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Short abstract:

Sky inside the Soil is an artistic research project that reimagines Bitterfeld-Wolfen's industrial legacy. Utilizing archival photographs and pigments derived from polluted plants, we use silkscreen printing to re(con)textualize ideas about the more-than-human labor of environmental (re)mediation.

Long abstract:

Who, or what, mediates pollution, and what kind of work does that entail? Sky inside the Soil is a multi-phase, mixed-methods, artistic research project that explores the work of plants as mediators between soil and sky in more-than-human communities of extreme toxicity. Visually unravelling the tale of a brown coal mining pit turned waste-water dump in the former East German district of Bitterfeld-Wolfen, the project asks: what roles do plants assume in the time-keeping and place-making processes of ecological labour engaged in environmental remediation? And how can this specific kind of vegetal labour mediate the complex political history of a specific place-time continuum? Using multispecies ethnography, sensory site survey, and artistic research, we draw an analogy between the labour of plants and the labour of humans in the site's material history of extraction and industrial expropriation. We use archival photographs and pigments derived from plant biomass to reflect on the social, economic, and aesthetic dimensions of pollution through the medium of silkscreen – a tightly woven nylon mesh, not unlike the synthetic nylon products once manufactured in Wolfen. We show how shifting meanings of place, labour, and multiple temporalities coalesce on site—from plant ancestors transformed into coal, to solar-punk speculations about the botanical-alterlife. Drawing on impulses from the fields of cultural geography, feminist STS, and environmental humanities, the paper weaves theoretical and practical threads to examine the more-than-human ecological labour forces at work in the ongoing remediation of a superfund site in post-socialist East Germany.