staging ground

2018, Mixed media video installation, consisting of HD-video, 19'19'', color, sound, gravel pile 300 x 500 cm

The dredgers move in a circulating manner to excavate the ground for diamond minerals. To extract the diamonds, the dredger works either directly in the natural body of water or a specially created dredging lake next to the actual body of water. The dredgers shown in the film are located near the town of Almazny, which means "diamond town." Almazny is located in Yakutia the 14th federal subject of the Russian Federation. Diamond and gold mines are spread over large areas here. Without these raw material reserves, the Soviet Union would probably not have existed for so long. Technology and ideology go hand in hand here and leave their mark. Militarily and economically oriented efforts to secure power are inscribed in this landscape. The extraction of raw materials and the exploitation of nature show their planned economic and geopolitical consequences, which make up the character of the subjects of the federation. In the work, possible formations of the post-Soviet utopian content and its implications are put into a relationship. At the same time, an evidential proximity to the Anonymous Sculptures, as found in the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, emerges in the motif. The forms of the dredgers are the result of purposeful and rational considerations as well as economic calculations of engineers. Their aesthetization detaches them from their context, branding them as strange structures in the landscape. Their form is based on a utopian creative potential of corporate but also ideological and political motivations.

staging ground