POWER

POWER connects questions of energy and politics. The exhibition and accompanying program challenges viewers to consider how contemporary infrastructure relates to everyday life across intersecting concerns, including political institutions, citizen participation, geopolitics, energy transition, and climate justice. From oil and gas pipelines to domestic radiators, from wind turbines to recycling hubs, infrastructure is central to today’s debates surrounding systemic change. Objects of intense political, social, and economic contestation, these infrastructures distribute power in both senses of the word POWER : as energy and as politics.

Today, architects, landscape designers, artists, and urban practitioners perpetuate the regime of carbon modernity. Yet they are also in a unique position to shift discourse and practice toward large-scale energetic transformation.

POWER is an exhibition that brings together historic references, contemporary practices, and speculations on the future. The contributors are comprised of a transdisciplinary field of architects, landscape designers, artists, philosophers, historians, scientists, legislators, and nongovernmental organizations: Monira Al Qadiri, Rachel Armstrong / Rolf Hughes / Anna Vershinina, Sammy Baloji / Jean Katambayi / Daddy Tshikaya (On-Trade-Off), BAUKUNST, BC Architects / Babini Geysen/ Schenk Hattori, Bento, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Oana Bogdan & Antoine Crahay, Jochen Brandi, Constantin Brodzki, City Mine(d) / Fanny Monier, Pierre Coulon / André Noterman, Eugène Delatte / Robert Maquestieau, Emile Devreux, Paul Duvigneaud, Feddes Olthof, Buckminster Fuller, Fritz Haller, HouseEurope! / B+ / Fosbury Architecture / s+ ETHZ, Bruno Latour, Armin Linke, OMA/AMO/ Rem Koolhaas / Reinier de Graaf, Claude Parent, André and Jean Polak, René Pechère, Cedric Price, Chris Pype, Philippe Rahm, Georges Ricquier, François & Luc Schuiten, Karl Schwanzer, Bas Smets, Territorial Agency, TU Delft / The New Open with Meta Office, Willy Van Der Meeren / Léon Palm, Hugo Van Kuyck, Hans Wieser Benedetti, and Liam Young

Intergenerational workshops were held as part of the POWER exhibition, in collaboration with Auranne Leray, BC, City Mine(d), Louise Lainiez, V+ and many more. On 13th January 2024 participants could shape the Brussels soil extracted from urban construction sites and reconditioned in a circular process by BC Materials. This material, extracted from beneath our feet, were used to create a natural composition, and thereby to consider the sustainability of object design from a different angle.

Link to the website of the POWER exhibition at CIVA