‘De Afbreekeconomie’, Boijmans van Beuningen, Online

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‘The Breakdown Economy’ is an online exhibition about making and destroying things. It’s not about economic growth and efficient production, but about the limitations of this model. How do we destroy everything that we, as humans, have made? In this discussion you can assume a radical position and lump everything together or adopt a more pragmatic attitude whereby a ‘breakdown economy’ is in balance with nature. What connects all these ideas is not just that things can be done differently, but that they must be done differently.

The research by Studio Klarenbeek & Dros into a world without plastic is placed centrally in this exhibition. They have developed a material called ‘weed-ware’ which is a natural degradable alternative to plastic. Atelier Van Lieshout shows a recent version of ‘Disco Inferno – Happy End of Everything’ (2020) which is an ultimate recycle installation that transforms all the waste we collectively produce into crude oil. Koehorst in ’t Veld presents a graphic representation that shows how the bio-based and the fossil economy have, over time, related to each other.

More information about the project via the Boijmans van Beuningen website.