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Lisa Rave
Europium, 2014

Still: Courtesy the artist

Lisa Rave

Collection

Single-channel video installation, color, sound
18 min 40 sec

In Europium (2014), Lisa Rave interweaves various layers of imagery and text, analyzing history’s repeating patterns in the complex interplay of culture, economy, and ecology. The video is titled after a rare earth mineral that will soon be mined from the ocean ﬂ oor. With its sequences of images structured like a nautilus shell, its narratives nested within one another, the work draws intricate connections between ecology, currency, spiritism, and commodity fetish while questioning the idea of progress. Although it is named after the European continent, europium cannot be found there. Rave comments on past and current exploitation of “resources,” with a particular view to the colonial history in the Paciﬁ c and its ongoing reverberations. Poignantly, the ﬁ rst deep-sea mining intervention is likely to take place in the Bismarck Sea, in Papua New Guinea, a place colonized by Australia, Germany, and Great Britain, among others. The revenues will go mostly to Western companies and cause environmental damage aﬀ ecting ecosystems and local communities. Rave connects the extraction of wealth with contemporary currencies such as euro notes, in which europium is used as a marker of authenticity. Europium is also employed in technologies such as mobile phones, video monitors, and projectors, similar to those used to screen Rave’s work.

CURRENT LOANS

Exhibition: Floating Cinema - Unknown Waters
Venue: Giudecca, Laguna di Venezia
Curator: A project conceived by Edoardo Aruta and Paolo Rosso presented by Microclima, in collaboration with Ocean Space / TBA21−Academy, Pentagram Stiftung, Palazzo Grassi – Punta della Dogana – Pinault Collection, In Between Art Film Foundation and Lamyland – Owenscorp
August 27, 2021

Living and working in Berlin, Germany

RELATED PROGRAM

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Privacy Statement

Symposium: Return to the Sea

Oceans. Imagining a Tidalectic Worldview

Artists

Lisa Rave

Lisa RaveEuropium, 2014

Lisa Rave
Europium, 2014