The visual artist Lasse Lau’s exhibition Subjectivities – Institutions in Crisis can be seen as an exploration of three institutions of the Enlightenment: the museum, the botanic garden and the university –  exemplified here by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Botanical Garden in Lisbon and the University in Nsukka, Nigeria. Each of these are portrayed in a film. But this is not traditional documentation. We see many close-ups and panoramic shots, while in the voice-over we hear reflections on the state of the institutions. Common to the institutions is the fact that they have had their glory days and are now  becoming decayed and over grown.  

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Lasse Lau uses this as an image of a more  general decline in which the knowledge systems, that these institutions are founded upon, are no longer appreciated – and thus no longer supported. At the same time the three films can be seen

as an exploration of the values of the Enlightenment – and thus of the ideologies on which our present knowledge para-digms are built. In the exhibition, besides the three films, objects and photographs are also shown.