“Imagine you are falling. But there is no ground.”

With these lines, contemporary artist and writer Hito Steyerl begins her essay In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective. In it, Steyerl proposes the liberation of the subject using an analogy between the free-fall and the loss of spatial orientation caused by the new types of visibilities that emerged with the invention of surveillance technologies. Through a brief look at the history of the horizon, the artist argues that this line—whether imaginary or real—and the invention of linear perspective, both work as instruments for the control of representation, and therefore of the way of seeing and organizing the world.

Let’s consider that our sense of spatial and temporal orientation was for a very long time governed by the stability of this line as a crucial element, for example, in maritime navigation. Through this system a person determined their geographic location and relationship to their surroundings, their destiny and ambitions.

This visual representation system placed us at the center of the world’s view, and declared this position as a norm. That immobility, according to Steyerl, established a point of view of dominance, control and subjectivity. For her, this system has been declining over the last century as we can see in styles, such as Cubism, and techniques, like collage, that decompose the image. She argues that this decline is more so intensified by the effect of new surveillance technologies like aerial and satellite views. According to Steyerl, the loss of the horizon implies the fall of these systematic constructions that rule our gaze and, in turn, provoke a liberation of the subject.

If the horizon is unstable, where are we?, how do we situate ourselves in the world?, how do we relate to our environment?, can we find change in this unsteadiness?

These questions are the genesis of my curatorial exercise for this project, which comes from a concern with the increasingly rapid transformations of the world we dwell in: climatic change as a consequence of our emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses, the loss of biodiversity, the destruction of ecosystems, ocean acidification, deforestation, soil and water contamination, and our modes of consumption—fueled by the logics of merchandising and advertising—founded in the precocious and programmed obsolescence of consumer products in service and benefit of capital.

This period of ecological crisis has been denominated by some sociologists as the Anthropocene, a new geological era where man rivals natural forces. This means that the levels of devastation caused by humans, and the speed with which we act over the globe, is equivalent to that of any natural disaster.

Sociological critique has spoken about an Anthropocenic Turn, proposing to reconsider the relationship between society and nature which, since modernity, has followed the rules of capital observing that nature exists as long as it is in the service of humans, instead of considering ourselves part of nature itself.

Humans, as the main agents of climate change, have the responsibility to compensate their actions with the creation of a new dialogue or a new correlation with other forms of life; as the main agents of climate change we have to turn once more, this time towards the landscape, to become one with nature and consider ourselves part of it, and not separated from it. We have to urgently rethink the socio-ecological crisis from a relational perspective. Through notions like post-extractivism and downturn we can think about (unstable) horizons of change and alternatives based on another environmental rationality, rooted community and other ways of social organization.

The works in this exhibition are reminders of the problem, but also suggestions of ways in which we can generate change. Throughout the show we find works like those of Vivian Suter, Irene Kopelman, Ana Mendieta, and Sofía Taboas—which’s title I borrowed for the show—, that involve strategies to foster a reconnection with the landscape, while artists like Wilhlem Sasnal, Eduardo Abaroa, or Superflex directly point to the ecological crisis.

In her series Siluetas [Silhouettes] (1973-80), Mendieta imprints the shape of her own body over flat terrains, earth mounds, stones, and ruins in a symbolic fusion between body and nature, a process she calls “return to earth.” Meanwhile, Kopelman connects with her environment through drawing; during her multiple expeditions throughout the world, the artist spends long periods of time observing the landscape with the aim to develop a specific interest over some peculiarity she discerns in the environment she is in. Meanwhile, Suter relates to the environment through painting. The artist—who lives in the Atitlán Lake area of Guatemala—works as much inside as outside of her studio, frequently hanging her works to dry outdoors where they are exposed to the dense vegetation and tropical climate of their ecosystem; there, elements like earth, botanic material, microorganisms, and mud stains adhere to her paintings.

On the other side—the dark side—, we find works like Incendio digital obsoleto [Obsolete Digital Fire] (2005) in which Eduardo Abaroa uses plastic straws to present a dystopian scene where digital and artificial elements have overtaken the natural ecosystem’s role. The installation takes the form of a group of corals crowded over the walls, while its use of materials points to the mass production of plastic objects and with it, the destruction of nature. Next to it is Amphibious (Login-Logout) (2005), a work by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla; these works relate to each other if we think of recent environmental campaigns about the impact of these plastic products over our marine fauna. Following that same line, Wilhelm Sasnal’s Petroleum (2010) depicts a desert landscape invaded by black spots that suggest the presence of oil wells; Sasnal is interested in petroleum as an indicator of contemporary economy and what its extraction and consumption imply for the environment.

And, how can we overlook the enormous neon sign? This piece by the artist collective Superflex points to the concept of the Anthropocene. Titled It is not the end of the world (2019), it makes reference to a specific natural disaster: the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet and the disconcerting rising sea levels. According to Superflex, we are approaching a dystopian future, still the phrase they use poses hope in the Earth’s resilience, even if in a posthuman era.

If we return to the issues raised by Hito Steryerl, we find that it is in unsteadiness, in the free fall and in the transformation of the horizon, where the fight for the liberation of the systemic really lies. We can no longer think of space in terms of a stable horizon, but a moving one.

• Curatorship: Verana Codina
• Artists: Eduardo Abaroa, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Juan Carlos Alom,  Elena Damiani, Mario García Torres, Irene Kopelman, Zoe Leonard, Jorge Méndez Blake, Ana Mendieta, Juan Rulfo, Wilhelm Sasnal, US Signal Corps, Superflex, Vivian Suter, Sofía Táboas, Adrián Villar Rojas.
• Seventh curatorship for CIAC’s office in 2017