Riddle of the Burial Grounds

APT artist Uriel Orlow & Mikhail Karikis are participating the exhibition "Riddle of the Burial Grounds" with "Sounds from Beneath" 2010-11, Single channel HD video with sound, 6 min 41 sec.  "Sounds from Beneath" a desolate disused colliery in East Kent, once populated with workers, machines and the sounds of their activities, is brought back to life through song. The video centers around a choral piece for which Karikis invites an ex-miners’ choir to recall and sing the subterranean sounds of a working coalmine. It transforms into an amphitheatre resonating sounds of explosions in the ground, machines cutting the coal-face, shovels scratching the earth and the distant melody of the Miner’s Lament, all sung by Snowdown Colliery Welfare Male Voice Choir grouping in formations reminiscent of picket lines.
 

This summer, visual art is taking over Project Arts Centre with one of our most ambitious exhibitions to date. "Riddle of the Burial Grounds" puzzles over signs, forms and communication, motivated by one of the major problems facing our planet – the markings and warnings around nuclear burial sites.

Stored in man-made concrete-clad tunnels deep within mountains or in repurposed salt mines, radioactive matter is being buried that will continue to have the potential to create catastrophic disaster deep into the future, into a period of time we can barely perceive of, yet alone imagine.

We are entering an era that is defined by our impact on earth – the Anthropocene – an era in which human actions have become the dominant force of change on the planet.

Through sculpture, film, photography, documentary, fiction, science-fiction, history, landscapes and imagined futures, Riddle of the Burial Grounds attempts to conceive of a time in which language, signs and forms will be beyond our current comprehension.

How do we communicate beyond the decaying half-life of our current knowledge?

And what will we leave behind?

Artists:
Lara Almarcegui (ES/NL), Rossella Biscotti (IT/NL), Simon Boudvin (FR), Matthew Buckingham (US), Mariana Castillo Deball (DE/MX), Dorothy Cross (IE), Regina de Miguel (ES), Harun Farocki (DE), Peter Galison & Robb Moss (US), Stéphane Béna Hanly (IE), Tracy Hanna (IE), Mikhail Karikis (GK/UK) & Uriel Orlow (CH/UK), Nicholas Mangan (AU), Tejal Shah (IN)

Curated by Tessa Giblin