DIE KONSTRUKTION DER STILLEN WELT 2007-2011

The series of eleven Photographs put into dialog the history of settlement, mining and research in Svalbard with the imagery of the arctic landscape. The photographs are reflecting the climatic change as well as the different ideas culturally linked to this landscape. They reflect the threat of the equally inhospitable and surreal aspects of the arctic landscape as well as the threat as a result of human usage. The title of the series refers to the 1985 science fiction film, ‘Quiet Earth –- the Last Experiment’, from the New Zealander, Geoff Murphy.

Focusing on this background, the images of the series also conscious suggest associations to the genre of science fiction in literature and film as well as to landscape paintings of the 19th century. The photographs were all taken in the surroundings of Longyearbyen and the mining site Svea Gruva on the Spitsbergen archipelago.