INtroDuCtIoN
An Artistic and Contextual Platform for the City in Times of Climate Change Anke Haarmann und Harald Lemke [AHL]
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thE arChIVE of thE arts
Nana Petzet, Joseph Beuys, Malte Willms, Dan Peterman, Elisabeth Richnow, Kathrin Milan, Lili Fischer, Ton Matton
art ProjECts
Ala Plástica—Transitions Intercultural Garden—Plant Bed Sculptures Critical Art Ensemble—Peep under the Elbe Susan Leibovitz Steinman—Gardens for All Nana Petzet—Im Peutegrund Fährstraße Party—Everything is Nature
strIP—BIllBoarD CoursE
A Collective Sculpture in the Public Interest
ExCursIoNs of rEflECtIoN
Harbor Tour Energy Tour Nature Tour Urban Utopia Tour Garden Tour
In Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, where the exhibition platform Culture | Nature took place, the history of the city district, its proximity to the Port of Hamburg, its location between various waterways and in a delta, the structure of its population, the political balance of power, economic dynamics, among other things, blend into such a collective. Contained in this collective is the risk that the moor frog in the so-called »Wettern« (the drainage ditches and canals of the marshland) is going to become extinct, as a dam is separating the Elbe river from the hinterland, as transport containers are piled up to metal mountains, as gardens are turned into massive industrial buildings and gardening product centers, as canals and wastelands are contaminated with inherited old pollutants, as plans for superhighways are proliferating, and as bicycle paths are being called for to relieve people’s nerves and the ailing climate. Bicycle paths, in this context, are they exclusively »culture,« and moor frogs, are they »nature« only? In the course of history, the occidental relationship between nature and culture has formed a dualism. Whatever was wild nature was supposed to be civilized by culture. Whatever was culturally molded could not be considered natural. It is by this antagonism in the basic concept that, to this day, we perceive our natural environment. We differentiate between culture and nature, urban and rural areas, artificial and natural, even though the respective values have traded places: it is no longer human culture that seems desirable, but it is nature, in its destruction by man, that seems to be in need of saving. However, the antinomy of man and environment continues to exist without being questioned. Flowers are nature—buildings are culture. Chimeras such as port basins or nature reserves are »laundered« terminologically. Wilhelmsburg is full of chimeras, not pure. Culture | Nature has not carried out the cultural questioning of man’s relationship with nature without regard to the locality, but has taken the specific situation in Wilhelmsburg as an example. In this city district of Hamburg located on the southern side of the Elbe, harbor industry borders directly on residential areas, the percentages of migrants and jobless are particularly high. Furthermore, nature reserves are part of the landscape, existing next to vegetable farms, quarters with Wilhelminian-style apartment buildings and more recently built high-rise apartment complexes, as well as single-family home neighborhoods. For decades, a highly involved citizens’ initiative has been active here. There has also been the image of a neglected city district to contend with, fears of the area being gentrified, demands for more urban development, a high noise level from all the port and industry traffic, but also rare marsh birds on wet meadowland. This is the place where the Hamburg city administration has decided to intervene by organizing an International Building Exposition (IBA) from 2007 until 2013 to »develop the city.« Just as controversial as the entire undertaking, but also critically useful, is its art and culture program, the »Elbe Island Summers,« which is under an independent curatorship for the first time in 2008. The »Elbe Island Summer« is part of city development and refers to the topics of this Building Exposition. The question is, however, what can art and culture achieve in urban development and to whose benefit?
Nana Petzet, who also realized the art project »Im Peutegrund« for Culture | Nature, was present with her system of utilizing household refuse, »Sammeln Bewahren Forschen« (SFB)« (»Collecting Conserving Investigating«), which had been exhibited in the Hamburg Kunsthalle in 2000. Petzet’s irritation with the German discarding-recycling system known as »Green Point« inspired her to come up with a counter-system: refuse is not discarded, but is collected, sorted, and categorized until a fitting way of reusing the item is found. Working delicately and with lots of imagination, Petzet weaves baskets from plastic bags or bundles Tetrapak containers into doormats. Petzet’s ironical seriousness with which she advertises her SFB system in a video clip, makes the viewer reflect upon existing commercial recycling systems and also relativizes her own »truth« about better ways of reusing refuse.
ton Matton began in 2007 to construct climate machines that simulate the process of global warming. These machines are conceived of as optimistic and provocative research instruments: what is being researched is not primarily climate change as such, but rather society’s reactions to it. The viewer turns into a climatologist and a co-producer when, by pressing various buttons, he »administers« water or light, thereby making the banana plant inside the machine prosper or suffer. In his 2007 project Surviving the Suburb, Matton also poses the question, what happens when our Western urban model is transformed to a global metropolis. Matton’s graphic works visualize the possibilities—in the foreseeable future—of self-supply in the city where exotic plants like bananas will begin to flourish due to climate change.
Nana Petzet »Im Peutegrund« In the course of her research for a contribution to the exhibition platform Culture | Nature, Hamburg artist Nana Petzet discovered the »Peutegrund.« The green plot with a pond and a manifold flora and fauna is located in the midst of Hamburg’s port area, in a sector characterized by intensive business and industrial use. The goal of the project Im Peutegrund was to employ artistic methods to make this fallow land, up to now designated as contamination risk area and territory for port enlargement, visible as a highly valuable biotope—hoping this would lead to a redesignation of the land. The Peutegrund is situated in the southeast of the Elbe island, on the so-called Peute. Until the storm flood in 1962, this low-lying land near the Norderelbe was home to smallscale gardens and a few business establishments. After the flood disaster, the Hamburg Port Authority (or »Strom- und Hafenbau,« as it was called then) took over. Originally, the Strom- und Hafenbau-GmbH had secured the Peutehafen plot as territory for enlarging inland water transport on the Elbe. For the flood protection of the industrial area in the surroundings, the Peutegrund was lined with a sheet pile wall and the levee, the Peuter Elbdeich, was increased in height—and then the area was abandoned. Over the past four decades, by being shielded from the tidal influence of the Elbe through a low dam and furnished with a drainage, the Peutegrund—which is regularly flooded during storm floods—has developed into a rather unique biotope. Environmentalists, botanists, and ornithologists have been witnessing the advancing biological desolation in the port areas with growing concern; the developments in the Peutegrund have been a source of delight for them. (For more detail, see the article by Harald Köpke in the text volume.) Since the Hamburg City department for environmental matters has been all but neglecting this biotope in the past, nobody has ever bothered to survey and map the flora and fauna in the area. Nana Petzet has now documented the natural habitat in the Peutegrund in a short film. Under the guidance of an ornithologist, a botanist, an expert for insects, and one for amphibious animals, the video document presents the animal and plant kingdom of the Peutegrund: egret, wood pidgeon, gray goose, reed, figwort, hemp-agrimony, and many other plant and animal species. They even documented a sighting of the extremely rare species of the striped bush-cricket, which is found in the Red List of endangered species in category 1 (»in immediate danger of extinction«). After the conclusion of the temporary exhibition during the course of Culture | Nature, Petzet is planning to shoot a longterm documentary film of the Peutegrund. Next to the biological survey and mapping, part of the work in the Peutegrund was another important aspect of biotope conservation: dealing with the problem of neophytes. Neophytes are plants that have been imported accidentally from distant geographical regions into the local area and have propagated in the new environment for a number of generations. In cooperation with the BUND (the German Union for the Protection of