Phantom Pond

At a former pond in northern Germany, tons of toxic chemical warfare agents from both world wars have formed an underground cloud of pollutants. A munitions clearance project has been underway for years to contain it. The installation takes this military landfill as its starting point. Through an ensemble of screen-printed monotypes, stencils and video projections, the work creates a small model of the exclusion zone to walk through. The images resemble research samples; the abstracted, seemingly harmless heathland plants resemble networks, reminiscent of nerve tissue, mycelium or alveoli. The landscape looks the same as ever. But the material pushes back. '