The filmmaker and photographer Armin Linke first came to the attention of a broader spectrum of the public with his Book on Demand project at the 2003 Venice Biennial, in the Utopia Station section curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist. Visitors could page through his computer-based archive and compose their own book, which was mailed to them a few days later. Today the artist has put together a veritable globalization archive. The artist has put together a photographic archive that lists places of primary importance in contemporary geopolitics, whether the selected criteria are demography-, energy- or strategy-related. Armin Linke thus documents such places as an oilrig in the Arctic Sea, a crowded market in Calcutta, and a space base at the furthermost bounds of Siberia. He more often photographs cities under construction on all continents: Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing, Pyongyang, Sao Paolo, Berlin, Moscow, etc. Acting as a chronicler of globalisation, he is interested in how global capitalism is shaping the planet.

Since the start of globalisation, Armin Linke has been forming an archive chronicling the upheavals that have transformed the world since capitalism became the rule. His photos come from the four corners of the globe and show a broad range of places and institutions. He has focused on the transformation of infrastructures as well as the connections between post-industrial societies through digital information and communication techniques. His work records the profound economic, environmental and geological changes that have shaped our highly technological world since the Anthropocene began. His 2017 exhibition at the CPG offered the public an excellent overview of these concerns. For OSMOSCOSMOS, the artist has selected photographs from the Cerro Paranal space observatory in Chile along with a picture of Moscow’s training centre for cosmonauts.