What is time and how can it be represented and measured artistically? And how can the future be thought? The starting point for this unusual exhibition is a work of art: the »Dripstone Machine« by Bogomir Ecker (1996-2496). Designed for an unimaginable 500 years, it runs through the entire Galerie der Gegenwart from the roof to the base floor. If everything goes undisturbed, the machine will have formed stalagmites and stalactites of about 5 cm length over this period. That doesn’t sound very spectacular, and yet an exciting mental journey into the future begins while we wait, spellbound, for the next drop to fall. What will the future look like, how do we want to shape it? And what can art do in this context? Can it make a substantial contribution to a discourse on perception, imagination and questions about the future?

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Dripstone Machine and the Galerie der Gegenwart, around 30 international artists will be addressing fundamental questions about temporality, sustainability and visions. Works of art, artefacts and natural objects come together on the entire first floor, which has been freed of all partition walls and has an open view of the urban space. Many of the works are new and were created especially for the exhibition, others enter into a surprising dialogue across the centuries and disciplines. Thus, a drawing by Caspar David Friedrich from 1826 meets a contemporary photograph by Pierre Huyghe, Katinka Bock’s ceramic installation entitled »Trostpfützen« (Consolatory Puddles), created especially for the exhibition, meets Courbet’s »The Grotto of the Loue« (1864), and geological meteorites find themselves in the vicinity of a room-sized installation by the young Hamburg artist Elena Greta Falcini.

Bogomir Ecker develops forms of combination and design for an exhibition. An associative and experimental structure emerges, which is furthermore continued in a huge tableau of image quotations and archives constructed by Ecker. Recycled museum inventory is the source material for his artistically designed platform. This playing field has a model character: in an experimental arrangement, manifestations of matter, changes and transformative processes become visible. Formations and deposits of the temporal, their possible stretching and condensation between moment and duration are recurring motifs here. Our technicized life is characterized by unimaginable speed and ephemerality. This makes it all the more urgent for us to try out a form of long-term thinking through and with art. What can art as an aesthetic category and experience contribute to future as a form of thought?

The exhibition »FUTURA. Measuring Time«, co-curated by Bogomir Ecker (artist) and Brigitte Kölle (collection curator), is expanded by an extensive and interdisciplinary programme of events conceived in cooperation with Tropfstein e.V. entitled »FUTURA. Future as a Form of Thought«. A musical premiere of a composition by Daniel Ott created especially for this occasion, readings with the author Emma Braslavsky and the actor Jens Harzer, talks and lectures by well-known philosophers, literary scholars and art historians are all part of this programme. A science fiction film series at the Metropolis Kino Hamburg, workgroups with Fridays for Future or even glimpses behind the scenes of the Dripstone Machine round off the multi-faceted programme. The exact dates and further information on the programme of events will be announced shortly on this homepage.

An artist publication conceived by Bogomir Ecker with numerous illustrations and installation views, as well as texts by Johanne Mohs, Brigitte Kölle and Uwe M. Schneede, will be published to accompany the exhibition. Designed by Günter Karl Bose, published by Kettler, publication date 5 February 2022.

Artists:
Katinka Bock, John Cage, Nina Canell, Gustave Courbet, Attila Csörgő, Hanne Darboven, Edith Dekyndt, Bogomir Ecker, Oswald Egger, Elena Greta Falcini, Ceal Floyer, Caspar David Friedrich, Monika Grzymala, Channa Horwitz, Pierre Huyghe, Daniel Janik, Samson Kambalu, On Kawara, Axel Loytved, Sarah Lucas, Étienne-Jules Marey, Johanna Reich, Jens Risch, Philipp Otto Runge, Ani Schulze, Roman Signer, Lucía Simón Medina, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Rayyane Tabet, Robin Watkins