Into Eternity

  • November 8, 2014 / 12:45

Director: Michael Madsen
75’, Denmark, Finland, Sweden 2010
English, Swedish, Finnish with Turkish subtitles

Onkalo (Finnish for "hiding place") is under construction: it's a cavernous world of tunnels and corridors, a permanent storage facility for nuclear waste, meant to last 100,000 years (that's 20 times as long as the pyramids have so far). Conceptual artist Michael Madsen's film is a creepy, eerily elegant meditation on human folly, punctuated by philosophical and historical references, that asks: how do you keep 3,000 future generations from inadvertently opening this Pandora's Box? Should markers be posted in every language or in hieroglyphics that say "keep out"?

Not Business as Usual

Not Business as Usual

Into Eternity

Into Eternity

DamNation

DamNation

Keep On Rolling: The Dream of Automobile

Keep On Rolling: The Dream of Automobile

Celeritas

Celeritas

Torre David: The World’s Tallest Squat

Torre David: The World’s Tallest Squat

Infinite Vision

Infinite Vision

Who Cares?

Who Cares?

Memory of the Region

Memory of the Region

Objects also bear the memory of the geography to which they relate. Ceramics, with soil as their primary material, are directly linked to the land where they are produced: forging a direct relationship with earth, ceramics bear the memory of the soil where they come from.

From Cypresses to Turkish Landscapes

From Cypresses to Turkish Landscapes

Among the most interesting themes in the oeuvre of Prassinos are cypresses, trees, and Turkish landscapes. The cypress woods in Üsküdar he saw every time he stepped out on the terrace of their house in İstanbul or the trees in Petits Champs must have been strong images of childhood for Prassinos. 

Mosques in the 18th and 19th Century Paintings

Mosques in the 18th and 19th Century Paintings

In the works of western painters, we encounter mosques as the primary architectural elements that reflect the identity of the city of Istanbul. Often we can recognize the depicted landscape as Istanbul simply from the mosques.