Hoël Duret: Low

Jungle

Hoël Duret's artistic practice combines fictional stories with real events and develops a visual language based on science fiction, post-apocalyptic cinema or the utopias of modernism, with the help of which she addresses the relationship between nature and technology against the backdrop of advancing digitalisation. The installation in the entrance hall of the Villa Merkel shows a jungle quote embedded in a cable network. This seems to entangle the proliferating plant-technological organism in an exchange of information - as if man could not help but constantly control everything, including the growth of the plants. Hoël Durets controls his artificial ecosystem using an algorithm based on climate data published online. This choreographs the lighting, vapourisation and soundtrack of the installation in real time. In this way, scientifically measurable parameters of current climate change are incorporated into a spatial ensemble that oscillates between romance and science fiction. This lends the installation an ominous, latently apocalyptic undertone and at the same time appeals to our deep-seated longing for Arcadia.

Exhibition:
Villa Merkel Gallery of the City of Esslingen, 16/8-15/11/2020