Messengers From Above 

Yael Bartana, Julius von Bismarck, Albrecht Dürer, Bogomir Ecker, Rodney Graham
Wolfgang Kaiser, Lukas Kindermann, Sonia Leimer, Olaf Nicolai, Regine Petersen, James Rosenquist, Charles Stankievech

Will the sky fall on our heads one day? Meteorites have a magical attraction, but at the same time they fuel age-old fears. Whereas in the Middle Ages they were regarded as divine signs and ominous devil’s stones, today people fear a natural disaster: a meteorite impact that could wipe out our civilisation. Perhaps not such a far-fetched thought. After all, according to scientific studies, the impact of a cosmic colossus several kilometres in diameter around 66 million years ago is said to have caused massive climate change and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Is there a threat of a repeat? Do we need to prepare to leave the Earth? For the time being, there is no reason to worry, as planetary defence programmes from NASA or ESA have their sights firmly set on potentially dangerous large calibres from space. Innovative technologies could even prevent a collision in an emergency by manipulating the trajectory and course of the asteroids.

Countless pieces of extraterrestrial rock enter the Earth’s atmosphere every day. Because they are often only the size of a grain of dust, they usually burn up unnoticed. Larger specimens light up as fireballs in the firmament, admired as “shooting stars” or meteors. Some debris makes it to the earth’s surface as meteorites. Bang on impact – as happened most recently in Germany in January 2024 near Ribbeck, north-west of Berlin. Meteorites leave behind fascinating traces, not only in the form of cratered landscapes or destroyed buildings. The mysterious messengers from space also harbour exciting secrets and are important information carriers for science. It is highly probable that meteorites were involved in the origin of life. It has only recently been proven that some of them contain organic substances such as water and amino acids. A groundbreaking discovery.

In the ERES Foundation’s new exhibition, the primordial matter of the solar system becomes a “time capsule”, a valuable information carrier for art and science. While researchers hope to draw conclusions about the origin and future of life from these rare lumps of stone or metal, artists are reading the extraterrestrial data storage devices in a multifaceted wealth of contemporary positions: Utopian-dystopian visions and works full of humour and poetry penetrate the atmosphere of the exhibition spaces, questioning chance, probability and again and again the position of us humans in the great cosmic structure. Will we need an interplanetary Noah’s Ark?