ISLAND or Infrastructure’s infrastructure

ISLAND or Infrastructure’s infrastructure is micrograph or our Earth, a self contained, materially closed ecosystem, floating in the sea of the universe.  All matter that it is made out of, cannot be destroyed or disappeared, only transformed. The structure is made with soil borrowed from Claytech, a company,  rammed into a pixel-like island, like one from a computer game. Cartesian thinking, post-modernism and brutalism, a kind of conglomerate of all the values that have influenced our contemporary culture, are distilled into its geometric form. The public is invited to participate in an expedition to this island, to get to know it, and, if they want, change it, reshape it, ‘terraform’ it, meaning making it again earth-like, able to support all planetary life by preventing coming catastrophes.

What will be the values that will lead this new wave of terraforming an already anthropocentrically designed infrastructure? And, will this be an action of destruction or regeneration? The participatory expedition will be a kind of philosophical game meditating on such questions. All material will be picked up from the same company who borrowed it, and will be sold in order to become a building using the same rammed-earth technique.

The work was realised during CURRENT – Art and Urban Space festival in Stuttgart, in September 2021, with the help of: Mobile Jungenarbeit E.V., Leo Lie, Marion Kohler, Pilar Caballero, Ronja Holweg, Philipp Phan, Soyran Clyde, Isabel Fecker, Lina Neubeck, Christian Kohler, June Gschwander, Max Held, Lea Woog, Sarah Gerdiken, Luisa Danaylov, Michelle Radam, Herr Clair, and the expertise of Hubert Heinrichs and Nico Hlavinka. Thank you Laura Bernhardt and Nora Unger.