Through their implicit messages, the works of the Scottish artist encourage viewers to take a holistic view of our planet – an entity that, like a living organism, breathes, moves and holds potential dangers. The expulsion of rocks during a volcanic eruption, the production and destruction of new landmass, the juxtaposition of fast and slow time: Halperin uses geology as a language to explore our understanding of time and our relationship to an ever-changing environment. For Halperin, the human body and its products – kidney or bladder stones – are not just a painful health condition, but also contribute to the formation of geological landmass on this planet. As “physical geology,” human immortality seems to be within closer reach.

Edited by curators Sara Barnes and Andrew Patrizio, the catalogue includes texts by Gillian Beer, Horst Bredekamp, Ilana Halperin, Thomas Schnalke, volcanologist Hugh Tuffen, and the curators themselves, most of which have been written especially for the catalogue. Halperin’s artistic work and her intellectual passions form the gravitational center which the essays examine from the perspectives of aesthetics, the history of science, and cultural philosophy.

Following an introduction by Prof. Dr. Thomas Schnalke, director of the Museum of Medical History, curator Andrew Patrizio talked with artist Ilana Halperin about the exhibition concept as well as their catalogue contributions. Prof. Dr. Horst Bredekamp, professor of art history at Berlin’s Humboldt University, and Dame Gillian Beer, professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge, read from their essays.