“Life on Planet Orsimanirana”, an exhibition designed as a community system

Cannot the museum open? Let’s start with the radio anyway, ahead of schedule. Almost a year after the first lockdown, Hamburg’s Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (MK&G), led by the Austrian Tulga Beyerle, solves (hopefully momentarily) the problem of institutional closure with an unconventional project that includes a broadcast section as part of the exhibition led by Jerszy Seymour of the extraordinary Dirty Art Department. “Life on Planet Orsimanirana” – jointly conceived, curated and realised by the Italian Emanuele Braga of the activist collective Macao Milano, Assemble London’s Amica Dall and the aforementioned designer and artist along with Dennis Conrad and Luisa Hilmer of MK&G – aims at telling the extraordinary power of an entirely original collective imagery that unfolds inside and outside the walls of the German institution.

Is this an unusual and therefore fascinating world, full of humour and fantasy, capable of awakening consciences? Let’s hope so! The creative extremism is in power here (what a wonderful opportunity) and what could be more fascinating? In the curators’ words: “Life on Planet Orsimanirana is an exhibition conceived as a community system and a physical, online radio station that invites viewers to immerse themselves in a kaleidoscopic primordial soup of molecular consciousness, an archive of autonomous reflections, a futuristic DIY narrative and an injection of reactions to organic processes”.

The idea is to reproduce an unprecedented universe: it starts with the concept of “Non-Gesamt Gesamtkunstwerk”, (literally translated as ‘total art, not total’ – it sounds bad but it gets the idea) as a kind of decentralised generative form of (different) world-building to be experienced first-hand. Art collectives (Macao, Das Gängeviertel, Park Fiction, Assemble, Hallo Festspiele and the Dirty Art Department), activists, local and international artists and designers are invited to be present, to attend on site, to participate and activate discussions and conversations as well as to organise workshops and performances to seek new ways forward. It will be shared with the general public thanks to the web radio www.radio-orsimanirana.com, on air from 5 February – so with the museum still closed, pending its reopening on 14 February. The radio programme is entrusted to the Berlin-based queer and feminist tattoo studio Muschi Muschi with Daddies on Acid, and is set up in a dedicated space equipped with musical instruments and mixers which also hosts Assemble London with its series of alien sculptures, as well as the evocative projections created by Macao Milano, entitled Moleculocracy.

But the goal of the exhibition is to predispose the viewer to a specific state of mind; a critical and proactive state that is able to awaken the consciousness in search of other, but possible and tangible dimensions. The raised issues – social, existential, ecological and economic – are factual and touch on universal participatory issues, knots to be unravelled that can be resolved with a close exchange of ideas accompanied by a total freedom of expression – not only verbal.

“This project was born from the desire to bring equality and harmony between humans, genders, sexuality, non-humans and the environment, and to stimulate new forms of happiness and spirituality. The project seeks to respond to the social, ecological and existential crisis we are experiencing now by presenting joyful interventions that represent the world we want on a practical, imaginary and symbolic level”. (Emanuele Braga, Amica Dall and Jerszy Seymour) With “Life on Planet Orsimanirana”, the Beyerle’s institution once again affirms a deep desire for research and radical criticism of the present, as well as questioning “what is really worth presenting in museums today and how to engage the general public”, the director adds. This composite, and therefore exceptional, exhibition is dedicated to those who wish to play a proactive role within the museum institution (and beyond), using the power of the imagination to look for answers to the present.

It is not possible not to mention all the participants: Saâdane Afif, Balzer Balzer, Baratto & Mouravas, Charles Benjamin, Franco ‘Bifo’ Beradi, Veronika Bjarsch, Borie, Deborah Bowmann, Das Gängeviertel, Anaïs Borie, Daniel Dewar and Gregor Gicquel, Dirty Art Department, Quentin Dupuy, DVTK, Freies Sender Kombinat, Hallo Festspiele, HFBK & Jesko Fezer, Institute of Radical Imagination, Tom Kemp, Reinier Kranendonk, Selma Köran, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Mary Maggic, Marcell, Mars, Massive Attack x Young Fathers, M.Bassy, Morph Collective, Muschi Muschi & Daddies on Acid, New Day Gallery, OBOT, Park Fiction, Anna Reutinger, RiMaFlow, Octave Rimbert-Rivière, Eurico Sá Fernandes, Daniele Salvini, Janne Schimmel, Lavinia Schulz & Walter Holdt, Jeremy Shaw, Tomasz Skibicki, Ursina Tossi, Touche Touche and many others.

“Life on Planet Orsimanirana” is on until 20 June; it will be interesting to understand not only the tangible developments but above all the questions that an exercise of such singular energy will be able to raise. “Life on Planet Orsimanirana”, more than an exhibition project, is a place to meet and discuss. In whatever dimension that may be.