Technoflows

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York proudly presents “TECHNOFLOWS: Luiza Crosman and Christoph Weber”, an exhibition that delves into critical themes of climate governance, planetary forecasting, and resource extraction, framed through the lens of the technosphere. This concept refers to the interconnected system of technologies that operate almost autonomously, metabolizing energy and shaping the Earth as a geological force. By engaging with this idea, the exhibition examines how technological systems influence the environment and humanity’s shared future.

This artistic dialogue between São Paulo-based Brazilian artist Luiza Crosman (b. 1987) and Vienna-based Austrian artist Christoph Weber (b. 1974) features works addressing both the distributed nature of the climate emergency and more localized, specific issues. Crosman’s video piece Átropos Sky (2022) is a research-driven exploration of the sky as an interface for new forms of collectivity, emphasizing the roles of women as figures of foresight and future-telling. Weber’s work, Touch Fragments, Contact Print (Limestone Quarry of the Cement Industry) (2022), presents a life-size depiction of an extraction surface: a fractured limestone wall with two vertical boreholes, molded in translucent material and exposed on analog photographic paper.

A selection of new works further investigates the intersections of computation, extraction, architecture, and planetary structures, highlighting “climate dignity” as a critical issue that transcends territorial and geopolitical boundaries. By situating the dialogue within the interdependency of local human gestures, the global technosphere, and planetary metabolic systems, the exhibition challenges the notion of a singular narrative, offering a nuanced perspective on the flows of technology and its impacts.

For the opening, the ACFNY were honored to feature a specially commissioned text by Fernanda Brenner, The Weight of Systems: Notes on Planetary Dignity and the Power of Encounters. Her reflections offer profound insights into the exhibition’s themes, expanding on the dialogue between technology, climate dignity, and the material and digital realms that shape our world.

Exhibition poster based on

Luiza Crosman, To all contributory factors (info see further down the page)

Poster design by ACFNY

Touch Fragments, Contact Print

(Cement Industry Limestone Quarry Mannersdorf), 2022

Photographic exposure of casting rubber

silver gelatine prints, neodym magnets

322 x 245 cm overall, 2 parts

Burst, 2024

Kalkstein (Mannersdorf), Beton

53 x 44 x 35 cm

Chase #2, 2023

Lead type Antiqua 16p: quote Immanuel Kant, Styrofoam quote Achille Mbembe from Brutalism, Acrystal

39,5 x 30,5 x 2,5 cm

Luiza Crosman, Colapsar, 2024

Jacquard pieces, zippers, mounted on aluminum

100cmx100cm.

Luiza Crosman

To all Contributory Factors, 2024

Inkjet print on paper, on acetate, stickers, tin transfer, seals and plastic envelope. Collage

Mounted in acrylic frame designed and made by the artist. 25cmx33.4 cm each

Fossil Continuum, 2024

Kalkstein (Mannersdorf), Beton

46 x 43 x 61 cm

The dialogue between these approaches reveals something essential about our current moment, what Achille Mbembe, the Cameroonian philosopher and political theorist, calls our era of "digital reason" – where both physical materials and data become reservoirs to be drilled, tapped, and processed. Weber materializes this philosophical tension by working with chases – the metal frames used to hold moveable type in printing presses – from a Heidelberg press. In "Chase #1" (2023), he fills the industrial frame with a beeswax cast of a Vienna highway support. For "Chase #2" (2023), he combines traditional Antiqua 16-point lead type bearing Kant's words about "pure schema" with Mbembe's text from "Brutalism" printed digitally on polystyrene. By repurposing these printing press components with such contrasting materials and ideas – from ancient beeswax to contemporary polystyrene, from Enlightenment philosophy to postcolonial theory – Weber creates a material meditation on how different systems of knowledge and production frame our understanding of the world.

Excerpt from Fernanda Brenner’s text

Die Grundsätze des reinen Verstandes, sie mögen nun a priori konstitutiv sein (wie die mathematischen), oder bloß regulativ (wie die dynamischen), enthalten nichts als gleichsam nur das reine Schema zur möglichen Erfahrung; denn diese hat ihre Einheit nur von der synthetischen Einheit, welche der Verstand der Synthesis der Einbildungskraft in Beziehung auf die Apperzeption ursprünglich und von selbst erteilt, und auf welche die Erscheinungen, als data zu einem möglichen Erkenntnisse, schon a priori in Beziehung und Einstimmung stehen müssen.

Immanuel Kant, Sämtliche Werke: Philosophische Schriften, Aufsätze & Biografie, ISBN 978-80-268-6648-0, S. 914, Der transzendentalen Doktrin der Urteilskraft (Analytik der Grundsätze) Drittes Hauptstück, Von dem Grunde der Unterscheidung aller Gegenstände überhaupt in Phaenomena und Noumena