POWER connects questions of energy and politics. The exhibition and accompanying program challenges viewers to consider how contemporary infrastructure relates to everyday life across intersecting concerns, including political institutions, citizen participation, geopolitics, energy transition, and climate justice. From oil and gas pipelines to domestic radiators, from wind turbines to recycling hubs, infrastructure is central to today’s debates surrounding systemic change. Objects of intense political, social, and economic contestation, these infrastructures distribute power in both senses of the word POWER : as energy and as politics.
Today, architects, landscape designers, artists, and urban practitioners perpetuate the regime of carbon modernity. Yet they are also in a unique position to shift discourse and practice toward large-scale energetic transformation.
POWER is an exhibition that brings together historic references, contemporary practices, and speculations on the future. The contributors are comprised of a transdisciplinary field of architects, landscape designers, artists, philosophers, historians, scientists, legislators, and nongovernmental organizations: Monira Al Qadiri, Rachel Armstrong / Rolf Hughes / Anna Vershinina, Sammy Baloji / Jean Katambayi / Daddy Tshikaya (On-Trade-Off), BAUKUNST, BC Architects / Babini Geysen/ Schenk Hattori, Bento, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Oana Bogdan & Antoine Crahay, Jochen Brandi, Constantin Brodzki, City Mine(d) / Fanny Monier, Pierre Coulon / André Noterman, Eugène Delatte / Robert Maquestieau, Emile Devreux, Paul Duvigneaud, Feddes Olthof, Buckminster Fuller, Fritz Haller, HouseEurope! / B+ / Fosbury Architecture / s+ ETHZ, Bruno Latour, Armin Linke, OMA/AMO/ Rem Koolhaas / Reinier de Graaf, Claude Parent, André and Jean Polak, René Pechère, Cedric Price, Chris Pype, Philippe Rahm, Georges Ricquier, François & Luc Schuiten, Karl Schwanzer, Bas Smets, Territorial Agency, TU Delft / The New Open with Meta Office, Willy Van Der Meeren / Léon Palm, Hugo Van Kuyck, Hans Wieser Benedetti, and Liam Young.
In parallel to the exhibition, the project includes POWER Talks, a public program of lectures, roundtable discussions, and film screenings which among others features Rachel Armstrong, Alice Babini, BC Architects, Oana Bogdan, Kristiaan Borret, Arno Brandlhuber, Koenraad Danneels, Ludwig Engel, Olaf Grawert, Andrés Jaque, Stephan Kampelmann, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Sabine Oberhuber, Marina Otero Verzier, Dennis Pohl, Philippe Rahm, Tomàs Saraceno, Bas Smets, Paulo Tavares and many more.
In the framework of the exhibition POWER and its public program, CIVA hosted the launch of After Comfort: A User’s Guide, a new long-term project by e-flux Architecture in collaboration with Daniel A. Barber, Jeannette Kuo, Ola Uduku, and Thomas Auer.
Intergenerational workshops will also be held as part of the POWER exhibition, in collaboration with Auranne Leray, BC, City Mine(d), Louise Lainiez, V+ and many more.
