Exhibition
POWER

Save the Date: OPENING 12 OCTOBER

Fri, 13.10.2023 -
Sun, 17.03.2024
10:30 AM - 18:00 CIVA

POWER connects questions of energy and politics. The exhibition and accompanying program challenges viewers to consider how contemporary infrastructure relates to everyday life across intersecting concerns, including political institutions, citizen participation, geopolitics, energy transition, and climate justice.
From oil and gas pipelines to domestic radiators, from wind turbines to recycling hubs, infrastructure is central to today’s debates surrounding systemic change. Objects of intense political, social, and economic contestation, these infrastructures distribute power in both senses of the word POWER : as energy and as politics.

Today, architects, landscape designers, artists, and urban practitioners perpetuate the regime of carbon modernity. Yet they are also in a unique position to shift discourse and practice toward large-scale energetic transformation.

POWER is an exhibition that brings together historic references, contemporary practices, and speculations on the future. The contributors are comprised of a transdisciplinary field of architects, landscape designers, artists, philosophers, historians, scientists, legislators, and nongovernmental organizations:
Monira Al Qadiri, Rachel Armstrong, Sammy Baloji / Jean Katambayi / Daddy Tshikaya (On-Trade-Off), BAUKUNST, BC Architects / Babinigeysen / Schenk Hattori, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Oana Bogdan and Antoine Crahay, Constantin Brodzki, City Mine(d), Paul Duvigneaud, Feddes Olthof, Buckminster Fuller, Bruno Latour, Armin Linke, André and Jean Polak, René Péchère, Cedric Price, OMA/AMO, Philippe Rahm, S+ / Arno Brandlhuber / Fosbury Architects, François and Luc Schuiten, Karl Schwanzer, Bas Smets, Territorial Agency, The New Open / TU Delft, Willy Van Der Meeren, and Liam Young.

Parallel to the exhibition, the Goethe-Institut Brussels supports the event series POWER Talks - a public program of lectures, roundtable discussions, and film screenings which among others features Thomas Auer, Daniel Barber, BC Architects, Oana Bogdan, Arno Brandlhuber, Koenraad Danneels, Andrés Jaque, Jeanette Kuo, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Philippe Rahm, Bas Smets, Paulo Tavares, Ola Uduku and many more.
Intergenerational workshops will also be held as part of the POWER exhibition, in collaboration with Auranne Leray, BC, Bento,City Mine(d), Louise Lainiez, V+ and many more.


Curatorial execution: 
Silvia Franceschini, Eric Hennaut, Nikolaus Hirsch, Yaron Pezstat, Dennis Pohl, Ursula Wieser Benedetti

Scenography:
Pauline Clarot

Project partners: 
e-flux architecture, ETH Zurich, Goethe-Institut Brussels, La Cambre, TU Delft