The exhibition On Air  is an emerging ecosystem that hosts a choreography of multiple voices belonging to human and non-human universes and in which works reveal common, fragile and ephemeral rhythms and trajectories linking these worlds. On Air is comprised of the myriad presences, animate and inanimate, that meet and cohabit within it.

The exhibition functions as an ensemble, revealing the strength of the various entities floating in the air and the ways in which they interact with us: from CO2 to cosmic dust, from radio waves to reimagined corridors of movement. Thus, when breath becomes air, the invisible histories that compose the nature of which we are part invite us to poetically reimagine our ways of inhabiting the world—and of being human.

As industrial extraction mines the Earth for resources, threatening entire ecologies, On Air celebrates new ways of thinking and new modes of knowledge production that point the way to a planet free of borders and fossil fuels. In so doing, the exhibition responds to the debate and global challenges posed by the Anthropocene, a word coined to define an epoch in which human activity leaves an impact so great that it profoundly modifies terrestrial ecosystems.

On Air gathers numerous collaborators and collaborations, bringing together scientific institutions, research groups, activists, local communities, visitors, musicians, philosophers, non-human animals, and celestial phenomena, all of whom collectively take part in the evolution of the exhibition. Workshops, concerts, and public talks will regularly transform the exhibition into a “cosmic jam session,” animating On Air with new encounters and assemblies that appear out of this togetherness as part of nascent rhythms of interspecies solidarity.

Curator: Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel

Jamming with spiders concerts program:
October 26: Alvin Lucier
November 23: Evan Ziporyn
December 14: Éliane Radigue

On Air, carte blanche to Tomás Saraceno, with:
Holocnemus pluchei, Éliane Radigue, Psechrus jaegeri, Bruno Latour, Bise, Argiope lobata, PM 2.5, Mitchell Akiyama, Air, Caesium-137, Peter Jäger, Mark Wigley, 1.62 m/s², Yannick Guedon, Tegenaria domestica, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus, Anselm Franke, Sagittarius A*, Yasmil Raymond, Vinciane Despret, GW170817, Milovan Farronato, CO, Maximiliano Laina, Andrea Belfi, Isabelle Su, (C8H8)n, Estelle Zhong Mengual, Cyanobacteria, Michael Marder, Nephila senegalensis, Turritopsis dohrnii, Nephila edulis, Philip Ursprung, Sasha Engelmann, Theridiidae sp, Christine Southworth, Linyphia triangularis, Nick Shapiro, Alberto-László Barabási, Markus J. Buehler, Peggy S. M. Hill, Larinioides sclopetarius, Sam Hertz, Linyphiidae sp, Cyclosa conica, 51 Pegasi b, Bertrand Gauguet, Emidio Giorgio, Nephila inaurata, Anna-Sophie Springer, Zygiella x-notata, Lodovica Illari, Fecenia sp, Pm3n (223), Gabriele Uhl, Steatoda triangulosa, Freifunk Antenna, 9.789 m/s2, Jonathan Ledgard, Eben Kirksey, Robert Barry, Porous Chondrite, Argyroneta aquatica, Jo Grys, Débora Switsun, Glenn Flierl, Badumna longinqua, pm, Parasteatoda tepidariorum, Eratigena atrica, Primavera de Filippi, <10 Hz, Ingo Allekotte, Christian Spiering, Yellow dwarf star, Veronica Fiorito, CO2, Stavros Katsanevas, Mistral, Anna Lena Vaney, Marie Thébaud-Sorger, Ozone, Jol Thomson, Nicolas Arnaud, Soot, Caroline A. Jones, Alberto de Campo, Panda algorithm, Hannes Hoelzl, Brandon LaBelle, U, Etienne Turpin, Alex Jordan, Megan Prelinger, VOC, PM10, Carol Robinson, Jens Hauser, Valerio Boschi, Julia Eckhardt, Christine Rollard, 6.62607004 × 10-34 m2 kg/s, João Ribas, Whales, David Haskell, Leila W. Kinney, CHO, Giorgio Riccobene, Bill McKenna, Cyrtophora citricola, Claudie Haigneré, Neriene peltata, Steatoda grossa, Hg, Philoponella alata, d’bi.young anitafrika, Frédérique Ait-Touati, Anelosimus studiosus, Fernando Ferroni, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Sofia Lemos, Aerocene Explorer, Argiope bruennichi, Neriene clathrata, Luca Cerizza, Derek McCormack, Manuel Platino, Chondrite, Alvin Lucier, Paschal Coyle, Salvatore Viola, Filipa Ramos, (C2H4)n, Timothy Choy, HD 209458 b, Andrea Familari, Li, Steve Torchinsky, 20 Hz, Jussi Parikka, Cumulonimbus, Sarodia Vydelingum, Alberto Etchegoyen, Enoplognatha ovata, Latrodectus geometricus, Vincenzo Napolano, siberian tiger, Claude Vallee, OGLE-2005-BLG-390, Agelena labyrinthica, Benjamin Bratton, Beatriz Garcia, 1 Hz, Heinrich Jaeger, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Museo Aerosolar, Evan Ziporyn…

Tomás Saraceno thanks: Aerocene Foundation, Airparif, BIENALSUR / Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero, CCK / Sistema Federal de Medios y Contenidos Públicos / Argentina, European Gravitational Observatory, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle

Tomás Saraceno was born in 1973 in Tucumán, Argentina. He lives and works in and beyond the planet Earth.
After obtaining his Masters in architecture at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de la Nación Ernesto de la Cárcova in Buenos Aires, Tomás Saraceno studied Fine Art at the Städelschule in Francfort, followed by a Masters in Art and Architecture at the IUAV in Venice. Saraceno then moved to Berlin, where he works on projects that aim to travel “on and beyond planet Earth”. In 2009, the artist’s work was exhibited at the 53rd Venice Biennale, “Fare Mundi” directed by Daniel Birnbaum. His last major solo shows include “Cloud Cities”, presented at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin in 2011, and “On Space Time Foam” at the HangarBicocca in Milan in 2012. The same year, Saraceno produced an in situ Cloud City installation at the Metropolitan Museum of New York’s rooftop. Since 2013, Düsseldorf’s K21 Ständenhaus presents his aerial installation In Orbit, and in 2016 the show “Stillness in Motion, Cloud Cities” has been on at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He has held residencies at Centre National d’Études Spatiales (2014–2015), MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (2012–ongoing) and Atelier Calder (2010), among others. His work has been widely exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions, and is included in the collections of MoMA, New York; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin; among others. Tomás Saraceno first presented his work at Palais de Tokyo in February 2015 in the exhibition “Le Bord des Mondes”, then proposed the seminar Aerocene along with the workshop “Museo Aerosolar”, in response to the COP21 in December 2015. His work Du sol au soleil was on view from October 2017 to January 2018 in Palais de Tokyo’s offsite exhibition « Voyage d’Hiver » in the gardens of Versailles’s castle.

On Air
Carte Blanche to Tomás Saraceno
October 17, 2018–January 6, 2019

Palais de Tokyo
13, avenue du Président Wilson
75116 Paris
France
presse@palaisdetokyo.com

Image: Argyroneta aquatica in the air bubble of the underwater web she built at Studio Tomás Saraceno, 2017. Courtesy the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen; Pinksummer contemporary art, Genoa; Esther Schipper, Berlin;