Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: Alienarium 5

Alienarium 5 is a speculative environment that invites us to imagine possible encounters with extraterrestrials. The exhibition is a culmination of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s decades-long interest in science fiction, and her continued research into deep space and alien life.  

Engaging with the exhibition as a medium, Gonzalez-Foerster’s spatial inventions and investigations probe the notion of display, as well as how an image or scene is experienced. Drawing on a wide range of references from music, literature, film, architecture, and pop culture the artist creates densely layered environments with the ability to transport viewers into alternative narrative, temporal and psychological dimensions.  

Compelled by historically experimental modes of presentation such as the panorama, the artist creates uncanny environments that unsettle both the familiar and the expected. Gonzalez-Foerster’s distinctive form of speculative visual fiction connects feeling and thought to that which we can see, smell, hear, and touch, in an exploratory process of world-building. 

For Alienarium 5, Gonzalez-Foerster has collaborated with writer and philosopher Paul B. Preciado, musician Julien Perez and parfumier Barnabé Fillion, among others, to transform the gallery into a spectacular and otherworldly vision. A multi-user VR piece contemplates new forms of connection through alien embodiment, while an immersive 360-degree collage titled Metapanorama uses outer space as a framework to bring humans, non-humans and extraterrestrials together. With live engagements taking place at various points during the exhibition, Alienarium 5 blurs the lines between what is real and what is imagined. 

Connecting to Serpentine’s historical role as a tea house and site of rendezvous, Alienarium 5 serves as a meeting point for friends from the past, the present and a time not yet named. Welcoming visitors into a world of expanded possibility the exhibition is, in the artist’s words, “a mutant place contribution to the invention of new technologies of consciousness. It is an anti-War of the Worlds vision.”  

Alienarium 5 is a proposal for freedom and interspecies connection. It is an experimental place in which to discover new forms of love and to imagine encounters with possible visitors from outer space.  

Live Apparitions will take place in the gallery on: Friday, May 27, 7–9pm / Saturday, May 28, 4–6pm / Sunday, May 29, 12–2pm

A second weekend of Live Apparitions will take place, dates to be confirmed.

Alienarium 5 is curated by Claude Adjil, Curator at Large and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director. With Kate Wong, Assistant Curator. With special thanks to Mike Gaughan, Gallery Manager.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (b. in 1965 in Strasbourg, France) metabolises cinematographic, literary, architectural, musical and pop references to create spaces that investigate the implicit neutrality of artistic practice and display.

Gonzalez-Foerster’s work consists of short films, concerts, exhibitions and activations to explore the essences of objects and their context. The artist’s multifaceted oeuvre ranges from collected fragments of modernist buildings in Brazil to an immersive light and sound environment speculating on climate catastrophe and the imagination of future life forms.

The artist builds multifaceted worlds that oscillate between finite and infinite, the empirical and the dramaturgical. Elliptical texts, carefully drafted or selected by the artist, often support the understanding of these abstract environments, fluctuating between fiction and non-fiction whilst rooting themselves in the complexity of memory.

Beginning with her participation in the 1992 Exhibit A: Eight Artists from Europe and America and in Serpentine’s Poetry Marathon in 2009, Gonzalez-Foerster has worked closely with the Serpentine for many years. In this time, she has appeared together with writer Enrique Vila-Matas for Park Nights (2010), the Garden Marathon (2011), Memory Marathon (2012), Transformation Marathon (2015), GUEST, GHOST HOST: MACHINE Marathon (2017), and has done a live concert and EP Release of Exotourisme (2018) for which she also collaborated with musician Julien Perez. 

Gonzalez-Foerster is the recipient of the 2002 Marcel Duchamp Award and has been exhibited worldwide, including at the Venice Biennale (Italy, 1990, 1993, 1999, 2003, 2019); Documenta 11 (Kassel, Germany, 2002); the Dia Art Foundation (New York, USA, 2009); the LUMA Foundation (Arles, France, 2012); Manifesta 10 (Saint Petersburg, Russia, 2014); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2014); Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2015); and Secession (Vienna, Austria, 2019). The artist was commissioned for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London, 2008–2009. 

VIVE Arts harnesses cutting-edge technology to transform the way culture is experienced. Since 2016, VIVE Arts has partnered with over fifty cultural institutions and organisations to produce one-of-a-kind projects and realise a variety of innovative collaborations. With the aim of building a rich ecosystem for digital art, VIVE Arts explores the artistic applications of new technologies, supporting artists in the creation of ground-breaking works. Most recently, VIVE Arts launched its NFT Marketplace for all forms of digital art, combining industry leading expertise in Metaverse technologies with a range of bespoke services.

Headline Sponsor: The Rosenkranz Foundation 
Virtual Reality Partner: VIVE Arts 
Supporting Partner: Muse, Rolls-Royce Art Programme
Holorama Partner: The Vega Foundation 
Supporter Circle: 303 Gallery, Galería Albarrán Bourdais, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Corvi-Mora, Jan Mot, Catherine Petitgas, Esther Schipper Berlin
Additional support: Fluxus Art Projects
Advisors: AECOM, Weil, Gallowglass
Serpentine supported by: Arts Council England, Bloomberg Philanthropies