The Science of Imagination

Through works by international artists, the exhibition “The Science of Imagination” considers the European and North-American culture of the Cold War era from a contemporary viewpoint. The works reflect on the presence of this chapter of Euro-Atlantic history and culture today.

Through works by international contemporary artists, the exhibition considers the European and North-American culture of the 1945-1989 period from a specific viewpoint. Darkened by anxiety and competition, the utopia of the Cold War period was often fueled by scientific achievements and technological developments, to be about cities for future societies, the info communication revolution, or the space race. Exact scientific facts and precise, inanimate machines, filtered through fantasy, artistic creativity, social tensions and political ideologies or phobias, turned into peculiar, in cases optimist, in others threatening or even apocalyptic visions of late modernity. Proceeding from the political changes and incredible technological advancement of the last two decades, nowadays this myth does not seem to fade; to the contrary, it has become a deep, fertile soil for contemporary culture.

The videos, drawings and installations in this exhibition conjure up this period and its culture: scientific theories, visions of the future, obscure stories. The artists shit in once secret and by now closed-down sites, in a nuclear rocket launch base or a cosmonaut training center; designed robots and vehicles for the future themselves; re-created scientific experiments or re-staged prophesies by famous Science Fiction writers. However their authors got inspired though, these works propel one not that much to rove into the past but to reflect on the presence of this chapter of Euro-Atlantic history and culture today: why it is still important if it is at all; and why it is so fascinating, even it sometimes seems obsolete, disheartening, or foolishly naïve.

The exhibition is a collaboration of Ludwig Múzeum Budapest and Siemens Stiftung.

Pawel Althamer, Gerard Byrne, István Csákány, Marine Hugonnier, Tamás Kaszás, Adam Kokesch, Chris Marker, Anna Molska, Deimantas Narkevicius, Panamarenko, Daniel Roth, Sašo Sedlaček, Jane & Louise Wilson

Publication

A catalogue accompanying the exhibition will be published.

Cooperating Partners

Ludwig Múzeum Budapest and Siemens Stiftung

Curator and Project Management

Hajnalka Somogyi (Ludwig Múzeum Budapest), Thomas D. Trummer (Siemens Stiftung)

Place

Ludwig Múzeum Budapest
Komor Marcell u. 1
HU-1095 Budapest
Hungary
http://www.ludwigmuseum.hu/