growing together, on the banks of a dying river

THANK YOU

Beata Hemer (supervisor), PACS team and classmates, family and friends, workshop managers, royalgarden_akademi, Richard Dmitri Hees, Esther Fröhlich, Lisa Maria Gerdes, campus service, and helpdesk.

The project was presented on 4 June 2024 as a spatial installation with a performance of a presentation script guiding through a digital model on a three-channel video display. The presentation highlighted different interventions, visions and reflections in the proposal, supported by the following sensory inputs in the installation.

Extract from thesis presentation: 

We are visiting the site through a digital model I’ve built. I’ve spent countless hours in this model; trodden every path, gotten lost. I sat at the shore while the river slowly vanished. I do not consider any of it finished, and I guess it can’t be. It is an environment in the making, an environment that requires patience. Basically, a spiky mesh spun with JPEGs and PNGs. Tall reeds, wildflowers, and raspberries. Wild carrot, cattail, and cotton thistles.

Extract from thesis presentation: 

I imagine many lives in this digital model, also more than we see. A goat grazing in the tall reeds. Somewhere a shepherd and the people the goat sometimes meets. Other goats slumbering by a mirabelle tree. In a book on film poetics I read:

What is a symbol? To say something and mean something else. Why not say it directly? For the simple reason that certain phenomena tend to disappear when we approach them directly.

E. Wind, quote in Raul Ruiz's Filmens Poetik.

Extract from thesis programme: 

Behind time-based and sensory media representations, some sort of subject always emerges, an idea of a sensing body with a certain set of abilities. Technology allows us to associate ourselves with yet more abstract bodies and perspectives that we were previously unaware of. This project will be carried out through a comprehensive exploration of sensory and time-based media. This is an attempt to be inclusive to all parties regardless architectural literacy.

Extract from thesis programme: 

Navigating today’s social and ecological breakdowns, there is a growing recognition of the need for holistic approaches. My proposal for a wilderness in Berlin is driven by a holistic approach seeking new urban dynamics in both the social and ecological perspectives of the wilderness.

Video archive

Online, I have been collecting video material recorded by local residents resisting the development of big tech and media offices on the riverbanks in the late 2000s. The video archive works as a contextualization of the project through the lens of local citizens. Most of the video archive consists of low-quality footage from citizens participating in protests and performances around the site. Since much of the civic opposition to the big tech and media developments vanished after the area’s completion, the videos in the archive appear to me as important testaments to the spaces and culture that once existed.

Aroma representation

Early in the process of sensualizing the predicted decay of the Spree River, it became clear that the proposed transition from riverbank to wilderness would manifest itself through a very different aroma spectrum than what exists on site today. To accommodate this, I initiated a series of studies with different modes of sampling and emitting aromas as a form of spatial representation. The resulting aroma representation is a series of artificially developed aromas emitted through infused computer components.

Icon sculpting

The project site in Berlin's east side district is characterized by a series of large commercial icons indicating land ownership and advertising local businesses. By sculpting one of these icons, I am exploring questions of ownership using materials that represent the proposed wilderness of the project. The sculpted icon thus also functions as a symbol for the project itself by reembodying local actors in a new ecology.

Banners

I have been looking at development banners in the nearby context and trying to replicate the communicative strategies utilized in negotiating the local architecture. This approach uses a direct and promising tone to engage passers-by in the ongoing development. The resulting banners act as a communication study designed to provoke images and stimulate interest in future users of the site. Through a concise bullet-point style without supporting imagery, the actual visualization of the upcoming spaces is left to the reader.

Laser-cut laser print reliefs

During my master's studies, I've been developing a method of laser printing on reflective surfaces, which are then laser cut into reliefs. The method is driven by an interest in the tension that often arises in digital media between image surface and internal mass. I find this tension represented in the conflicting material cultures of the site: the hard, smooth, and reflective architectural environments versus the wealth of organic and digital processes they organize every day.

Extract from thesis presentation:

It is clear that a site like this always puts the project at risk of being cancelled by commercial developments. Therefore, from the outset it has been my intention to reinforce the proposal with a model that can sustain the project in the far future. For this purpose, the East Side Initiative is outlined as an intermediary organisation, coordinating efforts between residents, companies, local authorities, and environmental experts. 

Support Agreement

The attached document Support Agreement for the cultivation and maintenance of the wild banks of the River Spree outlines a contract for the involvement of local businesses to make it economically sustainable to keep the river banks wild in the future. 

Diagrams

The project was preceded by six months of fieldwork and research around the site and in the broader regional and national context. Part of this work is manifested in a research paper and a diagram edition graphically outlining the political and ecological context of the project. 

Extract from thesis presentation: 

iPhone note, April 11.

It occurs to me that this project addresses both an external and an internal energy crisis of our time. The external energy crisis unfolds within the national German context, amidst the shifting energy resources and transitioning supply chains that have triggered the decline of the Spree river system. Meanwhile, an internal energy crisis is something that unfolds within the inhabitants of Berlin, marked by the increasing pressures imposed upon individuals and the attention demanded by the media industry represented around my site. Thereby, it becomes motivating for me to work on a spatial counterpoint to Berlin’s media industry, a wilderness in the terrain of the external German energy crisis.