Tomás Saraceno
Tomás Saraceno is an Argentinian artist who lives in Berlin. In his utopian projects, he investigates new possibilities for a sustainable living environment. Saraceno analyses the properties of the atmosphere, neural networks, cloud formations or spider’s webs as a basis for the creation of floating sculptures or interactive installations. For the artist, spider’s webs are more than just ingenious natural architecture: they also illustrate how you can communicate and cohabit with your environment. For example, spiders don’t only use their webs to catch prey, but also to signal to other spiders, demarcate the edges of their territory or collect information about things like air pressure or temperature. There is a collective associated with Saraceno’s studio that engages in multidisciplinary research into arachnology, music, geography and other subjects.
The installation Galaxies on Strings (2011) imagines an entirely mobile and mutable floating city in the air. The work is part of the Cloud Cities series and shows how humans could live in the ‘Aerocene’. A group of artists including Saraceno use that term to denote a period of history after the Anthropocene: the period in which we transcend geopolitical boundaries and can travel without the need for fossil fuels.
© image: M HKA
Exhibited work:
Galaxies on Strings, 2011
Collection Joost & Siska Vanhaerents-Dezutter