It is precisely in the city, where everything is subject to automated and thus seemingly unquestionable routines, that it is difficult to take a critical look at our dire predicament and recognize and combat the causes of the global economic-ecological polycrisis as such. The artistic projects that Anna-Lena Wenzel investigated for the “Kin City” series offer opportunities to interrupt the capitalist-colonial continuum and open up emancipatory spaces for action.
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How can the relationship between human-beings and nature be conceived as equal in an urban context? How can we get out of the cycle of exploitation, and what are the ways out of the logic of growth without shifting the problems to the urban periphery, the countryside, or abroad? With Till Krause and Jelka Plate, I would like to introduce two artistic positions that – in their consistency – are groundbreaking for me. On the one hand, their artistic practice is closely linked to their everyday lives, which means that their concerns do not remain in the exhibition space, but are lived. Secondly, they open up radical spaces of thought, and these are necessary to step out of familiar patterns of action. After all, who doesn’t know this: Oops, I forgot my cup again / Oops, I’m only going to the Biennale once more / Sorry, but I really can’t afford the food from the food co-op.
Free River Zone Süderelbe
What would it mean to close the Hamburg branch of the Elbe to inland navigation? “Freie Flusszone Süderelbe” (Free River Zone Süderelbe) is the name of a project that speculates on what would happen if a piece of domesticated and exploited nature were removed from the economic cycle. The artist Till Krause played a key role in initiating the project in 2011, bringing together artists and scientists to play out this idea on a specific site. The project is based on inventories and mapping, which are made public through poster campaigns, exhibitions and publications.
One of these is the slim volume “Lost Plants,” published by Till Krause together with the botanist Wanda Thormählen. It contains profiles of 21 river valley plants that once inhabited the Elbe lowlands but are now lost. This impressive example of the consequences of human influence and economic use of the Elbe valley is complemented by a text by Till Krause. In it, he transfers the idea of colonization to human behavior toward nature. “Now that almost the entire surface of the earth has been made available for human use, as well as the airspace and parts of the depths of the earth and the oceans, and we are working on the economic use of the moon and space – in other words, now that the total domination of mankind has reached a new peak and the whole thing has been christened the Anthropocene – it makes sense to give a voice to all the other beings that are still there (at least those that do not cause plagues and pandemics)…”.
But Krause is skeptical about the resulting “talk of human and non-human coexistence.” Because when you talk about coexistence, the relationship is far from being reversed. It’s still about maintaining the world order – only now we live together as equals! For Krause, this does not go far enough. In his view, we have “no business in the spheres of others […]. If we respected them as untouchable in their respective existence, then we would try not to disturb them, not to hurt them, to keep our distance from them, or, where not otherwise possible, to move between them with delicacy.”
During a visit to Till Krause’s house in Hamburg-Altona, I learn what might be meant by delicacy as he leads me through his backyard garden. “We don’t have a rooster because of the neighborhood,” says artist Till Krause, “it would be too loud.” But there must be a dozen chickens with shiny feathers that can roam free here. One curiously approaches Krause and pecks his foot in greeting, others sit on perches in the shade, another is busy gathering several chicks into a nest in a wooden box. “This is a bantam, but the chicks are from another hen, so they will soon be bigger than the ‘mother,’” Krause explains. He shows me the feeding trough, which is well stocked with lettuce and melon – leftovers he gets from a local grocer – and talks about hawk attacks, hybrid chickens, and the early start to the day that comes with raising chickens.
His report reflects both the enormous knowledge he and his partner Ute Schmiedel have acquired and a great respect for the chickens, which are treated more like pets than farm animals. Still, the co-existence is not romanticized. Krause and Schmiedel eat and give away the eggs they lay – and slaughter the hens when they get too old (and sick). A description of this slaughtering process (which, as he admits, costs him a lot of effort every time) can be found in the book “On Slaughter” by Klara Hobza, which Krause gives me as a parting gift. His text in this volume is called “Friendship and Cannibalism.” The title alone is irritating, as it suggests that the chickens have become friends to him and that eating them is comparable to cannibalism. The text captivates with its careful and appreciative description of the process: „I place my friend’s rump together with her wings and legs in a closed, cast-iron saucepan on a rack over her own fat and steam her, possibly adding a little water. The older my friend, the slower and longer this process will be. It softens her meat, but she will retain her well-defined structure, given that she has spent many years growing, exercising plentifully, and benefitting from a varied diet. The heat can be turned up high at the end to crispen the skin.”
Paradoxically, the detailed description of each step leads to them losing their ‘brutal’ character. In addition, a different temporality is propagated when each part of the chicken is used and eaten over several days. This celebrates the opposite of fast food-style consumption of industrially produced burgers and shows a relationship to the animal that most people today have probably lost. Krause reverses the functional treatment of so-called farm animals and turns it into a friendship – in the middle of the city! The power imbalance between humans and animals is not eliminated, but by understanding it as a mutual dependence, it becomes much more equal – and based on respect.
But don’t we treat all our pets that way? Do we treat our dogs with respect when we feed them fancy dog food and take care of them? In my opinion, the main issue here is our relationship with farm animals, which today – and this includes organic farming – is an industrial one, designed to maximize profit. Living with animals that we benefit from sensitizes us to their needs and challenges the consumerism we have come to take for granted. It is clear that not everyone has the space to do this, but this is more about the thought experiment, and I believe that it leads to a different relationship with our environment, one that is characterized by a less (of consumption) and at the same time a more (of togetherness).
Winter sleep
A furry creature lies on a sofa, clutching its head with its claws. Inside the fur is a human being – the artist Jelka Plate – who is hibernating, or at least trying to. She has tried this in various places and habitats: in her apartment in Berlin-Neukölln and during the “Oesterfeld 04” residency in Dithmarschen. In a diary published on her website, she reports on her impressions and gives an insight into her thoughts: “28.12. I’m slowly realizing what a glaring paradox I’m getting myself into with this hibernation idea. Of course, I can’t sleep as much as I should be able to talk about hibernation. But I’m not saying ‘I’m a hedgehog’ or ‘I’m a dormouse.’ I use them as models to see who I can become, what possibilities a thick skin gives me.
With her research project “Dickes Fell & faule Haut” (Thick fur & lazy skin), Jelka Plate continues her exploration of human-animal-nature relationships, which she began with the project “DisAppearances.” She is concerned with an urgently needed positive narrative of retreat and embedding of human activity in the face of anthropogenic climate change. The guiding questions are “How can we reverse the situation and make ourselves disappear? What can we learn from animals in the face of global warming?”
While for “DisAppearances” she uses camouflage costumes to blend in and disappear into nature, for her latest project she has donned a thick coat and put on her lazy skin to simulate hibernation. The idea is to draw inspiration from animals and their reduced energy levels during hibernation. Plate sees the project as “a proposal for how society should organize itself in the future in order to remain viable. It is a retreat from a certain structure,” she explains in conversation with Christoph Behnke and Dorothea Reinicke. And she continues: “I disappear as what it means to be human. That’s what I wanted to see in both performances: who can I be through this or that costume, by slipping into another skin. In other words, disappearing to try out a different way of being.”
Slipping into another mode of being as a strategy for de-hierarchizing anthropocentric existence is an exercise in self-retraction and engagement with another temporality. She asks: “What kind of existence would it be to classify oneself differently? No longer as the crown of creation, but in relation to a creation without a crown [as suggested by Eileen Cris]. Is it a loss at all if we go down from there? I don’t think so. I think it’s more of a relief and a gift.” What is conceived as a performance, documented by photo and video, opens up a series of urgent questions about social coexistence as a whole: Is sleep itself a subversive gesture? What would it mean if society as a whole were to hibernate, i.e. save energy instead of continuing to consume (finite) resources and thus exploit the environment? What would happen if more people stepped out of the production cycle and took a break? In other words, if the principle of sufficiency, exemplified by 99% of living beings and indigenous peoples, were declared the human way of being. Would everything really collapse or, on the contrary, come to rest? But could everyone really afford it?
Radical reversals
With their artistic projects, Till Krause and Jelka Plate show possibilities for action in a time of perceived powerlessness in the face of multiple crises. This is what makes them so valuable. They are exercises in necessary transformations. If we want to move forward, we in the Global North must say goodbye to a consumerist and resource-depleting way of life. Less is more is their message. They show that you don’t have to move to the countryside to do this, but that there are ways to use resources and our environment differently, even in densely populated urban areas. It is a policy of small steps that draws its strength from the radical nature of rethinking. What if?