Emerging Exits. Diogenes Bunker
Group exhibition co-curated with Jacco Ouwerkerk. Arnhem, NL. 03.10.2025—02.11.2025
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Isabelle Andriessen, Kévin Bray, Zeno van den Broek, Ali Eslami, Silvia Gatti, Anna Hoetjes, Jeroen Jongeleen, Kees van Leeuwen, Maksud Ali Mondal, Julian Oliver, Tega Brain & Bengt Sjölén, Vica Pacheco, Irakli Sabekia, Sissel Marie Tonn, Miloš Trakilović, Rodell Warner
Hidden in the landscape of the Veluwe, the monumental Bunker Diogenes, one of the largest bunkers in the Netherlands, opens its doors for the immersive exhibition Emerging Exits. Once built to map enemy signals, the bunker now hosts artists who explore the changing relationship between humans, technology, and ecology. Their interdisciplinary work stems from a shared awareness that we are living in a time of constant ecological and political threat that calls for alternative perspectives and knowledge structures.
Building on the site’s charged history, Emerging Exits approaches the bunker as a place to map hidden dynamics. The artists focus on themes ranging from war, conflict, and collective memory to ecological depletion, myths, and transformation. They work with materials and techniques such as light, sound, ceramics, algorithms, and micro-organisms, raising questions about how we relate to our environment and to the systems that shape those relations.
Constructed in 1942 by the German air force, the Diogenes Bunker functioned as a central command post. Here, data arriving from a network of radar and observation stations was transmitted by telephone and projected in real time onto a vast map, informing decisions that shaped the course of the air war.
The exhibition ties in with the mechanics of detection, analysis, and response: the artworks sense threats, reveal how systems shape our reality, and open up space for us to imagine and question alternative future scenarios. The works come together in a carefully orchestrated scenography that makes visible the transition from a closed system to an open, evolving process. Cut off from sunlight, the internet, and mobile phone reception, the exhibition becomes an ‘exit’ from today's complex reality, where time slows down and other perspectives become visible.