20170426_MUN_InauguracionAureliaImmortal

Can we do with nature everything we want or does science allow us to do? This is the big question that underlies Javier Viver's latest artistic creation, a work graduate Aurelia Immortal which consists of a exhibition and a photobook. The artist, based on the observation of a jellyfish subject that regenerates itself and never dies, poses how the human species will be in 2046, a year after science has achieved the immortality of people.

Art, science, nature and ethics are disciplines of knowledge that come together in this artistic production to address the same topic, recurrent and universal: immortality and its consequences. "This exhibition is not a scientific sample , but poses an artistic speech on the eternal struggle against death; it is a fictional story from procedures obtained from science," says Viver.

In order to intellectually address all the topics that the exhibition suggests on identity, consciousness, particularity and globality, ethics, science and nature, the Museum will organize in September a conference with researchers from various areas, open to students and all interested members of the public.

Origin of project and its subject matter

In December 2015, Chinese marine biology student He Jinru published in the scientific journal PloS One the surprising property of the jellyfish Aurelia, capable of achieving biological immortality. According to National Geographic, once Aurelia immortal expires, it develops the prodigious ability to regenerate its cells until it reaches the juvenile stage, as if it were a phoenix.

This scientific finding serves Viver to propose a narrative that oscillates between scientific documentation and fiction. The story is told from the year 2046, in a future in which advances in biotechnology have made it possible to develop a transhuman species, whose life could be prolonged indefinitely. Seen from this fictional future, the finding of the properties of the Aurelia would have result decisive for humanity. Based on this narrative, Viver's project proposes a reflection on immortality in human beings, nature and art.

The newly created works will coexist with images from the Museum's Collection: four photographs with the remains of humans and animals found in the ruins of Pompeii, a city where sculptures without an author are housed, and reflect the artists' attempt to create an enduring work over time. Javier Viver thinks that science and art face death with different methods.

The conference room expository

Aurelia Immortal occupies the conference room called the Museum Tower, a versatile space of 256 square meters, which houses the fifty or so works created by the author, all of them unpublished, in different media.

Javier Viver, known mainly for his sculptor facet, recognizes that "in this project I put in relation to various artistic disciplines, blurring the boundaries between what we call drawing, photography, sculpture, installation and even relate them with the architecture of the conference room, sound and audiovisual; something common in contemporary art.