Tote Erde / das Brot der Welt
11 pigment prints, Diasec-mounted; sound.
Photographs and sound installation as part of the Ruhrtriennale. The Atacama Desert is technologically and metabolically connected to the Ruhr Region in Germany. Salpeter, the powder that fertilized Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, was extracted through a kind of knowledge and a set of machines coming from the coal-mining industry in West Germany. Knowledge and machines combined, alchemically transformed the millenary archive of the desert into life at the other side of the Atlantic. While the industrial heritage of coal mining in the Ruhr region, composed of the same machines, has been monumentalized by the work of important artists such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, the violent exploitation of the Atacama Desert can only be read in the traces left on its infinitely mnemonic surface.
Sound: With Pablo Thiermann
Design: With Maite Raschilla
Thanks to Sarah Lorbeer and Vale Romandia
Curated by Britta Peters and Alisha Raissa Danscher for @urbanekuensteruhr
This work is part of an ongoing research project supported by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and the Swiss National Science Foundation. The research is being carried out in the Laboratory for the History and Theory of Architecture, Technology, and Media at EPFL, in collaboration with Pedro Correa, Ella Neumaier, and Xavier Nueno.
Tote Erde / das Brot der Welt
11 pigment prints, Diasec-mounted; sound.
Photographs and sound installation as part of the Ruhrtriennale. The Atacama Desert is technologically and metabolically connected to the Ruhr Region in Germany. Salpeter, the powder that fertilized Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, was extracted through a kind of knowledge and a set of machines coming from the coal-mining industry in West Germany. Knowledge and machines combined, alchemically transformed the millenary archive of the desert into life at the other side of the Atlantic. While the industrial heritage of coal mining in the Ruhr region, composed of the same machines, has been monumentalized by the work of important artists such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, the violent exploitation of the Atacama Desert can only be read in the traces left on its infinitely mnemonic surface.
Sound: With Pablo Thiermann
Design: With Maite Raschilla
Thanks to Sarah Lorbeer and Vale Romandia
Curated by Britta Peters and Alisha Raissa Danscher for @urbanekuensteruhr
This work is part of an ongoing research project supported by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and the Swiss National Science Foundation. The research is being carried out in the Laboratory for the History and Theory of Architecture, Technology, and Media at EPFL, in collaboration with Pedro Correa, Ella Neumaier, and Xavier Nueno.
Tote Erde / das Brot der Welt
11 pigment prints, Diasec-mounted; sound.
Photographs and sound installation as part of the Ruhrtriennale. The Atacama Desert is technologically and metabolically connected to the Ruhr Region in Germany. Salpeter, the powder that fertilized Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, was extracted through a kind of knowledge and a set of machines coming from the coal-mining industry in West Germany. Knowledge and machines combined, alchemically transformed the millenary archive of the desert into life at the other side of the Atlantic. While the industrial heritage of coal mining in the Ruhr region, composed of the same machines, has been monumentalized by the work of important artists such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, the violent exploitation of the Atacama Desert can only be read in the traces left on its infinitely mnemonic surface.
Sound: With Pablo Thiermann
Design: With Maite Raschilla
Thanks to Sarah Lorbeer and Vale Romandia
Curated by Britta Peters and Alisha Raissa Danscher for @urbanekuensteruhr
This work is part of an ongoing research project supported by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and the Swiss National Science Foundation. The research is being carried out in the Laboratory for the History and Theory of Architecture, Technology, and Media at EPFL, in collaboration with Pedro Correa, Ella Neumaier, and Xavier Nueno.
Tote Erde / das Brot der Welt
Film showing the archival research I conducted in various archives in the Ruhr Region for my contribution to the Ruhrtrinnale this year.
Alfredo Thiermann in conversation with Niklas Maak and Anna Polze. Film and edit: Alina Schmuch.
Curated by Britta Peters and Alisha Raissa Danscher for @urbanekuensteruhr
Tote Erde / das Brot der Welt
Film showing the archival research I conducted in various archives in the Ruhr Region for my contribution to the Ruhrtrinnale this year.
Alfredo Thiermann in conversation with Niklas Maak and Anna Polze. Film and edit: Alina Schmuch.
Curated by Britta Peters and Alisha Raissa Danscher for @urbanekuensteruhr
Tote Erde / das Brot der Welt
Film showing the archival research I conducted in various archives in the Ruhr Region for my contribution to the Ruhrtrinnale this year.
Alfredo Thiermann in conversation with Niklas Maak and Anna Polze. Film and edit: Alina Schmuch.
Curated by Britta Peters and Alisha Raissa Danscher for @urbanekuensteruhr
Book Launch at DOMUSHAUS EG
Wed 27 Nov 2024, 18:30 at Domushaus, Pflugleingässlein 3, Basel
“Radio-Activities. Architecture and Broadcasting in Cold War Berlin”
Alfredo Thiermann Riesco. MIT Press, 2024
Conversation with Charlotte Truwant, Christoph Gantenbein, Chrissie Muhr and Alfredo Thiermann Riesco to present the book.
In 1945, having occupied German territory, Soviet troops made two strategic moves: they dismantled the Deutschlandsender III radio transmission tower, the single tallest structure at the time in Europe, and they seized the Haus des Rundfunks in West Berlin, a monumental building designed by Hans Poelzig. These moves were crucial both symbolically and technically, as together they sparked what would become a veritable radio war between the Eastern and Western blocs during the Cold War. In this talk, Thiermann will present "Radio-Activities", his recently published book, in which he investigates this spatial conflict by interrogating the political, technological, and environmental dimensions of architecture at a time when buildings began to interact with the remote transmission of information.
By its very nature, the medium of radio promised to evaporate the intrinsic material aspect of architecture; in fact, it did no such thing. By way of transscalar analyses, in the book, Thiermann pays particular attention to Berlin’s buildings, walls, transmission towers, factories, research institutions, and territorial organisations during the Cold War period, which enabled the production, reproduction, and transmission of sonic-based content across the divide of the Iron Curtain. In doing he reveals under researched continuities between politics, technology, media, and architecture, reframing notions of national and transnational boundaries.
In Radio-Activities Thiermann interrogates the status and agency of buildings during a period — not unlike today’s — of increasingly hyperconnected, ubiquitous, and apparently invisible modes of coexistence.
@athiermann@epflarchitecture@mitpress@truwantrodet@christgantenbein@chrissiemuhr@domushaus_eg
Book Launch at DOMUSHAUS EG
Wed 27 Nov 2024, 18:30 at Domushaus, Pflugleingässlein 3, Basel
“Radio-Activities. Architecture and Broadcasting in Cold War Berlin”
Alfredo Thiermann Riesco. MIT Press, 2024
Conversation with Charlotte Truwant, Christoph Gantenbein, Chrissie Muhr and Alfredo Thiermann Riesco to present the book.
In 1945, having occupied German territory, Soviet troops made two strategic moves: they dismantled the Deutschlandsender III radio transmission tower, the single tallest structure at the time in Europe, and they seized the Haus des Rundfunks in West Berlin, a monumental building designed by Hans Poelzig. These moves were crucial both symbolically and technically, as together they sparked what would become a veritable radio war between the Eastern and Western blocs during the Cold War. In this talk, Thiermann will present "Radio-Activities", his recently published book, in which he investigates this spatial conflict by interrogating the political, technological, and environmental dimensions of architecture at a time when buildings began to interact with the remote transmission of information.
By its very nature, the medium of radio promised to evaporate the intrinsic material aspect of architecture; in fact, it did no such thing. By way of transscalar analyses, in the book, Thiermann pays particular attention to Berlin’s buildings, walls, transmission towers, factories, research institutions, and territorial organisations during the Cold War period, which enabled the production, reproduction, and transmission of sonic-based content across the divide of the Iron Curtain. In doing he reveals under researched continuities between politics, technology, media, and architecture, reframing notions of national and transnational boundaries.
In Radio-Activities Thiermann interrogates the status and agency of buildings during a period — not unlike today’s — of increasingly hyperconnected, ubiquitous, and apparently invisible modes of coexistence.
@athiermann@epflarchitecture@mitpress@truwantrodet@christgantenbein@chrissiemuhr@domushaus_eg
Book Launch at DOMUSHAUS EG
Wed 27 Nov 2024, 18:30 at Domushaus, Pflugleingässlein 3, Basel
“Radio-Activities. Architecture and Broadcasting in Cold War Berlin”
Alfredo Thiermann Riesco. MIT Press, 2024
Conversation with Charlotte Truwant, Christoph Gantenbein, Chrissie Muhr and Alfredo Thiermann Riesco to present the book.
In 1945, having occupied German territory, Soviet troops made two strategic moves: they dismantled the Deutschlandsender III radio transmission tower, the single tallest structure at the time in Europe, and they seized the Haus des Rundfunks in West Berlin, a monumental building designed by Hans Poelzig. These moves were crucial both symbolically and technically, as together they sparked what would become a veritable radio war between the Eastern and Western blocs during the Cold War. In this talk, Thiermann will present "Radio-Activities", his recently published book, in which he investigates this spatial conflict by interrogating the political, technological, and environmental dimensions of architecture at a time when buildings began to interact with the remote transmission of information.
By its very nature, the medium of radio promised to evaporate the intrinsic material aspect of architecture; in fact, it did no such thing. By way of transscalar analyses, in the book, Thiermann pays particular attention to Berlin’s buildings, walls, transmission towers, factories, research institutions, and territorial organisations during the Cold War period, which enabled the production, reproduction, and transmission of sonic-based content across the divide of the Iron Curtain. In doing he reveals under researched continuities between politics, technology, media, and architecture, reframing notions of national and transnational boundaries.
In Radio-Activities Thiermann interrogates the status and agency of buildings during a period — not unlike today’s — of increasingly hyperconnected, ubiquitous, and apparently invisible modes of coexistence.
@athiermann@epflarchitecture@mitpress@truwantrodet@christgantenbein@chrissiemuhr@domushaus_eg
The Atacama Desert cannot forget. Dry, salty, wrinkled, and silent, everything that ever touched its surface is condemned to eternal memory. Literally, the desert cannot forget. Being the driest place on the planet, pulverized dinosaur bones, fossilized bird excrement, stardust, atmospheric sediments, and the material echoes of long-extinct volcanic and marine life have accumulated on its surface for millions of years. When walking on its rugged crust, one steps on the surface of a millenary archive, a memory device as vast as it is precise, which, due to the lack of rain, has stored everything the rest of the world has decided to forget. The exploitation of this archive, this millenary memory device, is what has made this thing we call modernity possible.
Europe, as we know it, would not exist without the alchemical transformation of nitrates into food. It was the nitrates extracted from the salty ground, transformed into saltpeter, that fertilized European soils plagued by Malthusian anxiety. Later, from the same ground, copper enabled the total electrification of the planet, and now it is lithium that fuels our tech-assisted reified in phones and computers, allowing us to remember and communicate simultaneously. Paradoxically, it is the soil of the driest and most uninhabitable place on Earth that has nurtured modern life on this planet, both biologically and technologically. But the desert cannot forget, and its surface has stored with the same stubborn precision as if they were drawings, the traces of the human and ecological violence required to exploit that very ground.
The Atacama Desert cannot forget. Dry, salty, wrinkled, and silent, everything that ever touched its surface is condemned to eternal memory. Literally, the desert cannot forget. Being the driest place on the planet, pulverized dinosaur bones, fossilized bird excrement, stardust, atmospheric sediments, and the material echoes of long-extinct volcanic and marine life have accumulated on its surface for millions of years. When walking on its rugged crust, one steps on the surface of a millenary archive, a memory device as vast as it is precise, which, due to the lack of rain, has stored everything the rest of the world has decided to forget. The exploitation of this archive, this millenary memory device, is what has made this thing we call modernity possible.
Europe, as we know it, would not exist without the alchemical transformation of nitrates into food. It was the nitrates extracted from the salty ground, transformed into saltpeter, that fertilized European soils plagued by Malthusian anxiety. Later, from the same ground, copper enabled the total electrification of the planet, and now it is lithium that fuels our tech-assisted reified in phones and computers, allowing us to remember and communicate simultaneously. Paradoxically, it is the soil of the driest and most uninhabitable place on Earth that has nurtured modern life on this planet, both biologically and technologically. But the desert cannot forget, and its surface has stored with the same stubborn precision as if they were drawings, the traces of the human and ecological violence required to exploit that very ground.
The Atacama Desert cannot forget. Dry, salty, wrinkled, and silent, everything that ever touched its surface is condemned to eternal memory. Literally, the desert cannot forget. Being the driest place on the planet, pulverized dinosaur bones, fossilized bird excrement, stardust, atmospheric sediments, and the material echoes of long-extinct volcanic and marine life have accumulated on its surface for millions of years. When walking on its rugged crust, one steps on the surface of a millenary archive, a memory device as vast as it is precise, which, due to the lack of rain, has stored everything the rest of the world has decided to forget. The exploitation of this archive, this millenary memory device, is what has made this thing we call modernity possible.
Europe, as we know it, would not exist without the alchemical transformation of nitrates into food. It was the nitrates extracted from the salty ground, transformed into saltpeter, that fertilized European soils plagued by Malthusian anxiety. Later, from the same ground, copper enabled the total electrification of the planet, and now it is lithium that fuels our tech-assisted reified in phones and computers, allowing us to remember and communicate simultaneously. Paradoxically, it is the soil of the driest and most uninhabitable place on Earth that has nurtured modern life on this planet, both biologically and technologically. But the desert cannot forget, and its surface has stored with the same stubborn precision as if they were drawings, the traces of the human and ecological violence required to exploit that very ground.
