In the 21^st century military occupations, neoliberal finance, and technological surveillance have intensified drastically, to the point of creating a condition where the “greatest emergency is the absence of emergency.” This emergency theory does not imply that a crisis such as the coronavirus or the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are not fundamental emergencies that we must continue to confront at all levels. It simply demands that we avoid pretending these were unpredictable events that we didn’t know would occur. The coronavirus, for example, was an “absent” and “great” emergency for many years – sociologists, scientists, and international organizations have warned us for decades of the threat of pandemic influenza – that became an emergency. The same is occurring now with air pollution which is responsible for the deaths of seven million people every year. The more an emergency is absent the greater it is.

This exhibit aims to present to the public an art exhibition where several contemporary artists display works that can save us, that is, “rescue us into our greatest emergencies” before they become “emergencies.” But why must we call upon artists to rescue us into these emergencies? Aren’t scientists, journalists, and politicians doing this already?

Although we are constantly warned of looming financial crisis, social inequality, and environmental degradation, the twenty-first century is characterized by a general distrust in government agencies, major newspapers, and credentialed academics. The internet, particularly social media, has tricked us into believing that traditional vectors of authority and legitimation are no longer needed to know facts. This is a symptom of the global return to order and realism, which seeks to pretend that our knowledge does not require filters, interpretations, and emotions when, in fact, it depends upon these. The difference, for example, between Greta Thunberg’s environmental activism and the findings of respected climate scientists is not one of kind but rather of degree, intensity, and depth. Scientific results by respected scientists can be truthful but rarely as powerful and effective as her activism. In contemporary art, this difference becomes more evident.

In Why Only Art can Save Us. Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency,[i] Santiago Zabala explains that art often works better than scientific announcements and philosophical treatises as a way to reveal emergencies. This is not because of artists’ ability to create beauty but rather for the intensity and depth of their works. Today, artists are closer to the greatest emergencies than many scientists and philosophers because art has been more resistant to the global return to order that defines our socio-political condition as the emergence of far-right populist demonstrate. While these seek to “rescue us from emergencies” by improving and preserving our order, art at its best attempts to “rescue us into emergencies,” creating event and shock. This rescue not only reveals absent emergencies but it also becomes an emergency, that is, an experience of danger. If we agree with the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin’s when he states that “where the danger is, also grows the saving power,” we must find ways to experience or at least acknowledge this danger. Art’s role in stirring our existence is vital to opposing the absence of emergency sought by the advocates of the return to order.

This exhibition presents works of art by Timo Aho, Diane Burko, Arturo Comas, Gabriel Barcia-Colombo, Beverly Fishman, Julia Galán, kennardphillipps, Josh Kline, Filippo Minelli, Pekka Niittyvirta, and Avelino Sala who seek this experience and demand public intervention in global emergencies—climate change, increasing inequality, gender violence, whatever has been concealed by the rhetoric of power—that are concealed in the idea of their absence.