A highlight and a great novelty of this sixth edition of the BPM, the group exhibition “PEP: (Im)possible worlds” brings together some forty international artists in an emblematic venue for a fascinating survey of contemporary photography in the Anthropocene era.

Anyone visiting Mulhouse for the first time cannot fail to notice its most iconic building: the Europe Tower, the reinforced concrete skyscraper that rises majestically in the heart of the city. Its triangular shape recalls its geographical position at the junction of three European countries - Germany, France and Switzerland. Its concave sides, topped by a flying saucer that looks like something out of a science-fiction film or Japanese cartoon - who said Goldorak? It has to be said that this hundred-meter-high edifice, designed by architect François Spoerry, is symptomatic of the slightly megalomaniac ambitions of a bygone era, when it was all about projecting into a future that sacrificed human comfort and the integrity of nature on the altar of rampant productivism. In a way, with its UFO-shaped revolving panoramic restaurant, whose drive mechanism has long since fallen into disuse, this monument in need of repair but with an endearing silhouette symbolizes the end of an era and stands as a vestige of capitalism.

What could be more natural, then, than to find this year, on the 14th floor of the 31-storey Europe Tower, in one of the 180 apartments it houses, a new exhibition space, the KunsTURM, entirely redesigned to host the group exhibition “PEP: (Im)possible worlds”, in which we take note of the end of a world that has become impossible, and look towards those - hopefully less bellicose - that are coming in its wake.

The exhibition is the result of an initiative by photographer and curator Bénédicte Blondeau, the PEP (for Photographic Exploration Project), which aims to bring together a multiplicity of emerging photographic writings around highly contemporary themes. The collective aspect of the project is coupled with an itinerant, international identity. Under the auspices of PEP, exhibitions have been held in galleries and festivals in Berlin, Lisbon and Brussels, and now in Mulhouse for the biennial.

For the latter, an open call was jointly launched by the BPM and the Photographic Exploration Project, inviting artists to share their visions of our post-industrial age and the challenges we face, set against a nature exhausted by two and a half centuries of exploitation by man. Of the 600 artists who responded to the call, a jury presided over by Anne Immelé and Bénédicte Blondeau selected 42, for an eclectic corpus totalling some fifty photographs spread across the walls of the eight spaces that make up the KunsTURM.

The corridor through which visitors enter is studded with prints relating to the cosmos, extraterrestrial worlds and the utopia of futuristic projections, such as the Future Tales by London-based Polish artist Karolina Maria Dudek. She imagines an apocalyptic future in which all forms of life, including our own, have been annihilated by artificial intelligence. In this disquieting anticipation, the artist uses photomontage to stage fake relics of the past, such as this neat black-and-white image showing the implant of a microprocessor in a fragment of raw rock, the silicon chip acting as a fossil of a vanished human civilization or, at the very least, as an indecipherable hieroglyph for some non-human intelligence that would never have known of our presence on Earth.

The living room of the apartment lends itself to an exhibition mixing works that reflect on the relationship between human beings and animals and plant species, and proposals dealing with a subject addressed in a transversal way by different exhibitions of the biennial this year: mining, the many damages inflicted on the planet by the extractivist madness of Western societies. Among other universes, the public can discover that of artist and filmmaker Vincent Jondeau through an image from his series Verschwinden - literally: “to disappear”. It shows a plant whose silvery palms seem to emerge from the half-light. As if devitalized, the colors reflect the corruption of the environment in which it is dying. This simple, powerful and edifying image, featured on the cover of this special issue, reflects the threat of extinction of many species in the fragile ecosystems of the Anthropocene. A similar concern runs through Yann Haeberlin's photographs, which focus on plant species described as invasive by those who do everything in their power to eradicate them. A hasty condemnation when we know that some of these species have the capacity to absorb the toxic waste emitted by our carbon-based lifestyles. The urgent need to repair our damaged links with the living world is palpable in the gesture captured by Aurélie Scouarnec on the premises of a care center for sick or injured wildlife: white-gloved hands cover an animal's eyes as they seem to relieve its suffering. The photographer's documentary approach explores the complexity of the relationship between the human and the non-human, paying particular attention to light, sensations and the sometimes moving rituals born of this face-to-face encounter with animal otherness.

Extractivism is a major issue of the 21st century. Artists such as Maximiliano Tineo and Lisa Mazenaueur take a sensitive and original approach to the subject. The former has drawn a photographic parallel between the exploitation of the “Silver Mountain” in Potosí, Bolivia, and that of lithium in a triangle extending into neighboring Argentina and Chile. The second, with her Swiss Gold Entropy series, delves into the archives of her grandfather, who was involved in a troubled gold rush, said to be present in large quantities in the soil of the former Republic of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. The personal story becomes symptomatic of the perversity of an entire system, when the coveted ore stolen from African soil finds itself stockpiled in Switzerland and traded by some of its most unscrupulous nationals, to whom, of course, it benefits. In Mazenauer's work, as in Tineo's, photography is there to reweave the unravelled thread of a historical and geopolitical reality that some would have an interest in keeping secret, while at the same time imposing itself as the site for the elaboration of a subtle visual language, with expressive potential that is never exhausted.

While the rest of the journey through this playfully converted studio apartment will hold a few surprises in store for festival-goers - the bathroom and kitchen are not to be missed in this respect - another important part of “PEP: (Im)possible worlds” will be the arrangement of images with a clear autofictional, memorial and even existential charge. The mystery and enchantment of an elemental, visceral and cosmic representation of the world in the work of Italian photographer Stefano Parrini. Transylvanian Tamas Cseke's existentialist and literary photography - one thinks of Milan Kundera as much as Patrick Modiano - frames a mysterious young woman in very close-up, in an attempt to guess her thoughts, dreams and intentions - or, quite simply, to capture her soul. « Sediments », by American photographer Helen Jones, uses a diaristic, everyday approach to highlight the traces that our lives imperceptibly leave on the surface of the world. This scum of the day, these fragile relics of happiness, seem accessible only through patient, sustained attention to life, as evidenced by the great beauty of the words of a woman who lived for many years in contact with the rigorous, untamed nature of Oregon : « Like images from the early industrial period, when we began the habits that would drastically change the climate, these images are made slowly. », she says. « Photographs can appear instantaneous, a moment snatched out of the river of time, but they are made up of rays of light that must collect on silver halide crystals. In places this temporal process becomes visible— the hazy shape of swaying foliage or swirling reflections gathering cloud-like on the surface of moving water. »

With As Dusk Crawls, by British artist Polly White, the self-narrative once again shakes things up as it intersects with ecological concerns. In a sumptuous still life featuring young hands lifting the two parts of a horse's skull, the artist's own memories and sensations are reactivated: childhood in the countryside, a harmonious relationship with flora and fauna, but also the decline, in the space of a few years, of this seminal landscape, gradually emptied of its substance by the excesses of intensive agriculture. This striking vision, like all the others chosen, resonated and arranged by Bénédicte Blondeau and Anne Immelé in a fluid, coherent display, has a real emotional accuracy. It can be seen as an evocative link between all those things we can still vouch for in the “here and now” of the world - the wish, for example, for a more harmonious and gentle coexistence with the living - and that “beyond” space and time into which photography magically enables us to immerse ourselves.



PEP : (Im)possible worlds
Jury and curators PEP × BPM : Bénédicte Blondeau,
Anne Immelé, Svenja Lüdemann, Mark Lüdemann

Selected artists: Guillaume Amat, Filippo Barbero, Ole Brodersen, Matthew Bruce,
Panos Charalampidis et Mary Chairetaki, Odysseas Chloridis, Tamas Cseke, Mauro Curti,
Karolina Dudek, Daniel L. Fleitas, Yingying Gao, Uta Genilke, Robin Germany, Yann Haeberlin,
Alix Haefner, Vincent Jondeau, Helen Jones, Ina Königs, Cinzia Laliscia, Felix Lampe,
Lisa Mazenauer, Kim Llerena, Julien Mauve, Giaime Meloni, Maria Oliveira, Stefano Parrini,
Pedro Rodrigues, Paula Pedrosa, Jason Pinckard, Paula Punkstina, Martha Roschmann,
Aurélie Scouarnec, Fiona Segadães Da Silva, Katya Selezneva, Ashutosh Shaktan,
Marten Slothouwer, Maximiliano Tineo, Diana Tishchenko, Marinos Tsagkarakis, Armelle Tulunda,

Valentin Joseph Valette, Alkistis Voutsara, Polly White

LA KunsTURM, Tour de l’Europe (14th floor), Mulhouse
September 14 to October 13, 2024