Enlightenment

Installation, Solo Exhibition
Museum for Applied & Decorative Art, Moscow, RUS

As part of V. Moscow Biennale, 2013

Curated by
Karin Zimmer, Daria Kravchuk 

Funded by
The Austrian Federal Chancellery

Supported by
Manfred Maier

Commissioned work

Ever since the steam engine heralded in the industrial age, energy has been a dealable good, one that today determines everything. While obsolete power units bear a visual resemblance to their physical prototype like horse power, electricity is perceived as a fully abstract force without any reference to physical exertion. Electricity comes from the outlet and is consumed without care as though it had no end.

Enlightenment visualizes the energy potential of an individual’s physical exertion in the sense of an inefficient hydroelectric power plant. Like a storage power plant, recipients were invited to exert their physical strength to generate potential energy. Small turbines at the base of the platform then converted this kinetic energy into electricity.

The electricity thus generated was used to light a simple description of the installation itself. This tedious means of generating power aptly demonstrates the basic premise of modern technology. A disproportionate effort on behalf of the recipient is necessary while contradicting the pursuit of efficiency in modern power plants Enlightenment is a Prohaskaian power plant par excellence whose irony culminates in its overdimensioned form.


Production
Daria Kravchuk