The exhibition HARDSCAPES brings together two large-scale works, which draw attention to circulation and transformation.
Energy Budget (a collaborative video work conceived with Robin Watkins, 2017-2018) is a study of a leopard slug that slowly navigates an electrical enclosure.
Seemingly blending into a hybrid form, the slug’s muscular fluctuations respond to defunct circuits and palimpsest electric fields, almost becoming a part of the infra-structural environment. The intimate moving images of the slug are combined with a sequence of so-called “dragon holes” – large architectural portals constructed according to principles of feng shui. These passages choreograph the dragons through the skyscrapers, allowing them to descend from the mountains to drink and bathe in the ocean below.
Filmed in Telegraph Bay, where the first undersea telegraphic cable landed in Hong Kong at the end of the 19 century, the camera steadily zooms out from the openings, using compressed air to control the motion of the camera.

The absence of sound in the video allows for a floor-based sculpture to speak up from the ground, filling the space with presence. The work Muscle Memory (16 Tonnes) (2021) is simultaneously transformed and broken by the density of moving bodies, literally crumbling under the shoe soles of visitors. The seashells from marine molluscs are in fact the raw material which form the basis of most of our built environment, including the floor of the Officine Grandi Riparazioni. Calcium carbonate is a fundamental component of concrete, an essential scaffold for all kinds of industrial construction. Muscle Memory (16 Tonnes) originally commissioned by GAMeC, and has been repurposed into a new installation that takes the history of OGR as a site of repair into consideration.

to know more about the exhibitioN:
nina canell

image:
Nina Canell & Robin Watkins
Energy Budget
2017-2019