GMU:Re-enchanting the field/Rieke Hettinger

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Am 07.07.2025 um 14:51 schrieb Karlotta Sperling <karlotta.sperling@uni-weimar.de>:

Hi Rieke, 
This mail is in English so it’s possibly usable hehe… 
I thought why not have a written exchange as a form of text for our project.
I feel like our ways of thinking about our work are very different but the
difference can be made a principle. We can both write down what we think,
what we thought. What do you think? 
We could also formulate different questions we have for the other.. 
We could also use different forms of writing for eg trying to describe a
landscape, maybe also both describing the same landscape? 

What do you think? 
Do we need a form of text? 

Karlotta 



Von: "Rieke.Hettinger@uni-weimar.de" <Rieke.Hettinger@uni-weimar.de>
Betreff: Aw: Estland Text
Datum: 14. Juli 2025 um 17:16:06 MESZ
An: Karlotta Sperling <karlotta.sperling@uni-weimar.de>

Hey, Karlotta!

I was very happy to receive your message. I think you're right; emailing about it might help us to clarify how we see the work. Although I'm tempted by your last question about whether we need a text to accompany our praxis, I will give it a try.

Instead of writing down our final ideas on a piece of paper as we were supposed to, we chatted about the presentation from the last few days, which included stones, ashes, and different perceptions of nature.  I felt excited to take on this topic manually and was eager to get started. And, of course, I wanted to see the oil shell burn! Just like in the ancient myth and today in industry. I liked the pragmatic freedom we took.

I must admit that, since you explained your thoughts, I've never been able to quote you exactly. [Possible reasons]. I shared the perception of the playground regarding the mountain of oil-shell residue. I could see the potential of having a mountain in an area without mountains. For example, the view. I also noticed the contradiction you pointed out when you said, 'We talk of artificial nature when we talk about landscapes shaped by the oil-shell industry, but there are stones that are millions of years old.' We go on hiking trips in so-called nature, and fail to recognize, that the environment has been shaped by humans.' My usage of the term 'nature' in both German and English does not include our relationship with it. When we are in the oil shell landscape, terms emerge to describe our connection with it. These terms may be 'pure', 'wounded', 'fake', 'disturbed', and so on.  The way in which these terms are used do not provide a comprehensive description of our relationship with nature. The lack of connotation shows me how underdeveloped our relationship with nature is.

This is what I got from our shared praxis.

My following up thought is, that by categorizing nature types as sacred or profane, we miss the chance to understand ourselves as a part of nature and develop a relationship within. 
I mean, I maked up the stone to show, that we could interfere with nature in any way, it could be a caring one. And I burned the stones to see them burning with all the magic given to them. 


Our exhibition had two sides, like a Janus Head. Even though we worked together, the two sides were pretty different. Why did you prefer to work practical? Why did you want to burn the stones? What do you think differs our approaches? Were you looking for something?

Thanks for the shared work, c u seen! Probably tomorrow I guess hehe. 
Rieke




Em 16 de jul. de 2025, à(s) 16:58, Karlotta Sperling <karlotta.sperling@uni-weimar.de> escreveu:

Hi Rieke sorry I didn’t reply. 
I will try to after I cleaned my room and made some coffee.
later,
K

Von: Karlotta Sperling <karlotta.sperling@uni-weimar.de>
Betreff: Aw: Estland Text
Datum: 16. Juli 2025 um 22:55:52 MESZ
An: "Rieke.Hettinger@uni-weimar.de" <Rieke.Hettinger@uni-weimar.de>

Hi Rieke 
I just reread your mail thoroughly and i really enjoyed it! I think you made this inaptitude of finding words for nature very tangible! 
I also like the blanks that point to the artificiality of this allegedly authentic email conversation!
Same goes for me that I cannot really put into words what you said about our work. The only thing I remember you say is holy, maybe you could describe the notion of holy you’re referring to and how it relates to our work. 
I also have the impression that even though we use different terms we are describing an important shared point which is the relation to what we call nature and the moral judgement of it. 

I also really enjoyed our practical and hands-on approach that came from a point of time pressure but I was really happy how it turned out and how we were able to think together in this short amount of time. 

What I found very interesting in the interviews we had with the experts in estonia is these notions that came up of pure nature and disrupted nature. And I had to think of Timothy Morton and how he describes our western romantic relationship to nature that works foremost on a visual level, a picturesque one. As long as the expected image of what we understand as nature holds up, unfolds in front of our eyes we might perceive it as pure. We mostly don’t try to understand the ecosystem or the composition of dirt, or whether worms are happy, etc. Timothy Morton proposes the ecological thought as a concept but I don’t know if it helps me to just have a new term. I rather like to dissect commons terms and their notions and think about them with a newly wired brain. 
I think with our work we were more asking questions, not trying to have all the right answers and concepts and we were trying to somehow understand the material we had at hand which was several hundred million years old (how much?).which is unimaginable. I also understood it as a form of play and experiment, we followed spontaneous ideas and tested them and I really enjoyed it. I think sometimes it’s very nice to just deep dive into things and then see what comes out. Also we did a good job with the scale of it I think. 

I would really like to create a double janus computer sculpture now ::) 

What do you think of it in hindsight? 
I think that’s it for tonight..
Cuuuuu 
byeeee
Karlotta

Am 17.07.2025 um 12:13 schrieb Rieke Hettinger <rieke.hettinger@uni-weimar.de>:

Heeeey K,

Who ever is able to continue working straight after 4 days of  Summeary is a respect earning wild one. I am still tired and sore.

What I meant with all the words in my first mail, is that these words used by the experts we met around the oil-shell-industry, don’t describe the experience an individual does with the nature there. “Pure nature” I would never use this word to describe any thinking trip. 

Are you still cleaning your room or yet burning another stone?

<3 Rieke 

Am 18.07.2025 um 15:10 schrieb Karlotta Sperling <karlotta.sperling@uni-weimar.de>:

Post semester exhaustion is a thing! My eyes are still extremely tired.
Which of our experiments did you like the best and why? 
Is there any part you would like to repeat or expand on?
Byeeee k 
::::::::::::) 

Von: "Rieke.Hettinger@uni-weimar.de" <Rieke.Hettinger@uni-weimar.de>
Betreff: Aw: Estland Text
Datum: 18. Juli 2025 um 17:25:47 MESZ
An: Karlotta Sperling <karlotta.sperling@uni-weimar.de>

Hey K,

Well, I finally made up my mind about the holy and profan stances I took. Or better: I reread parts of Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, which is the origin of this idea. The separation in holy and profan is a way humans create orientation in a pre-rational, so-called mythical world, where everything is intertwined and charged with meaning. Within this unity of sensing the separation in holy and profan gives you orientation. With the gradual development of rational thought, ethical reflection, and the rise of scientific understanding, this mythically grounded orientation began to dissolve—though it has not been entirely overcome. 

I would state, that what we did was, to pull back the oil shell industry into our sphere of sensing by rituals of destroying and reconstructing.

Well, there we are, our two approaches visible. 

I won’t sum up this conversation of what’s our experimental outcome, what was the base and how do we differentiate in thought, because you can read through the mail ~~~~~~~'.'

I rather want to emphasize once more the enthusiastic feeling I get from fleeing into practice.

Thanks K for the Co-oP. I wish you a beautiful summer with lots of burning and raising.


And yeah let´s get the Janus sculpture done. I want loose myself in Ilmpark. I send you the final blender in a bit and then we chat about the further arrangement?.


besos
rieke