One of the best-known emblems in Aby Warburg Mnemosyne-Atlas is the fish-bearing girl in a white dress on her mother's arm, Walter Riemer's book design of the “Seefisch-Kochbuch” from 1927. As the advertising image went around the world and was imprinted on the memory of the image, so did it a simple fish carrier from the Norwegian mountains as a picture around the world, literally: The picture of Hardi Felgenhauer from the eighteenth century was still so present as a tourist souvenir a hundred years later that the American industrialist Scott used it as cod liver oil from 1884 onwards. Label distributed a million times over. As a mosaic made by Italian craftsmen from twenty-two thousand tesserae, nine meters high and thirty tons in weight, it adorned the “Scott's Pure Cod Liver Oil” factory near London.In 2007 the colorful stone image was brought back to its origin from where it hangs from afar next to the hospital's emergency room.

Stefan Trinks

Editor in the features section.

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From today, images of this kind that contain the ocean and the questions linked to them can be seen in the “art hall” of tranquil mountains, or at various outdoor stations such as the “picture vehicle” mosaic. Despite the global theme, the huge group exhibition “The Ocean” with its 27 artists could only be of regional importance - Bergen, the old capital and still the second largest city in the country, halfway between the immense fishing grounds of North-North and the European mainland as a willing protein buyer located, has always lived from the sea, the trade on it, and recently with the nearby oil production in Stavanger also from the treasures under the sea surface. But nothing remains local in the Kunsthall. Your Stuttgart-based director Axel Wieder, himself a globally experienced curator,knows only too well about the interconnectedness of this world empire, the ocean, which covers seven tenths of the earth. While the summer was rainy in Germany, for example, Bergen's otherwise rain-soaked nature suffered from unusual drought, because the Gulf Stream permanently heated the bays and fjords of the city, which also makes them significantly warmer than the inland in winter. But woe, the Gulf Stream really overturned in the future. This would not only be fatal for fish stocks such as salmon.This would not only be fatal for fish stocks such as salmon.This would not only be fatal for fish stocks such as salmon.

Accelerated pioneers of renewable energies

Several artists deal with the huge breeding stations for the globally sought-after salmon around Bergen, as it is not a legend that salmon sushi, as the epitome of Japanese cuisine, is a Norwegian invention. The Japanese Ei Arakawa, on the other hand, exhibits water filled and labeled in PET bottles in the sea off Fukushima, including photos as “Collecting water in Fukushima”, in order to symbolize the immense danger of contamination, which does not stop at national borders, with the still radiant source of life of the seas to point out. DDT as a highly toxic pesticide may also be banned in Europe, but in Africa it is used unchanged, washed into the oceans and passed through the food chain into the mother's milk of Inuit and seeds high in the north of the world. How crucial it isThe work “Sun (set) provisioning” by Yuri Pattison shows that the Kunsthall does not spread all these problems with a didactic rolling pin, but in strong or beguiling images that make you wonder whether their beauty is in particular: a picture-book sunset is about to come see, which is nevertheless created purely digitally from sensor data out in the sea; paradoxically, however, the greater the measured air pollution, the more picturesque the downfall.paradoxically, however, the greater the measured air pollution, the more picturesque the downfall.paradoxically, however, the greater the measured air pollution, the more picturesque the downfall.

That man comes from the sea is a banality. It is no longer the case that humanity will only be able to survive through the oceans in the future. If the ocean floor is overfished, a large part of the world population, which will then have grown to eight and more billion, will depend on food derivatives such as algae. Norway's economy, which is under alarm due to the foreseeable end of its oil wealth, is also exemplary: The country's oil companies are the most advanced pioneers of renewable energies, and not out of philanthropy; the fishing industry is already converting to algae producers.