Join us for a conversation between artists Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen with Rebecca Lewin, Curator of Exhibitions & Design at Serpentine and Lucia Pietroiusti, Founder, General Ecology and a special late viewing of Heavens, a new work by the artists.
Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen (both b.1981) explore processes of production as cultural, personal and political practices. Their work forms bridges between labour and choreography, gambling and emotional manipulation, systems of capital and animal bodies.
This moving image installation starts from the theory that the octopus evolved from a virus originating in outer space, expanding our perception of ecology as a network of interplanetary relationships. Emerging from conversations with a philosopher, a writer, a psychiatrist, an astrobiologist, an astronomer and an escape artist, Heavens comprises a constellation of text, sounds and images. The piece looks to the physiology and behaviours of the octopus to reflect on human and non-human attempts to escape through acts of communal ritual, or through leaks and spillovers.
Heavens is accompanied by a multi-channel soundscape by Pan Daijing. It is co-commissioned by Serpentine and Malevich.io as part of Back to Earth, Serpentine’s long-term multidisciplinary project dedicated to the environment and the climate crisis.
