Manifesta purposely strives to keep its distance from what are often seen as the dominant centres of artistic production, instead seeking fresh and fertile terrain for the mapping of a new cultural topography.
Ben Cain, GB
Ben Cain, Work in the Dark, 2012 © Manifesta 9 / Kristof Vrancken.
In this installation British artist Ben Cain evoked the industrial change whereby production would become completely automatised and free from human labour. The former working space of the Waterschei mine was transformed into a “theatre of encounters between objects” featuring purposeless machines and posters with texts inspired by the calligraphy of early modernity.