Our wonderful research cluster "Stoffwechsel - Ecologies of Collaboration" has found its new focus: the alps and new and very old forms of living sustainable with the environment there. A super-interesting and very very charged topic I am so happy to delve into with this formidable group! We have our first publication event on the 3rd of October and it would be lovely to see some of you there!
STOFFWECHSEL Labor 2026 – SOILED LOVE: Feuchter Alpennordsaum
Did you know that the word “Alps” comes from Iraq? And that ever since the first settlers from Mesopotamia, the Alps have been cultivated as a cultural landscape that has been slowly decaying since the start of industrialization?As part of the artistic research lab Stoffwechsel – Ecologies of Collaboration, we have been exploring new and old materialisms and ecosophies for a decade now, ones that establish different relationships with the Earth, relationships that are dirtier and more loving: soiled love. We are currently focusing on the Alpine region, including the challenging questions surrounding traditional ways of life.
Buried in the Damp Northern Alpine Rim lies a millennia-old cultural practice that has made the Alps, as a cultural region, what they (still) are today: a highly biodiverse area with human landscape cultivation practices designed for cohabitation and sustainability. Just as indigenous peoples co-created the Amazon rainforest as a complex habitat, the Alpine region can also be understood as the result of highly complex and long-term human eco-intelligence.
Yet in many places, the Alps are also a machine for leisure tourism and the related environmental destruction and displacement of agricultural communities, as well as a symbol of reactionary populism. How can this toxic mix be understood, and how can we – beyond simplified, idealized projections – think of the historical ways of life in the Alpine region as a source of inspiration for future forms of co-habitation? As part of SOILED LOVE: The Damp Northern Alpine Rim, we explored cow dung and cloud formations, watercourses and alpine farming – we searched for the local fairy tales and explored our physicality in relation to the towering rock massifs. With this Open Lab, we aim to share our experiences and open them up for discussion. We have also invited the artist Esther Strauß, who has been intensively engaged with the Alps from an artistic perspective for many years. She will present her current project, Denkmal für Schnee, which explores the loss of snow and the grieving process that accompanies it.
“The day may come when the very last snow falls in the Alps. A monument is to remind us of this loss even before it has occurred. On a nameless peak, situated between two summits in the primeval rock of the Tux Alps, a delicate brass inscription, 80 centimetres wide, will be affixed at an altitude of almost 2,700 metres. The three little words Denkmal für Schnee (Monument for snow) transform the mountain into a pedestal, on whose highest point – at some point, on a day that can be sensed but not predicted – the last snow to fall on this peak will melt. What does its disappearance mean to us?” (Esther Strauß)
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