“People, he began to understand, were both beneficiaries and victims of their own culture. It makes them blossom, but also makes them wither in the bud and plants a cancerous growth in the middle of the flower corolla. Would it not be possible, on this forbidden island, to avoid the cancer, to reduce the withering and to make the individual flowers more beautiful?“ Aldous Huxley, Island
In 1962, Aldous Huxley’s last novel, Island, was published – exactly 30 years after Brave New World. Here he sketches the positive social utopia of the community on the island of Pala, which refuses the usual ideas of profit, power, property, education, medicine, family or religion and seeks to merge the best of the European and Oriental worlds.
In 2015, the artist duo Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkacova is developing an exhibition entitled “ah, soul in a coma, act naive, attack”, which explores the possibilities for a new beginning in society and refers to Huxley’s island as its main reference.
The evening at the GAK introduces Island, explains the connecting lines between Huxley’s novel and the exhibition of Chisa & Tkacova and finally gives an atmospheric insight into the ideas and concepts of the book by means of a reading.
A reading to the exhibition “Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkacova. ah, soul in a coma, act naive, attack”.