CSW

I was invited to assist architect and scientist Zbigniew Oksiuta during the preparation and the opening of his show at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, in Warsaw, Poland.

I have previously worked with this visionary architect on number of occasions. His “Breeding Spaces & Transgenic Habitats” exhibition further pushed the boundaries of experimental, biological and sustainable architecture.

During the opening Jens Hauser had a fascinating lecture :
"Observations on an art of growing interest.
Towards a phenomenological approach to art involving biotechnology"

"Breeding Spaces & Transgenic Habitats"
In the techno-economic world all objects, tools, machines and instruments created by man are lifeless things. Because they are not alive, they cannot die. They are outside of the cyclical self-regulating economy and are in a state of entropy. This contributes to the uncontrolled growth of material things in consequence bringing the increasing expenditure of resources and degradation of our planet.
Live systems are systems that are opening dynamic processes. They are characterized by self-organization and autonomy. These instable systems are only possible on the border of order and chaos.
They are part of the cyclical economy. They use the solar energy in the most economical way and they create the least amount of entropy.
"The forms of the living are not, but happen; they are the expression of a perpetual flow of matters and energies, running through the organism and forming it at the same time. What morphology defines as form and structure means a chronological cross-section through a stream of process in space and time." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Das biologische Weltbild, 1949)
Life, as we know takes place in a liquid medium. As only in this labile material state the dynamic self-organizing processes, that are the foundation of evolution, are possible.
Existence of the biosphere and existence of life on Earth, both depend on that whether we shall be able to move from the over-exploiting economy of linear systems to the cyclical economy of Nature.
Nature and live beings do not have a chance against the mechanical civilization, which does not obey rules of play: labile existence, evolutional processes of development and cyclical economy.
We are at the turning point of the evolution, the point that might perhaps be compared to the discovery of processes of assimilation of CO2 (with the aid of sunlight) by the cyan bacteria, which took place billions of years ago. Evolution moved on from the over-exploitation of energy contained in the cosmic primordial soup to self-producing processes, thus creating the basis for Nature?s cycles and enabling the development of life.
In order to protect the biosphere we have to abandon the exploitation of non-renewable resources of energy and create a possibility of transformation of solar energy into a chemical one ? by means of photosynthesis.
The complexity of the self-creation processes, the precision of the transfer of information and cyclical economy of living organisms has no comparison to any artificial systems.
These principles of Life extend a great hope for creating a biological future in which the transfer of energy, matter and information will be a biological progress and the structures, the objects and the habitats will breed as living organisms.
Zbigniew Oksiuta