During Esch2022, a number of exhibitions will be on display to the public. Some of them are coordinated by the cultural year team and take place in the exhibition spaces in Belval. The public can discover Remixing Industrial Pasts: Constructing the Identity of the Minett at the Massenoire, and Hacking Identity--Dancing Diversity at the Möllerei.
Industrial history on display
The exhibition Remixing Industrial Pasts: Constructing the Identity of the Minett explains the transformation process of the Minette region from the end of the 19th century to the present day in an immersive installation with numerous audiovisual elements. The scientific basis of the exhibition is founded on research carried out by the Luxembourg Center for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) and is set up by the Tokonoma collective and 2 F Architettura. The exhibition is divided into different stations, each containing an explanatory text and objects that visitors are allowed to touch.
The theme of the Minette, a landscape that changes over the years like a palimpsest, is followed by the issue of pollution and dirtiness linked to industrial activity, population growth and the very important place of women in this society.
In the Massenoire, a selection of videos shows images from the archives of the NAC, with which an important documentary research was carried out. The images are edited in a thematic approach and supported by a very successful soundtrack composed by Max Viale. This is in fact the heart of the exhibition, and where its richness lies.
Although this exhibition may seem a little futile to those who have lived in the region and whose story is being told here, it has the merit of introducing the evolution of the Minette to those who have been living in the country for a shorter period of time and to visitors who are discovering Luxembourg and its regions.
Avatars, projections and identities
At the newly renovated Möllerei visitors can discover Hacking Identity--Dancing Diversity, an exhibition created in collaboration with the ZKM I Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and curated by Anett Holzheid and Peter Weibel. It brings together 26 works by international artists who explore the phenomenon of the dissolution, metamorphosis and multiplication of identity in our digitally mediated age.
Today, many of us have a “virtual self”, a digital image shaped through shared photos, videos or music that form connections with other individuals. These media are ways of affirming, but also questioning and redesigning identities. It is precisely this point that the works highlight in this exhibition. There are video installations, very large projections (one of the screens being 32 metres long) and participatory digital works, forms and media that lend themselves particularly well to the atypical location of the Möllerei.
If the word “hacking” originally comes from the world of computers, the artists appropriate it here in a creative process, an active position that aims at transformation. The artists also explore the way in which media influences the processes of identification, ranging from the cult of personality to emancipation to imitation or even irony.
Visitors can discover, for example, works designed for TikTok or installations that allow everyone to create a virtual avatar that either borrows the visitor's face and then merges into a crowd of other avatars, or captures the visitor's body movements to make a whimsical character move.
The expositions are open until 15 May 2022, more information can be found on www.esch2022.lu
This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.