Technology of the future. Vanessa Billy, Brodie Ellis, Paul Schatz

With the hydroelectric power plant (1914) and the Star of Laufenburg (1958), Laufenburg has seen two milestones in the supply of electricity beyond the country's borders. Now, from 2025, a data center with an enormous storage battery is to be built at the Laufenburg Technology Center. Electricity plays a central role in our daily lives, but at the same time its production poses risks and creates unresolved problems. The exhibition at the Rehmann Museum poses the question from an artistic perspective: What should the technology of the future look like? How are electricity and ecology compatible?

Vanessa Billy (*1978 in Geneva, resident in Zurich) and Brodie Ellis (*1979 in Lismore, resident in Dja Dja Wurrung Country, Castlemaine, Australia) address the question of the electrical infrastructure in the region. With this archaeological approach and a focus on the belief in progress and sustainability, they seek a new view of the future. To this end, they are creating site-specific works in the Rehmann Museum that do not aim to provide clear answers to these questions, but offer an artistic view of the urgent requirements for new technologies.
Scientific and aesthetic inspiration can be found in the work of mathematician and artist Paul Schatz (1898-1979, born in Constance, died in Arlesheim), who campaigned throughout his life for 'nature-friendly mechanical engineering' and environmentally friendly future technologies.

Vanessa Billy
Vanessa Billy has created a group of works for the Rehmann Museum using agricultural waste and technological materials that explore materiality and its vitality. She combines simple basic materials with products for the industrial production of electricity. By dissolving existing hierarchies between human and non-human actors in this way, she enables a new perspective on energy production and embodied knowledge. It thus focuses on the relationship between two actors (human/non-human) and creates an intra-action, as it were.

Website: https://vanessabilly.com


Brodie Ellis
Brodie Ellis spent five weeks in Laufenburg in the summer of 2024. She used the time to create two sculptural installations and a video work that deal with energy production, storage and management. She is concerned with the integration of cultural knowledge, the sustainable use of natural resources and the consideration of complex ecosystems when using new and conventional technologies. By interpreting a control room and a battery storage system in her own way, incorporating elements from nature and parts of cultural and intergenerational knowledge from Laufenburg society, the artist develops a new perspective on these hidden resources - beyond the pursuit of progress at the expense of the environment.

Website: https://www.brodieellis.com


Paul Schatz
After studying mechanical engineering, mathematics and astronomy, as well as attending lectures in philosophy, Paul Schatz (1898-1979) trained as a wood sculptor. He turned to anthroposophy in 1925. As early as 1929, Paul Schatz discovered the invertible cube, from which he further developed the Turbula shaking mixer, which is still used in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries today. He also developed the Oloid form from it. Paul Schatz found pioneering applications for this fundamentally new body. The oloid is used for water purification and treatment, but also as a ship propulsion system. This spatial-geometric object serves as a source of inspiration for technical science and research, but also for the fine arts, architecture, philosophy, music and environmental technology.

It is less well known that Paul Schatz developed an alternative wind turbine that could be used to generate energy, and that he conducted research in many other areas.
The exhibition features models of the Oloid and other shapes and devices, as well as insights into Paul Schatz's research and artistic work, which are well documented thanks to the Paul Schatz Archive.

Website: https://paul-schatz.ch


Support and thanks
The project was made possible thanks to the support of Swisslos Canton Aargau, the Jubilee Foundation of the Mobiliar Cooperative, the Ruth & Arthur Scherbarth Foundation, the Ernst and Olga Gubler-Hablützel Foundation and the Erna and Curt Burgauer Foundation.

As well as the following partners:
FlexBase Holding Laufenburg | Institut Kunst Gender Natur HGK Basel FHNW | Jakob Müller Museum Frick | Kuboid GmbH Basel | Kulturausschuss beider Laufenburg | KultSCHÜÜR
| Kunstbetrieb Münchenstein | Leureko AG Laufenburg | naturenergie holding AG Laufenburg | Paul Schatz Stiftung Basel | Paul Scherrer Institut Villigen | Pro Helvetia | Strömungsinstitut Herrischried | Swissgrid Aarau | videocompany.ch | WAB-Group Muttenz | Sonja Wunderlin

Design: ROLE Studio, ZH


Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.