Fin et début / Einde en begin

What comes after damaged landscapes? Where do we build our futures on? And with whom?

In her poem End and Beginning, the Polish Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska, describing a barren landscape in the aftermath of war, weaves a narrative of resilience, reflection, and hope. Reflecting on the struggles for renewal, healing and collective responsibility her words carry a diachronic significance. Although referring to a specific conflict, her verses hold a frightening and unfortunate universal validity making her call for communal action, empathy, and care more relevant than even. Inspired by Szymborska’s reflection on the collapse of ideologies, the relentless passage of time and history, and the irreversible decay of the past along with everything that comes with it, iMAL wonders: How would a future built on empathy and collective care look like?

Challenging long-held notions of human singularity, excessive progress, and growth Fin et début / Einde en begin redefines the notion of care as an ecological and relational structure; as a polyphonic assemblage of shared existence between human, nature and technology. Embarking on an exploratory journey into alternative systems of care between humans and non-human entities, this exhibition offers a place of transformative encounters fostering self-reflection and re-imagination of the infinite possibilities of our shared futures.

Curated as an intricate narrative of care, the exhibition unfolds across three interconnected circles: Care for Humans, Care for Nature and Care for Technology. The exhibition presents 11 works produced within the European Media Arts Platform (EMAP) residency program and 4 recent productions by Belgium-based artists. Their encounter offers space for reflection and reconsideration of formative societal infrastructures such as labour, communal practices, energy consumption and highlights the vitality for inter-species knowledge exchange and the importance of empathy for humans and other-than-human entities through diverse lenses. By giving agency to and drawing connections between underrepresented voices and alternative perspectives — be they human, artificial, natural, or imaginative — the exhibition invites the public to take a step towards unexplored territories of our shared futures and reimagine resilient collective ecosystems rooted in multispecies cooperation.

Here, ​“everything is intelligent and worthy of our care and conscious attention.” (James Bridle, Ways of Being)

The Poem :
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

We’ll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.

THE END AND THE BEGINNING
—Wisława Szymborska, translated by Joanna Trzeciak