Ausschnitte Aus Eden/Extracts from Eden: Re-Representing the “Wounded” Landscape of the Lausitz, Eastern Germany

Abstract

Centrally informed through the application of photography, my multi-media practice has evolved to one conversant in ethnography and the principles of a critically reflexive practice. Ethnography can be viewed as an epistemological position or “a commitment”, as Zsuzsa Gille states, “to study an issue at hand by understanding it from the perspectives of people whose lives are tied up with or affected by it”. The thematic concerns within my research practice have critically addressed the predatory context resulting from the flows and migrations of global capital. To this end, and drawing upon my own practice-led fieldwork in the Lausitz (Lusatia), Brandenburg in the former East Germany (Deutsche Demokratische Republik), this article and the illustrations frame a long-term research project constructed in a landscape inscribed with the utopic “wounds of modernity” (Berman) — Industrialisation, Socialism, and now at great cost, Globalisation — and the re-representational strategies employed to evoke the “wounded” landscape of the Lausitz, a landscape of the here and now.

Acknowledgements

Ausschnitte aus EDEN/Extracts from EDEN was generously supported through funding from the Arts Council of Ireland.

Notes

1. From recorded conversation, Cottbus, Brandenburg, 23 Sept. 2003, original in English.

2. The cycle began with SOUTHERN CROSS (Gallery of Photography/Cornerhouse 2002) which surveyed the spaces of development and finance of the so-called “Celtic Tiger” economy of the Irish Republic between 1999 and 2001, and subsequently The Breathing Factory (Edition Braus/Belfast Exposed/Gallery of Photography 2006), the outcome of my doctoral research, sited in a multinational complex in Leixlip in the East of Ireland which addressed the role and representation of labour, global labour practices and the fragile nature of globalised industrial space and the relationship to curatorial practice. Continuing with this project, Ausschnitte aus EDEN/Extracts from EDEN (2011) to my current project, THE MARKET, on the functioning and conditions of the global stock and commodity markets, these have been extensively presented as exhibition, installation and publication.

3. Taussig’s description that “ethnography may not represent reality but its effects may be real” was included in a presentation by Dr Allen Feldman, New York University, on “Media and Global Ethnography”, American University Paris (16 June–5 July 2008).

4. Pink’s approach underscores the fractured and experiential potentials within Stephen Tyler’s concept of “evocation” in which a text is read “not with the eyes alone but with the ears in order to hear the voices in the pages” (136).

5. The methodological approach, advocated by Pink, is addressed in greater detail in relation to my doctoral research (see Curran “The Breathing Factory”).

6. “Der Herrgott hat die Lausitz erschaffen und der Teufel hat die Kohle darunter versteckt” (original Sorb saying).

7. While the “braunkohle” (lignite) will eventually be depleted, the intention is to create a large “complex of artificial lakes” through flooding and redeveloping former mining locations. The “Internationale Bauausstellung” (IBA), a government-funded project, initiated in 2000, plans to create a future tourism lakescape in the region. However, challenges exist for the project, from degrees of cynicism on the part of local communities to the environmental impact. This includes potential groundwater contamination through the flooding and the toxicity of the water being unable to support waterlife and indeed being unfit for humans to swim in. See <http://www.iba-see2010.de/> (10 Aug. 2011); <http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/archiv/.bin/dump.fcgi/2001/0828/wissenschaft/0005/index.html> (10 Aug. 2011).

8. Published in 2007, the ZukunftAtlas (Atlas of the Future) by research institute, Prognos, outlined the challenges facing German provinces. See <http://www.prognos.com/Zukunftsatlas-2007-Regionen.173.0.html> (5 Jan. 2011).

9. This is in the context of the collapse of the Irish economy, beginning in 2007, necessitating an International Monetary Fund/European Union financial bailout in 2010.

10. My conception regarding the role of still and moving image is informed by Green’s essay on the work of the Belgian artist, David Claerbout.

11. Paul Harrison outlines the inherent political potential of stillness.

12. My understanding is informed by an article written by Liz Wells on attempts to theoretically frame the meaning of the photograph.

13. From a recorded conversation, Cottbus, Brandenburg 7 Sept. 2006, original in German.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Curran

Mark Curran lives and works in Berlin and Dublin. He completed a practice-led PhD at the Dublin Institute of Technology (2011), lectures on the BA (Hons) Photography programme, IADT, Dublin and is Visiting Professor on the MA in Visual and Media Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin. His long-term projects, SOUTHERN CROSS (Gallery of Photography 2002) and the outcome of his doctoral research, The Breathing Factory (Edition Braus/Belfast Exposed 2006), have been extensively presented and published while Ausschnitte aus EDEN/Extracts from EDEN (2011) was installed at Encontros da Imagem 2011 (Braga, Portugal), PhotoIreland 2012 and will be part of the group exhibition, Phantasmagoria at the Thomas J. Walsh Museum of Art, Connecticut, USA in 2014. Continuing this cycle, Curran’s current long-term project, THE MARKET, is part of the marking of the forthcoming centenary of the Dublin Lockout, a pivotal moment in Irish labour history occurring in August 2013. To be presented simultaneously at the Gallery of Photography, Dublin and Belfast Exposed and supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, this multi-sited transnational project focuses on the functioning and condition of the global stock and commodity markets. A publication will follow in 2014.