iMAL presents End and Beginning

iMAL presents End and Beginning marking the 25th anniversary of the Art Center for Digital Cultures & Technology in Brussels.

This ambitious and groundbreaking group exhibition explores alternative systems of care for the future coexistence of humans, nature, and technology.

It is also iMAL's first group exhibition as a member of the European Media Art Platform (EMAP), an organisation that enables European media art organisations and artists to collaborate on projects.

Inspired by Polish Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska’s poetry on resilience and hope after war, End and Beginning invites visitors to challenge anthropocentric views and reimagine collective ecosystems rooted in multispecies cooperation.

Curated as a narrative of care, the exhibition unfolds across three interconnected circles: Care for Humans, Care for Nature, and Care for Technology. Through the lens of 14 diverse works by international artists from the European Media Art Platform (EMAP) and Belgium-based creators, the exhibition navigates critical issues around collective and individual responsibility, interspecies cooperation, and empathy for humans and other-than-human entities.

Challenging the long-held notion of human superiority, End and Beginning redefines care as an ecological and relational structure balancing shared existence between human and non-human entities. By embracing and acknowledging alternative perspectives—be they human, artificial, natural, or imaginative—the exhibition envisions futures that are less extractive, destructive, and unequal. Here, "everything is intelligent and worthy of our care and conscious attention" as James Bridle writes in Ways of Being.

In an invitation to reconsider and reflect on social infrastructures such as labor, communal practices, energy consumption and reuse of existing resources, the artist’s works encourage critical questions and conversations, offering diverse perspectives on our shared futures of care.

In our increasingly digitized, technology driven world, next to scientists and programmers, it is artists, who create alternative visions for a more sustainable and just society. ​
​Here are some of the topics that this exhibition and the works presented, are addressing:

For example, Vivien Roubaud’s mixed-media installation Stalactite reflects on the cooperation between human intervention and natural phenomena, encouraging a reevaluation of how we perceive waste and the materials that surround us. Roubaud extracted limestone-based stalactites from abandoned buildings in Charleroi and beneath the Brussels Canal, giving them a second life. Assisted by a machine that perpetuates its expansion, the stalactite serves as an encapsulated natural event, emphasising the fragility of its formation, which occurs too slowly for us to observe in real time. His sculptures go beyond mere recuperation of waste; they incorporate autonomous and breathing systems, aiming to reveal hidden qualities in the objects that surround our daily life. 

End and Beginning is not merely an exploration of the present, but a bold step toward imagining the endless possibilities of our shared futures. This internal quest for sustainable and symbiotic futures will come alive through Alex Verheast's acclaimed interactive philosophical game Ad Hominem, a choose-your-own-adventure film, where the player takes on the role of Change and is invited to construct their own versions utopic futures. End and Beginning is an invitation to engage with the underrepresented voices and intelligences that will shape the ecosystems of tomorrow, and a call to rethink what it means to care in an era where the lines between human, nature, and technology are increasingly blurred.

End and Beginning
​​7 November 2024 - 16 February 2025
​​iMAL
​Curated by Ismini Kyritsis and iMAL team
​In the framework ​
​Artistes:

THE END AND THE BEGINNING by Wisława Szymborska

After every war
​someone has to clean up.
​Things won’t
​straighten themselves up, after all.
​Someone has to push the rubble
​to the side of the road,
​so the corpse-filled wagons
​can pass.

Someone has to get mired
​in scum and ashes,
​sofa springs,
​splintered glass,
​and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
​to prop up a wall.

Someone has to glaze a window,
​rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,
​and takes years.

All the cameras have left
​for another war.

We’ll need the bridges back,
​and new railway stations.

Sleeves will go ragged
​from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
​still recalls the way it was.

Someone else listens
​and nods with unsevered head.

But already there are those nearby
​starting to mill about
​who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
​sometimes someone still unearths
​rusted-out arguments
​and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
​what was going on here
​must make way for
​those who know little.

And less than little.

And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
​causes and effects,
​someone must be stretched out
​blade of grass in his mouth
​gazing at the clouds.

—Wisława Szymborska, translated by Joanna Trzeciak

About iMAL

iMAL is a cultural organisation, located in Molenbeek, Brussels, combining the roles of an Art Center and a Lab. The approach of iMAL's 25th anniversary marks the beginning of a broader reflection on resilience, resistance to the dominant definition of progress, and the responsibility of fostering solidarity.

iMAL supports artistic practices that critically engage with digital technologies. We propose a multi-voiced and transdisciplinary approach to contemporary issues through our program consisting of exhibitions, research and production residencies, reflection and training, and public engagement.

iMAL also has its own workshop, the iMAL Fablab, where residencies take place every year. The Fablab also has its own public access system, with the aim of making technology accessible to all without distinction.

In the coming years, iMAL will explore the degrowth of computation and aims to emphasize the importance of regenerative production ecosystems.

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