Deliquescing

Edited by Anna Gritz, Steve Bishop

Contributions by Steve Bishop, Orit Gat, Anna Gritz, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Gary Zhexi Zhang

The publication Deliquescing accompanies Steve Bishop’s 2018–19 solo exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. Both the exhibition and publication reflect a body of research that focuses on the fragility of memory and the potential for its preservation, defying the gradual breakdown of matter through the effects of time.

The lion’s mane mushroom is sought after for its medicinal properties, known for protecting and repairing the mind and memory. Within KW, the artist reconstructed the exact conditions needed to cultivate the mushroom. Its medicinal properties were abstracted and repeated in the space of the gallery—the mushroom held in perfect stasis so that it wouldn’t lapse into the entropic process known as deliquescing. Bishop’s video work Deliquescing is paired with this regulated climate of cultivation: slow-panning HD shots study an abandoned Canadian mining town, maintained in a Sisyphean fashion by an unseen caretaker, homes still heated, bucolic front yards suspended from entropy, empty storefronts frozen, any sign of decay routinely swept away. This extreme stillness is randomly interrupted by the dashing of an animal, the only “aliveness” that remains.

Copublished with KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin