Who, or what, mediates pollution, and what kind of work does that entail? Sky inside the Soil is a multi-phase, mixed-methods artistic research project that explores the labour of plants as mediators between soil and sky in more-than-human communities of extreme toxicity. Visually unravelling the tale of a brown coal mining pit turned waste-water dump of the ORWO film and synthetic fibre factory in the former East German district of Bitterfeld-Wolfen, the project asks: what roles do plants assume in the time-keeping and place-making processes of ecological labour engaged in toxic remediation? And how can this specific kind of vegetal labour mediate the complex political history of human labour in a specific place-time continuum? In this paper we mix qualitative methods of multispecies ethnography, site survey, and artistic research to explore then resonances between the labour of plants and the labour of humans who in different ways became embroiled in the site's material history of extraction and industrial expropriation. We use archival photographs and pigments derived from plant biomass to reflect on the social, economic, and aesthetic dimensions of pollution through the medium of silkscreen – a tightly woven nylon mesh, not unlike the synthetic nylon products once manufactured in Wolfen. We show how shifting meanings of place, labour, and multiple temporalities coalesce and resonate on site—from plant ancestors transformed into coal, to solar-punk speculations about the succession of botanical-‘alterlife’.
Alexandra Toland
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
With a background in fine art and landscape planning, Dr. Alexandra Toland is an arts-based researcher and junior professor for arts and research at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
Caroline Ektander
Caroline Ektander is a practice-based environmental humanities scholar whose dissertation delves into the ambivalences of remediation, specific to the Bitterfeld-Wolfen region.
Sandra Jasper
FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg
Dr. Sandra Jasper is a cultural geographer and urban studies scholar and professor of Cultural Geography and Society-Environment Research at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg.