Toxic Landscapes: Holland and Brandenburg

The Netherlands has a long tradition of extracting gas and oil from the North Sea – only today numerous drilling rigs have been decommissioned because there is not much left to extract. On the other hand, artificial, men-made landscapes are camouflaged as idyllic resorts of nature. In the exhibition “Toxic Landscapes”, which will open at the Haus der Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Geschichte on 07 July 2023, Dutch artist Tanja Engelberts (1987, Deventer) investigates how to document landscapes that are no longer visible. These places range from artificial islands to the endless North Sea, and are often related to the fossil fuel industry. For example, she immersed herself in the industrial landscape of the North Sea by sailing with maintenance ships and speaking with offshore employees. The landscape takes shape by means of films, prints, sound and texts in which the atmosphere and experience of these places is recorded.

Fossile energy and artificial landscapes also plays a part for Brandenburg: 12 million tons of crude oil have so far been processed annually in the PCK oil refinery in Schwedt. With this, the traditional company from the Uckermark supplied Brandenburg, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with gasoline, diesel and heating oil. For almost 60 years, the crude oil came directly from Russia via the Druzhba pipeline. Since the beginning of 2023, the war embargo on Russian oil has been in force. Alternatives are in demand. At the same time, the seemingly idyllic lake and forest landscapes are contaminated with toxic remnants of industrial and military infrastructure. Some are not even accessible to humans. In Lusatia (Lausitz), one of the largest European transformation processes is underway – the phase-out of lignite mining by 2030. The Russian war of aggression in Ukraine has reignited the energy debate. Are we really at the end of the fossil age in Holland as well as in Brandenburg? What images represent these processes? What might a way of dealing with the toxic legacies of this era look like?

Hollow (2018), is the first film Engelberts made during her residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. The film is a portrait of an artificial Dutch island. It is shaped like a ring dike and serves as a dumping ground for contaminated sludge from Dutch waters that contain toxic substances. In this first video work the camouflage techniques that depict the island as an idyllic nature reserve are explored, as well as the monotony of actual islands making and the dumping of dredged material. The island is a vehicle for Engelberts to develop a speculative vision of the future in text and image in which she, by thinking through geological time, wonders what happens to processes that people set in motion, but which have consequences that will manifest themselves long after our own deaths.

In the film, titled Decom (2021), Engelberts refers to a scrapping yard for decommissioned gas and oil rigs from the maritime sectors of the Netherlands, England and Denmark. Once artificially created as workplace and housing for employees whose work ensured the prosperity of exporting countries, these islands stand like a “silent army on the edge of the North Sea” (Engelberts). They herald the end of the fossil fuel industry as North Sea sources dry up.

However, Engelberts doesn’t just analyze the interplay between nature and the fossil fuel industry – she also focuses on people, even though there are deliberately no people in either film. It’s precisely these voids that matter: because many who worked on the Dutch platforms and oil rigs were young men who started in the industry in their twenties. These men spent their working lives and parts of their personal lives at these unworldly sites. Now they are retired, and in some ways, these platforms are on their way to retirement as well. “I decided with Decom to shoot the film without people to reinforce the strangeness of this place. The machines take over and clean up the human remains. Sometimes we get really close to the demolition work, which is also a really violent act, it’s crazy to see.” – Engelberts said of her artistic decision to leave the image of the end of the fossil age to the machines. This confrontation is a vehicle for Engelberts to develop a speculative vision of the future in text and image. In doing so, she asks what happens on a geological scale in human-initiated processes that have consequences beyond our own deaths.

Also in Lusatia (Lausitz), since the 1990s, when coal mines were dismantled in Lauchhammer, an entire generation has been “shut down” amid life, leaving voids throughout the region. Following “Toxic Landscapes”, the most comprehensive exhibition to date at the Haus der Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Geschichte by photographer Christina Glanz will show these voids in photo series with impressive portrait of coal workers and remnants of the coal industry in Brandenburg / Lauchhammer starting September 29, 2023.

– Dr. Katalin Krasznahorkai, Haus der Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Geschichte

Titelbild: Tanja Engelberts: Hollow (Filmstill), 2021 │ © Tanja Engelberts