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 circular motion to excavate the ground for diamond rock. To extract the diamonds, the dredger works either directly in a natural body of water or in 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 might not have existed for so long. Technology and ideology go side by side here and leave their marks. Military and economic efforts to secure power are inscribed in this landscape. The extraction of raw materials and the utilization of nature reveal their planned economic and geopolitical consequences, which define the character of the subjects of the federation. In the work, possible forms of the post-Soviet utopian content and its implications are placed in a relationship. At the same time, the motif evokes an obvious proximity to the Anonymous Sculptures as found in the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher. The forms of the dredgers are the result of purpose-oriented and rational considerations as well as economic calculations by engineers. Their aestheticization detaches them from their context and brands them as strange structures in the landscape. Their form is based on a utopian creation potential of corporate but also ideological and political motivations.

staging ground