Post-digital Collectives: Memories of Lützerath

The making of Post-digital Collectives: Memories of Lützerath

The multiscreen-installation "Post-Digital Collectives: Memories of Lützerath" evolved from research to find parts of the roots of the definition of "post-digital". I noticed matching publications and symposiums with the participation of Florian Cramer, who is (among other activities) a lecturer and researcher in the field of media art and digitization.

Following the list of his publications and events he participated, i found a PhD-Workshop and a conference under the umbrella of "transmediale afterglow" 2013/2014. Core of my installation is a german translation of a "post-digital" definition i found presented in the conference-video and written in "APRJA" Volume 3, Issue 1, 2014: "A Peer-Reviewed Journal About POST-DIGITAL RESEARCH", published by: Digital Aesthetics Research Centre, Aarhus University.

While digitization is often about hyping "logic" or thought-to-be "more efficient" technology (what is at least questionable, with the new AI monsters using an increasing amount of energy for industrialized lie fabrication) "post-digital" in 2014 was coined as seeing the "old" and the "new" media side by side, instead of one above the other. Also the interconnection of (inter)net-work and artist collective action, open source and DIY-movements, remediated in the "real" world, were considered.

Viewing videos of a symposium about materiality i learned about the Jatiwangi Art Factory project in Indonesia, which is a local community project combining art, DIY-methodologies and activism to take and revive endangered old roof tile industrial places. I saw similarities in their strategy to romanticize their collective action with what i experienced in and around the (evicted and destroyed) german village Lützerath between 2020 and 2023: A multitude of people co-created rituals of living, creating art, and fighting together for a different future and against lignite mining...

Looking back, in "real life" we lost the battle of saving this village. Now there are only fragments existing: Some art pieces, memories, fotos, sound recordings, 3D captures taken by drones, trauma of experienced violence... Like my chaotic collage of images and sounds from Lützerath, together with additional material from luetzipedia.org, the village was crushed into pieces, taken away from where it existed, piled in layers of unidentifiable material at different locations.

This work is also about the violence of politics and industry, taking away what was once a real place to work and live. Between the lines (or the pictures) it is about the conflict of good paid mine workers, who do not want to see an end to mining, because it implies an uncertain future from a personal view, and climate activists, local residents and artists, building tree huts, engaging in legal proceedings to keep their farms and land, creating art and culture in the partly abandoned spaces, protesting against lignite-mining and burning for electric power production, which is a real threat for a livable future at global scale.

As an effort of the transformation of the energy (and employment) system (in former mining communities) Microsoft is embraced as an investor, who announced to build massive datacenters near old open-pit coalmines and coal power stations. Tragically, the scaled-up power consumptive data-mining technology is threatening the goal to phase-out coal and natural gas and the switch to 100% renewable energy, while it is uncertain if it will provide good paid jobs on a local and global scale. Having this in mind, i try not to over-aesteticize glossy 3D creations or to show only easy understandable, nice looking fotos to the audience.

At best, my installation makes people want to try their own bodily experiences in protests or collective art projects. When i close my eyes, i remember places, people and events i experienced in Lützerath. I remember the voles moving beneath my body, when i was lying in my tent on the sleeping-meadow, where now is a minimum 40 meter deep hole instead.