Prepper Paradise, Bureau Europa, Maastricht, NL, 2022
In the new exhibition, Prepper Paradise, by guest curator Ward Janssen, we connect the imagination of the end times in art, design, architecture, and science to visions, dreams, and speculations about how we can properly prepare for them.
From building bunkers and panic rooms all over the Euregion to designing food and urban farming; from Bunker shopping with the Kardashians to speculative future cityscapes; from hoarding food supplies for years of self-reliance to cryopreserving your body after you die – we prepare ourselves in myriad ways, and some people more than others, for unforeseen and uncertain futures.
And even though we can consider doomsday preppers and survivalists as loners, we can also wonder whether the phenomenon doesn't bespeak a certain optimism and utopism instead. After all, a world destroyed by war, pandemics, and climate change will have to be redesigned one day. How can we make sure that we will do it right next time?
This exhibition brings together works and stories by artists, architects, designers, and scientists, including Stine Deja (DK), Ted Noten (NL), Paul Kuipers (NL), Brent Watanabe (US), Rustan Söderling (SE), Theo Triantafyllidis & Kostis Stafylakis (GR), Stewart Brand (US), Paul Virilio (FR), Liam Young (AUS), Dunne & Raby (UK), Dennis de Bel (NL), Meeus van Dis (NL), Floor van het Nederend (NL) en Let Death Dance Again (NL).