Global populations are unstable and on the move. Unprecedented numbers of migrants are leaving their home countries for economic, political, and environmental reasons. “Exit” was created to quantify and display this increasing global trend. The first part offers an aesthetic re-framing of the media’s coverage of global migrations. Forty-eight computers hanging from the gallery ceiling store and display a living archive of news footage, photographs and documentaries about global migration and its causes. The second part immerses the viewer in a dynamic presentation of the data documenting contemporary human movement. Statistics documenting population shifts are not always neutral and the multiple efforts to collect them are decentralized and incomplete. Here, they are re-purposed to build a narrative about migration around the globe. The viewer enters a circular room and is surrounded by a panoramic video projection of a globe which rolls around the room, “printing” maps as it spins. The maps are made from data collected from a variety of sources, geo-coded, processed through a programming language and translated visually. The presentation is divided into narratives concerning population shift, remittances, political refugees, natural disaster, and sea level rise.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Mark Hansen, Laura Kurgan, and Ben Rubin in collaboration with Stewart Smith and Robert Gerard Pietrusko. Exit is based on an idea by Paul Virilio and was commissioned by the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain.
