Cisternerne

In 2020-21, the Cisterns presents Event Horizon, an exhibition by Argentine-born artist Tomás Saraceno. Here the audience is invited to experience a landmark work by an artist who continually challenges our ways of communicating and interacting, both with each other and with other species. During the exhibition period, the water, which continuously seeps through the Cisterns' concrete structure, will form an underground, night-black sea, and the exhibition must thus be experienced by boat.

Nature's processes and transformative potential are an endless source of inspiration in Saraceno's work. This is exactly why Saraceno and the Cisterns are the perfect match. The Cisterns are a culturally created space originally constructed to supply Copenhageners with clean drinking water. But at the same time, nature is omnipresent in the dark rooms, where the dripping stones descend from the vaulted ceilings and the water continuously seeps in through the old concrete.

Through her artistic practice, Saraceno has explored alternative forms of life and habitation based on studies in everything from astrophysics, philosophy and engineering to spiders and bats.

In Event Horizon, visitors sail in boats. Like small isolated satellites, you float through the ancient cisterns and pass enlightened spider webs and glittering silver spheres along the way. The floating sculptures form part of a carefully choreographed composition as moons and planets locked in their orbit. The spider's web is a reminder of how we are closely connected to and dependent on the world around us, how everything from the smallest microbes to the universe has an impact on our existence, as well as constantly affecting our surroundings. Actions that immediately seem harmless can have unintended consequences.