat consumption is a crucial step to free up land for biodiversity or human nutrition, even with further population growth. …
7. Minimize food waste as much as possible (everyone, restaurants, businesses). Europe alone wastes 173 kilograms of food per person per year, roughly half a kilogram per day. Minimizing this practice saves land for cultivation. It also helps discover the value of food, is enjoyable and is easy on the wallet.
8. Spend fifteen minutes a day or two hours a week engaging with nature (everyone). Greening the balcony, growing vegetables, taking walks in the park, going into the woods, discussing herbs with others, etc. This engagement helps develop or maintain a closer relationship with nature and a better understanding of its diverse values. You only protect what you love, and you only love what you know. Moreover, it promotes relaxation, well-being and demonstrable health benefits.
9. Green cities wherever possible; balconies, roofs, sidewalks, courtyards, etc. (municipal administrations, everyone). This benefits biodiversity, cools urban areas and enhances our health and well-being. Diversity is important here too: trees and shrubs with flowers and berries instead of thuja, meadows instead of lawns, deadwood instead of borders – and it can all look a little untidy.
10. Media, films, books, exhibitions and educational materials must seriously engage with nature, neither exaggerating nor ignoring it (journalists, educators and artists). The subject of nature must be integrated into the politics and economics sections of newspapers, not just relegated to the “Miscellaneous” or “Panorama” sections. It is about more than koalas, gorillas and tigers: it is about connections, ecosystems and nature as a foundation of existence. This requires engaging stories and images that reach people in various ways and remind us that every individual matters (Böhning-Gaese and Bauer 2023, Vom Verschwinden der Arten).

We can thus see that art has the potential to contribute to the necessary socio-ecological transformations; and maybe it even has a duty to do so?

Katrin Böhning-Gaese, Director Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre

We are proud to present the publication Perception is Reality, an overview of the exhibitions at the Frankfurter Kunstverein from 2015 to 2020. Under the direction of Franziska Nori, there have been 19 exhibitions featuring 77 artists that have explored the transformation of both the individual and society through digital technology, the connection between art and science, as well as the rapidly changing relationship between humans and nature.

What role can art play at the beginning of the third millennium, in the midst of a society in transition? Contemporary art is a field with blurred edges, whose strength derives from the freedom to adopt different perspectives. Like a seismograph, art can detect and visualize the phenomena of social transformation in interdisciplinary forms of thinking.

Curated by Franziska Nori, artists such as Melanie Bonajo, Thomas Feuerstein, Alicja Kwade, Trevor Paglen, Yves Netzhammer, and numerous other young emerging artists, as well as philosophers, computer scientists, biochemists, digital forensic scientists, and many other experts from various disciplines have all re-explored these boundaries at the Frankfurter Kunstverein.

As one of the oldest institutions and citizens’ associations in Frankfurt, the Frankfurter Kunstverein has always stood for contemporary art. Nori has given the Kunstverein a new international visibility and positioned it in relation to major societal discussions. Art is not only experienced intellectually here, but also through sensual perceptibility. The Frankfurter Kunstverein’s transparent 1950s building has frequently been temporarily transformed or rearranged so that installations and juxtapositions could turn the works into a sensory experience. The title of this publication, Perception is Reality, refers to one of Nori’s most successful exhibitions, which dealt explicitly with the question of the basic conditions of perception today: how we construct our perception of reality, and which perceptions our brain uses to construct an idea of reality.

The 19 exhibitions and outdoor sculptures are documented with texts and large-format images and placed in a discursive context over 512 pages. Detailed floor plans can be viewed for each exhibition, and a list of artists and their biographies presents a panorama of the positions that have contributed aesthetically and conceptually to the topics discussed within.

The project was launched by Franziska Nori and her team in spring 2020. This made it possible to avoid short-time work during the closures relating to COVID-19 and guaranteed continued employment for the entire team, including freelance employees.

Title: Perception is Reality—Frankfurter Kunstverein 2015 to 2020
Edited by Franziska Nori
Published in Frankfurt am Main, 2020
Number of pages: 512
Numerous large-format illustrations
Languages: German and English
Hardcover in slipcase
ISBN 978-3-00-066101-3
Price: 42 Euro