NATIVE LAND, Stop Eject with Paul Virilio, Raymond Depardon, Claudine Nougaret, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Mark Hansen, Laura Kurgan, Ben Rubin :: December 19, 2009 - February 21, 2010 :: Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Nyhavn 2, 1051 Copenhagen K, Denmark.

NATIVE LAND, Stop Eject explores the meaning of sedentariness and nomadism today, an epoch in which human migration flows are taking place on an unprecedented scale. The international COP15 conference on climate change organized by the United Nations and taking place in Copenhagen from December 7-18, 2009 attests to this critical moment in history, where the environment conditions what humans do, what they will become, and where they will live. NATIVE LAND, Stop Eject thus proposes a reflection on the notions of being rooted and uprooted, as well as related questions of identity in two works created especially for the exhibition.

Filmmaker Raymond Depardon gives a voice to those who wish to remain on their land but are threatened with exile. Philosopher Paul Virilio, in collaboration with the artists architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Mark Hansen, and Laura Kurgan, examines and challenges new trends in contemporary human movement due to environmental, political, and economic factors.

HEAR THEM SPEAK, a film by Raymond Depardon with the sound engineer, Claudine Nougaret, is centered on nomads, farmers, islanders, and indigenous peoples, all of whom are either threatened with extinction or living on the periphery of globalization. Giving value to speaking and listening, he focuses on their mother tongue languages: Kawésqar, Mapuche, Afar, Quechua, Chipaya, Breton, Occitan, Yanomami, Guarani.

Though still spoken today, all the languages heard in the film-a large-scale projection that assigns as much importance to sound as image-are endangered, symbolizing the imminent threat to their identity. ‘I was born in my language,’ says one woman, as she voices her anger, pain, and fears.

EXIT an innovative installation by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Mark Hansen, Laura Kurgan and Ben Rubin gives form to Paul Virilio’s concepts on human trajectories across the globe. In a circular and immersive projection, it presents 6 animated maps generated by a database of information provided by international organizations, with a focus upon the following subjects: Population Shifts: Cities. Remittances: Sending Money Home. Political Refugees and Forced Migration. Natural Catastrophes. Rising Seas, Sinking Cities. Speechless and Deforestation.

While you’re waiting to come in and see EXIT, you can have a look in the room next door at the names of all the institutions and organisations that have provided the statistical material behind the dynamic maps. The person responsible for ensuring the validity of all the material used is Francois Gemenne, researcher and professor of migratory movements associated with climate change at the Sciences Po, Paris.

In a separate small video installation Paul Virilio contextualises EXIT. The video consists of an approximately 3-minute-long reading in which Virilio constantly moves forward towards the viewer while speaking of his nostalgia in thinking of the changes in ‘magnitude of the world about its scale’ and contemplating the loss of geographic space these changes entail - an idea that has been central to his philosophical work for decades.

The idea for the exhibition NATIVE LAND, Stop Eject was conceived by Hervé Chandès, director and chief curator of Fondation Cartier. What remains, he asks, of the idea of native land and mother tongue at a time when over 200 million people live in a country other than the one they were born in? It was these kind of facts that aroused Chandès’ curiosity, compelled him to explore the consequences and gave rise to the process and concept behind the exhibition.

Raymond Depardon was born in 1942 in Villefranche-sur-Saône, France and currently lives in Paris. Considered one of the greatest photographers in France today and acclaimed as a filmmaker by the most prestigious international film festivals, he occupies a unique position in the world of contemporary photography and film. After co-founding the Gamma photo agency in 1967, he joined Magnum in 1978. His desire to report on the state of our society, which was already palpable in his photography, has been incorporated into the films-both documentary and fiction-that he has produced over the last thirty-five years. Raymond Depardon has participated in several collective exhibitions organized by the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain: By Night (1996), Amours (1997), The Desert (2000) and Yanomami, Spirit of the Forest (2002). He has made nearly twenty feature-length films and is the author of forty books.

Claudine Nougaret is a producer and sound engineer born in 1958 in Montpellier France. In 1992, she founded the production and distribution company ‘Pamleraie et desert’ with Raymond Depardon, which holds the rights to all of Depardon’s films. She was the sound engineer and producer of many different films included in the official selections of the Venice, Berlin, and Cannes film festivals, the most recent of which was ‘Modern Life’ in 2008. Since 1997, she produced six Raymond Depardon films for the Fondation Cartier.

Paul Virilio was born in 1932 in Paris and currently lives in La Rochelle, France. Professor Emeritus at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris, Paul Virilio also served as a Director and as President of this same institution from 1968 to 1998. In 1973, following the publication of his first philosophical essays, he became editor of the ‘Espace Critique’ collection at Éditions Galilée. He was awarded the Grand Prix National de la Critique in 1987. In 1990, he became Program Director at the Collège International de Philosophie under the presidency of Jacques Derrida. An urbanist and essayist specializing in the strategic issues related to new technologies, Paul Virilio has published many books, and his writings have appeared in numerous French and international publications. He has participated in several exhibitions at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain since 1991 and organized the first exhibition devoted to the theme of accidents entitled Unknown Quantity (2002).

Diller Scofidio + Renfro is an interdisciplinary studio based in New York that fuses architecture with the visual and performing arts. Their work encompasses various fields including architecture, urban design, sitespecific installations, multimedia theater, electronic media, and print. It was co-founded in 1979 by Elizabeth Diller, Professor at Princeton University School of Architecture, and by Ricardo Scofidio, Professor Emeritus at The Cooper Union. Richard Renfro, who was recently the Cullinan Visiting Professor at Rice University, joined the agency in 2004. Diller and Scofidio participated in the exhibition Un monde réel at the Fondation Cartier in 1999.

Mark Hansen is a statistician. He is an Associate Professor of Statistics at UCLA, where he also holds joint appointments in Design Media Art and Electrical Engineering.

Laura Kurgan is an architect and artist based in New York. She is the Director of the Spatial Information Design Lab and Director of Visual Studies at the GSAPP at Columbia University.

Ben Rubin is founder of Ear Studio. He is a visual artist and sound designer who brings together sound and new media within visual art installations, architecture, live performance and critical projects. He is a critic in graphic design at the Yale School of Art.

Francois Gemenne is a research fellow and junior lecturer at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), Sciences Po Paris. His research deals with population displacements associated with environmental changes, and adaptation to climate change. He teaches the geopolitics of climate change at Sciences Po.

The following people have organised the exhibition:

Chief Curator: Hervé Chandès, General Director of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris

Scientific Consultant: Francois Gemenne, researcher and professor of migratory movement linked to climate change, Sciences Po, Paris

Curator: Ilana Shamoon, Curator at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris

The map Speechless and Deforestation has benefited from the scientific collaboration of Bruce Albert, Director of Research at the Institut de Recherche pour le développement, and Francois-Michel Le Tourneau, Director of Research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

The following organizations have helped us in our acquisition of data. They have not, however, been asked to vouch for or endorse the content of this exhibition:

Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University; Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), École de Santé Publique, Université catholique de Louvain (EM-DAT database); Dartmouth Flood Observatory; Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty (Migration DRC), University of Sussex; Fire Information for Resource Management and Global Land Cover Facility, University of Maryland; Global Forest Watch (GFW); Instituto Socioambiental (ISA); International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD); International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA); Komunitas Konservasi Indonesia WARSI (KKI WARSI); Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change, A Regional Climate SCENario GENerator; South Dakota State University, Global Forest Monitoring Project System; Toyama University; UNESCO, Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 2009; United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and CIESIN, Last of the Wild project