A lecture I gave for the exhibition ‘Natur als Argument’ at Kunstverein Bamberg in 2019, inspired by my fascination with the idea that every lifeform constructs its own world—always embedded in its own time and reality.
Soma, Simulacra, Situation – Reflections on the Living in UUmwelt by Pierre Huyghe, author: Charlotte Desaga
If we wish to learn something essential about nature—its very being as vitality—then visual art offers an inexhaustible resource, far more than modern science, which typically avoids the question of nature’s essence. The interplay between nature and artistic expression reveals much about humanity’s place in the world, and how it perceives its surroundings. This surrounding world—what we call “environment” (Umwelt)—can only be understood through the consciousness of living beings.
This is the focus of Pierre Huyghe’s work, in which he explores the environments of different forms of existence. He calls these various worlds UUmwelten—with two capital U’s. And indeed, they are many.
Born in Paris in 1961, Huyghe often addresses the conditions, possibilities, and limitations of cultural, biological, and institutional systems. He creates evolving settings that often unfold in real time during exhibitions.
Nature and environment are not synonyms, but in Huyghe’s work, they are intrinsically linked. In this constellation, life itself exists in multiple causal relationships with both its surrounding world and with time—each shaped by specific modes of consciousness. With this in mind, let us turn to his spatial installation UUmwelt.
First exhibited in 2018, UUmwelt comprises several elements dispersed across multiple gallery spaces, each becoming an element in its own right. We encounter live flies roaming freely, a wall partially sanded down to reveal hidden layers of paint, the dust left behind on the floor, and—most prominently—five sequences of individual images displayed on monumental LED screens.
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