Conception ETF!

EXAMPLES TO FOLLOW! | ETF! will end at the very place where it started 13 years ago.

The exhibition has become a pioneer of a distinct artistic practice in terms of size, internationality and
richness of artistic methods. At every venue, the particularities of the respective artistic, scientific and environmental activist knowledges were integrated. As a result, the presentation became more condensed.  Each piece already existed and was not just created for a single occasion but was contextualized anew at every single venue. This, too, was and is a sustainable statement against the fast-moving nature of the art market and the short-sightedness of funding practices. Principles of action ETF!

Since ETF!’s started 13 years ago, the preoccupation with the climate disaster, dwindling resources, shrinking biodiversity and actions addressing them has increased significantly in the arts as well as in the political sphere. Lately we can observe artistic institutions implementing gezillion little measures making the institution ecological efficient. However, these measures are only addressing the institutions itself and are not supporting artists engaging with the environmental disaster.

ETF! on the contrary, focused from day one on expanding the individual artistic resonance space, interfering with transformative fields – from urban to material development, from climate theatre to sustainable exhibition concepts – using the means of art, and expanding social perception and imagination for transformation.

In keeping with the principle of the exhibition, further – already existing – artistic positions will be added in the Berlin exhibition integrating the local perspectives and knowledges.

This last venue shows 68 of the artistic positions assembled so far. The chronicle of this journey can be wandered on three Litfass-columns; in the hall hang thoughts that were asked of all 128 artists about what ETF! was and is for them, processed by the artist Nele-Marie Gräber.

We are drawing from the reservoir of voices for afund of aesthetics and sustainability | FAeS as a basis for workshops, panels and lectures.

The boundaries between art, research and invention become blurred in the experimental arrange-ments of the artists, their inventions and interventions, their architectural and aesthetic reflections. Many of the artistic positions use science and technology for their emergence, while others criticise precisely these. The works revolve around the big and the existential questions of our present times- and all of them provoke and request individual action.

The dramatic changes in our living conditions require the cooperation of the various social forces. It is about preserving, visualising, consciously shaping life, about the active engagement of human beings with their own and the surrounding nature.

We need new ways of thinking, moving and organising to be able to tackle the challenges of our present. This requires permeability and alliances between the arts, sciences, activism and participatory processes. And cooperation projects with an economy that is willing to change.