CATA-STROPHE exhibition

When everything we believed in turns against us, we end up on our asses.

Because everything that seemed positive to us - the progress of knowledge, technical innovations, universal rights, economic growth - reveals its degree of danger.

Because where that which should save us grows, perils increase. (Hölderlin notwithstanding.)

We old moderns are learning to live in the threatening shadow of coming catastrophes. Yet this great reversal should not be seen as a terrible twist of fate. It is the result of the choices that have shaped our civilization. Catastrophe is like us. And since it is ours, we might as well seize it with all the energy of our disorder.

The exhibition explores catastrophe in the nooks and crannies of philosophy, writing, painting, cinema and theater. It's a festive, carnivalesque exploration, where philosophers play the fool, unless it's the other way around, where texts are unwritten and erased, where ideas descend into the cave because the sun is burning us outside.