Paper short abstract:

Interactive presentation using silkscreen print-making as a means of practical reflection on the non-productive labor performed by plants, soils and others in large scale remediation projects. This is the solar-punk energy revolution – grab a rag and join the ecological labor force!

Paper long abstract:

Who, or what, mediates pollution? In Bitterfeld-Wolfen, industrial heritage is a fundamental part of the cultural fabric of the city. However, processes of bioremediation have masked ongoing environmental violence through the lush spectacle of reconstructed (urban-industrial) nature, so as to erase the former fly ash from collective consciousness. “Sky inside the Soil” is a multi-phase, co-authored research-creation project that explores the roles of plants and trees as mediators between soil and sky in more-than-human communities of extreme toxicity. Following the seasonal cycle of ruderal plants growing around the notoriously polluted Silbersee (Silver Lake), we imagine through them the historical trajectories of labor and repair on a former mining pit once used for wastewater from the Agfa film factory and chemical textiles plant in Bitterfeld-Wolfen. 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 consider changes in viscosity over time and invite an embodied understanding of such changes though the repetitive process of silkscreen printing: prepare, place, pour, pull, lift, sweep, repeat. Using these motions to structure our reflections, we work-with and think-with vegetal mediators to re(con)textualize ideas about the long-term, more-than-human ecological labor of remediation.