The title for this exhibition was taken from the seminal essay by this name by Thomas Nagel, in which he dissecting the landscape between subjective and objective experience in the search for consciousness. It was exhibited at Zone2Source, Amsterdam, in conjunction with Dewi de Vree’s and Patrizia Ruthensteiner’s project Magnetoceptia.

In this project we explore the relationships between consciousness, body and environment, as mediated by the filtration mechanisms of the senses. At the center of the project is the creation of worn instrumentations for rethinking collection, categorization and navigation from the perspective of the moment.

This exhibition is a response to the exhibition held at the Jardim Botanico herbarium in Madeira. While the first exhibition attempted to create a contemporary entry of biometric data collected for their 400-year old archive of plant specimens, this exhibition reflects upon the colonial history of collection in Madeira, which was a stopping point for acclimatization of foreign plant species before they were brought to the orangeries of Europe for the enjoyment and prestige of the European royalty. We imagined the exhibition as an overflowing of biometric data, to be considered by a contemporary audience within the manicured and acclimatized space of the orangerie.

The exhibition culminated in a performance developed through a 2 day workshop with local artists using worn biometric sound synthesizers outside in the courtyard of the orangerie.