Riddle of the Burial Grounds
Lara Almarcegui, Stéphane Béna Hanly, Rossella Biscotti, Simon Boudvin, Mariana Castillo Deball, Dorothy Cross, Regina de Miguel, Mikala Dwyer, Harun Farocki, Geoffrey Farmer, Peter Galison & Robb Moss, Tracy Hanna, Mikhail Karikis, Sam Keogh, Ruth E. Lyons, Nicholas Mangan, Jean-Luc Moulène, Lucy Skaer, Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan, Emmanuel Van der Auwera

We are living in a time when taking responsibility for the future has become the resounding imperative of our age. But what does ‘long–term’ really mean? What is human time when set against geological time, or cosmic time? What is it to think into a future so far beyond our lifetimes that the very idea of an inhabiting population of this planet is but speculation; where language would bear no resemblance to anything spoken today, and where the concrete remains of this epoch would be ruinous imprints at best?

“Do not destroy these markers. These standing stones mark an area once used to bury radioactive wastes. These wastes give off invisible energy that can destroy plants, animals and people. The rock and water in this area may not look, feel or smell unusual but may be poisoned. These markers were designed to last 10,000 years. Do not drill here. Do not dig here.” (From ‘Containment’, a film by Peter Galison & Robb Moss.)

‘Riddle of the Burial Grounds’ brings together artworks that measure themselves against geological and human time. They are artworks that give speculative forms and images to periods, epochs and eras: vast, unknowable expanses of time that help us to look outside of ourselves and the worlds we inhabit and, in so doing, attempt to stretch the possibilities of human imagination. Artists have situated works in or around various unique subjects: man-made ruins and extraordinary natural phenomena; excavated sites and empty-bellied mines; language and its limits; burial, ritual, forecasting, futures and radioactivity; raw material, the language of forms, wastelands and wildernesses.