The short film program Erde ohne Boden [Earth without Soil] points to the world-changing forces of both human agency and “geopower”: the earth forces that represent the pre-political conditions of territorialization and help determine social reproduction, according to geographer Kathryn Yusoff. Until now, only “biological” subjects have been given importance in Western-style anthropocentric thought and action. But the Earth has long been striking back in the form of climate change. Two of the films in Erde ohne Boden focus on the production of raw materials in the GDR; they provide a preview of the festival exhibition in Wiederstedt, where they will be shown in the Inspektorhaus. Sonne Unter Tage [Sun Under Ground] by Mareike Bernien and Alex Gerbaulet follows the radioactive traces of uranium mining in the Ore Mountains operated by SAG Wismut: the soil as an archive of technical and social utopias. The natural formation of diamonds, which takes place under extreme pressure and temperature conditions in the Earth’s mantle, can be simulated, as Andreas Bunte’s Künstliche Diamanten [Synthetic Diamonds] meticulously documents. This invention was intended to make the GDR more economically independent. In Adina Camhy’s Crater, too, a geological phenomenon – various terrestrial and extraterrestrial craters – forms the starting point for an artistic reflection on past moments of violence and the impossibility of capturing the world without gaps. Whether ever higher or ever lower, Stéphanie Lagarde’s Minimal Sway While Starting My Way Up describes the impetus of architectural expansion as an expression of our relationship to the environment, from the perspective of an intelligent elevator plagued by self-doubt.
Followed by an audience discussion with Mareike Bernien, Andreas Bunte and Alex Gerbaulet, moderated by Florian Wüst.