Project period: since May 2023
The Anthropocene not only represents the age of the Anthropos, it is also potentially the last epoch of Homo sapiens: the expansive and extractivist capitalist economy is not only destroying nature on an unprecedented scale, but also the basis of life in human societies; the sixth mass extinction could therefore also affect the "human" species.
As part of the Netzwerk Naturwissen, the project group Petrified Times: Energizing Past Futures approaches this topic from the perspective of the two central energy regimes "coal and nuclear energy", which have shaped the history of (post-)industrial societies and the planet. This is done through two artistic research projects that use the dimension of aesthetic experience to convey invisible, complex connections in the ecosystem and planetary material cycles and their temporal dimensions in a different way.
For this purpose, artists Ulrike Mohr and Susanne Kriemann work in the rather inconspicuous collection holdings of the museum—those of minerals and rocks as well as paleobotany. The rocks coal (in the form of charcoal, but also bituminous coal) and uraninite (pitchblende) represent, on one hand, the industrial revolution and, on the other, the nuclear age. By examining these rocks and the raw materials they refer to (as "stones of impetus"), the complex issue of the development of energy needs in extractivist and capitalist societies is made accessible. At the same time, the deep-temporal dimensions behind the energy resources and their use in contemporary cultures become tangible. The time dimensions behind the energy resources that have been consumed at a radical speed since the beginning of the Anthropocene just 70 years ago are almost immeasurable. The artistic contributions thus also deal with the clash of different time scales, of human time and planetary time, which represents a core problem for the question of how the Anthropocene can be understood and represented at all.
The first interim results of the artistic research will be shown in an experimental format in the exhibition at the Museum für Naturkunde in September 2024. The aim of the artistic works is to offer new spaces for reflection in which the relationship between human, specifically Western European positions and the world (as a comprehensive ecosystem), the connection between human activity and the Anthropocene as a historical-geological "caesura" can be experienced by means of aesthetic experiences. The final works will then be shown at various, also unusual, theme-specific locations.
Köhler workshop with artist Ulrike Mohr
13.04.2024, Gransee - A group of people knelt in front of charred biscuit tins in the open air. The participants of the Köhler workshop had placed things they had previously found on the studio premises of artist Ulrike Mohr in Gransee in these tins. Branches, for example, or an empty snail shell. These things were then charred: this is an old craft technique that results in charcoal.
While the fire provided a powerful soundscape, the curiosity was palpable: What might have happened to the things? On the millimetre paper on which the original outlines had been drawn, delicate, filigree shapes emerged that both resembled and did not resemble the collected objects. The transformation process they had undergone during charcoal burning had changed the objects in terms of their size and colour. However, their surface structures were recognisable, sometimes even overly clear.
Against the backdrop of these concrete examples, intensive stories and discussions about visible and invisible time and the significance of past ecosystems for life on our planet unfolded in Gransee. This also applies to the objects that a museum of natural history counts among its treasures. So how do natural objects become art objects? What role does the process play? What role does the resulting product play?
While the group opened the cans, a wind blew across the grounds and played with the lightness and transience of the objects that were revealed to the participants. On this afternoon, the participants had the opportunity to use all their senses to understand the contextualisation and production processes of an important source of energy. At the end of the day, the box that everyone was allowed to take home with them contained much more than just boiled objects.
The sub-project "Petrified Times: Energizing Past Futures" was created through the collaboration of network members Friederike Schäfer (FU Berlin), Elisabeth Heyne (MfN Berlin) and Maike Weißpflug (Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management).