In her project, Plan DELTA, Daniela Ponomarevová first constructs and then deconstructs a post-apocalyptic story in reaction to the current state of civilization. At the core of the dystopian narrative is an anticipated demise of Earth that had been turned into a testing object, a transitory place for humanity which will inevitably be destroyed by an enormous asteroid.
The author opens up the fictitious future with a series of objects installed in an immersive setting of a presumed laboratory and with a documentary composed of text and pictures. In the setting of the “research station” that forms the central construction of the installation lies what is left of a module which got torn off from a cosmic colonizer ship DELTA due to an explosion. In contrast to the debris - battered yet still working as its own “biotope” - stands a solitary section containing an imaginary archival yet subjective explanation of the events.
The everpresent motif of catastrophe is represented not only by genre cliches or popcultural conventions but also by the paradox of human obsession with images of its own destruction which is narcissistic and phobic at the same time: it expresses the triumph over nature just as the fear of powers that go beyond what is human. To achieve her goal, the author does not choose aggression or revolt but rather the gentle approach of mixing sci-fi references with poetics.
