Staying with the trouble

Staying with the trouble is an art exhibition organized by the Tiroler Künstler:innenschaft, in the context of the program of Art in public space Tyrol. For the 2021 edition, the open call for artworks was based on Donna J. Haraway’s eponymous book: the biologist and science philosopher develops the idea that we are living the collapse of the world, and rather than finding new livable futures as humans, the most useful paradigm would be to live the end of the world together with animals, minerals, vegetals, all boundaries blurred without any distinction of species. In the climate of political, ecological and sociological crisis we experienced with the Covid-19 pandemic, this mythology offers a brand new path that artists explored in their propositions for the program.

The identity was conceived by fertig design, who focused their branding on the use of two very idiosyncratic typefaces in two different manners: Cheesy Tots by Erik Sachse and Gothic Lab from Production Type. Cheesy Tots is a chaotic typeface with unstable shapes that seem to be falling apart, and each letter looks to be barely compatible with the other: we find there the idea of collapse and fragility invoked by Haraway’s concept. On the other hand, Gothic Lab is an experiment on algorithm-generated fonts with stochastic rasters: applied to wildlife-inspired patterns, this principle is almost an organism created on its own, letters with animal attributes. Union is used for all smaller text.

All items are printed in green on recycled paper and display a few natural tones for the descriptions of the artworks located in the nature. The artworks will be exhibited this autumn in a shopping mall, botanical gardens, and the nearby forest of Innsbruck.