We have each walked though city squares where brightly lit advertisements dazzle with images of exotic desires. Awe-inspiring in themselves, contemporary inner-city areas are nevertheless palpably functionalized and tightly programmed – designated overwhelmingly to consumption and work. The more we think on them, the more we are aware of how these places bound potential and constrain expression, says Olafur Eliasson. “Sites like Piccadilly and Times Square are enormously impressive spectacles; it’s a thrill; it’s a rollercoaster-style joyride. But I am not offered a choice, except to spend or to leave.” In Lifeworld, we become conscious of our sensorial relationships to urban public space anew. Part of the ever-evolving history and structure of our cities, public spaces hold the potential to be more than the physical fabric we traverse. Instead, this groundbreaking original work invites viewers to restore a sense of agency. “Once you have been granted the opportunity to question…

Capturing the contradictory phenomena of military flypasts – “a raw moment of extreme weather,” DISARM transforms a jingoistic display of military might into a call for global disarmament. As jets emerge from an immense sky to spell out the word “DISARM”, international audiences are confronted by a fleeting moment where our language meets its limits. “The aircraft in the flypast are named after forces of nature, Typhoon, Leopard and Lightning… so it speaks of our assault on the planet and each other.” At a moment of heightened tension, with more global conflict now than at any time since World War II, the precarity and contradictions in defence and aggression are writ large. “This is language in action.” The flypast continues Banner’s exploration of language to confront and exist beyond the predictable or clichéd. In DISARM, language is physical, subversive and perversely demonstrative. “In and of itself, a…

‘Everyone can be an artist’ — a call that  encapsulates the potential for each human being to embrace creativity, granting agency over one’s own life and enabling individuals to become creators rather than mere subjects to disempowering routines and roles. However, this holistic possibility is often obscured by a pervasive sense of discouragement fostered by societal pressures, historical dystopia, and the perception of art as confined to museums, leisure time, or exclusive domains. The vision that ‘everyone can be an artist’ inherently involves a flight of imagination challenging the ontological separation between life and art, reinstating the fundamental participation of the latter in every aspect of existence, much like the unity between humanity and nature. Kembra Pfahler has always been one step ahead or one step outside. Since her first performances in the 80s in New York, the artist’ life practice has…

In our questions, more so than any answers, we can find the map of the human mind. We ask questions in search of learning and understanding, says Ai Weiwei, dividing ourselves from systems of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that lack interior identities. The questions we ask reveal our humanity and preoccupations, further distancing the human questioner from machine systems, which have no life story, no personhood from which any sincere question can arise. Ai Weiwei’s 81 questions are both the continuation of a deep history of rational and spiritual inquiry as well as an innately idiosyncratic autoportrait. Ai vs AI is both an endeavour to reinvigorate the ancient convention of philosophical dialogues (from Socrates to The Enlightenment Salon) and a hand-drawn map of Ai’s own mind. Taking inspiration from both the Tiānwèn (‘The Heavenly Questions’) and…