win > < win

By Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel

“We are in this crazy, unforeseen and incomprehensible situation where we are competing against jellyfish. And they are winning,” says the Australian marine biologist and jellyfish expert Lisa-Ann Gershwin.

For at least 670 million years, jellyfish have been floating – unchanged – through our oceans, and pretty much everything that damages our ecosystem seems to benefit them: overfishing brings down the number of predatory fish that could reduce the number of jellyfish. Plastic bags in the oceans kill other predators like turtles. On top of that, jellyfish flourish in warm water; it extends their breeding season, while many fish suffer from the lower oxygen percentage. “Warm water is a disaster for anything that breathes and a dream come true for anything that doesn’t breathe much, like jellyfish” Gershwin says.
In the beginning of last year, a massive jellyfish invasion threatened to wipe out the fish population of the South Australian seaport Whylla, and another temporarily paralyzed the nuclear power plant in Swedish Oskarshamn when jellyfish plugged up the cooling water supply….
Marine scientists have thus arrived at an apocalyptic prognosis: “Jellyfish will be the only survivors when everything else has fallen apart.”
In collaboration with marine biologists and animal keepers, Rimini Protokoll is flipping the view of these creatures around and staging it as a gaze directed back at their observers.

win > < win is an installation piece commissioned in 2017 for the exhibition "After the End of the World” curated by José Luis de Vicente. Produced by CCCB (Barcelona) in Co-Production with FACT+BLUECOAT+RIBA NORTH (Liverpool).

By: Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, Daniel Wetzel
With: Jamileh Javidpour (Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research)
Daniel Strozynski (Zoo Berlin | Aquarium Berlin | Tierpark Berlin)
Lisa Ann Gershwin (Author of "Stung! On Jellyfish Blooms and the Future of the Ocean“, Hobart, Australia)
Boris Koch (Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research)
and others.

Architecture: Guillermo Santoma
Technical Director: Alejandro Olariaga
Sound-Synchronisation: Carlos Gómez, Andreas Mihan.

Voice over for Catalan expert, English version: Andreas Andreou
Production and Coordination: CCCB
Coordination Rimini Protokoll: Maitén Arns