Ich wurde neben einem Loch geboren

What traces does coal mining leave behind in a region?

How can we encounter a landscape that is full of holes?

And what does it mean to live in a time when mankind is building its own landscape?

In the Central German lignite mining region in eastern Germany, people have been digging coal out of the ground for many centuries. But soon the last excavators will standstill. The landscape is inscribed with structural changes and ruptures, by climate crisis and industrialisation, by mapping errors and thriving in ruins.

The multimedia installation is the result of months of ethnographic research into the traces of different temporalities that manifest themselves in the fragile present of the open-cast mining landscape.

Using materials from the edge of the demolition site, interviews with contemporary witnesses and lyrical field notes, an attempt is made to approach the hole.

A hole that extends far beyond the Central German lignite mining area and raises questions about the possibilities of living together in the Anthropocene.

Multimedia Installation and Research Paper

Materials: Paper from organic materials from the mine, Copper, Birch Wood, Postcards, Poetry

Sound: 12:25

Exhibition: University of Applied Arts January and August 2024

Presented at “Geschichten und Bilder von ost- und westdeutschen Bergbaulandschaften seit den späten 1980er-Jahren. Zur eigenzeitlichen Transformation von Montanindustrien aus künstlerischer Perspektive” Conference Bochum, April 2024