Common Accounts was commissioned to design the exhibition scenography for “Things To Come” by artist Maja Malou Lyse: the National Pavilion of Denmark at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Working collaboratively with Malou Lyse and curator Chus Martinez, Common Accounts developed a synthetic environment that integrated artistic interventions into the pavilion architecture.
Informed by Malou Lyse’s consideration of science, fiction, pornography, and the mainstreaming of image culture, the design scheme produces an environment of intensified media transmission. Screens—both giant and micro—are a critical motif in the pavilion. In the building’s elongated Brummer gallery, an in-the-round multi-screen installation refers both to the language of the billboard and to the immersive goggles used to view virtual porn increasingly available in sperm bank donation rooms.
Malou Lyse’s exhibition engages with recent scientific research suggesting that exposure to virtual sexual stimuli can measurably increase sperm motility. The finding offers a striking perspective on how image consumption does not merely influence imagination or ideology, but biology too. Set against a widely documented global decline in male fertility, “Things To Come” considers the consequence and potential benefits of contemporary media technologies. Science, fiction, and pornography intersect as entangled image systems shaping how futures are imagined, governed, and lived. In “Things To Come,” the collapse of sperm counts is not treated solely as a biological crisis, but as a metaphor for a broader civilizational breakdown. Environmental toxicity, screen addiction, cognitive exhaustion, and the erosion of intimacy mirror a society in which reproduction, relationships, and labour are increasingly unstable, and ailment and antidote may be interchangeable.
“Last spring, I flew to New York and settled into my studio at Times Square Residency, which looks out on these billboards and LED screens all day, this bombardment of images. I realized that there’s a sculptural quality about them that’s related to the immersiveness of virtual reality,” Malou Lyse told ArtForum’s Thomas Patier during the 2026 Biennale preview. “I started working with the architecture studio Common Accounts to create an immersive atmosphere within the pavilion, which became the starting point for my three-channel video installation. The LED screens are integrated into the architecture, as they are in Times Square.”
The commission for Malou Lyse’s pavilion falls within a lineage of interest at Common Accounts, and a series of projects that have explored the place of image in survival, as well as the relationship between bodies and hostile environments, like Clima Fitness, Have a Nice Day, and Refresh Renew. The pavilion architecture was developed in collaboration with M+B Studio in Venice.
In this pavilion, the artistic image and the architecture are indivisible from one another. The environment, constructed from clinical materials and colours, revels in its own artifice in a clear departure from the verdant grounds of the Giardini. An enfilade condition permits a view from the Brummer gallery to a défilade of modified yellow dry shipper cases used to transport cryogenic vessels containing sperm—a series of ready-made sculptures from Cryos International, the world’s largest sperm bank—embedded in the far wall of the pavilion’s Koch gallery.
Common Accounts’ commission also extended to the furnishing of the pavilion: the Maja bench—an elongated seat with a foam cushion—was specially designed for the project. Fabricated in Sicily, it welcomes visitors inside the entry area, building on the concepts developed in the studio’s prior furniture pieces, like Itaewon Chair and Paranoiacs Rest Easy.
Project credits
Project team: Miles Gertler, Igor Bragado
Artist: Maja Malou Lyse
Curator: Chus Martinez
Commissioner: The Danish Arts Foundation
Technical Coordination and Architectural Execution: M+B Studio (Troels Bruun, Margherita Muzzi, Ira Palmieri, Roberta Facchettin, Annapaola Passarini)
Furniture Fabrication: Atelier Nostra Signora
Artistic Collaborators, “Things to Come:” DIS (Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, Marco Roso, and David Toro)
Video Editing and Post-Production, “Things to Come:” Hotel Concorde
Video Editing, “Stars in my Pocket:” Andrew Gilbride
Producer, “Things to Come:” Starkman & Associates
Graphic Design: Studio Claus Due
Pavilion Photography: Ugo Carmeni
