summaery2022: Projects

The Sky in the Ground - Plants as "Mediators" in the Case of Bitterfeld-Wolfen

Project information

submitted by
Beatriz Oria Lombardía

Co-Authors
Kira Käthe Becker, Felix Jonathan Luca Joosten, Hannah Lisa Kettel, Gizem Uzkur Özel, Beatriz Oria Lombardí

Mentors
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Alexandra Regan Toland, Caroline Gunilla Ektander

Faculty:
Art and Design

Degree programme:
Fine Art (Diploma),
Public Art and New Artistic Strategies (english) (Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)),
Product Design (Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)),
Productdesign (Master of Arts (M.A.))

Type of project presentation
Exhibition

Semester
Summer semester 2022

Exhibition Location / Event Location
  • Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 7 - Van-de-Velde-Bau
    (Glasvitrinen/-Rahmen Hall und Flur 1 OG)
  • Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 7 - Van-de-Velde-Bau
    (Glasvitrinen/-Rahmen Hall und Flur 1 OG)

Participation in the Bauhaus.Modules


Project description

Processes and potentialities of agro-mining in remediation sciences and art historical perspectives of image (re)production have been explored within the Fachmodule as techniques to make the ongoing violence to human and more-than-human communities living in environments of chronic toxicity more present.

Working together with scientists and art historians, we have explored the traces of the Anthropocene in Bitterfeld with a focus on life in and around the Silbersee, a former brown coal mining pit used for wastewater from the Agfa film factory in Wolfen during the 1980’s.

Using dried and combusted biomass of selected plants growing around Silbersee, we have had pigments made and have experimented with silk screen-printing techniques as a way to (re)produce and (re)member historic images of Bitterfeld-Wolfen, once the heart of the global film industry.

Through the exhibited field research and printing experiments produced within the course, we want to critically expand discourses on environmental remediation and regeneration — what it privileges and how — by demonstrating how artistic interventions in Bitterfeld-Wolfen can help inform work on toxic legacies in other industrial cities.

Exhibition Location / Event Location