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Planet ID: memories of Earth

Main Hall

21. 06. — 06. 10. 2024

Petra Mazáčová, curator of the exhibition

„We go into space prepared for everything, i.e. loneliness, struggle, suffering and death. We don’t say it out loud out of modesty, but sometimes I think how wonderful we are. But we don’t want to conquer the universe, we just want to expand the Earth to its limits.“ (Stanislaw Lem, Solaris) Through the upcoming exhibition project, conceived as an epic environmental dis(u)topic science fiction, the gallery in Roudnice joins the loud societal discussion about the sustainability of life on Earth. The drastic extinction of animal species, the disappearance of fauna and climate change are just some of the problems that have already been highlighted by the world’s leading researchers. Today and every day we are reassured that the time of losing control of our lives is still far away. However, environmental anxiety has already become topical. Fear of what is to come. Fear that we have no plan B. This reality (and more) is what the exhibition PLANET ID: Memories of
Earth reflects. It plays with the idea of interplanetary escapism – a mental game of escaping to other worlds. But what does such a space journey become for its passengers? A rescue, or a prison in which nothing remains but memories? Snippets that the human brain assembles into new abstract concepts? The aim of the exhibition is to conceive the hitherto known world as a collage, the main axis being the Earth-universe connection. With the help of selected human artworks, understood as fragments of ideas about the near and distant surroundings, we will try to construct a mental map balancing on the edge of reason and sentiment, science and memory.