A high security crop of 17 mobile telephones with Esperantic wisdom

Futuristic sounds and mottos in Esperanto emanate from the high security crop before you when the telephone numbers of their corresponding Rare Earth Element are dialed. Esperanto (“one who hopes”) was created to be a universal language motivating harmony between people and is allegedly the most widely spoken language in the world. Like Esperanto, the heavy reliance on technology to solve our current sustainability dilemma is also a utopian ideal.

Rare Earth Elements are a group of 17 elements, whose special magnetic, phosphorescent, and catalytic properties are central to technological advances in x-ray devices, aircrafts, and lasers to green technologies such as wind turbines and electric cars.  Nine different rare elements can be found in a smartphone alone, used for the color screen, the phone’s circuitry, the speakers, and the vibration unit.

Technically speaking, rare earth elements are not rare at all, but rather they are diffuse and not easily extracted from the earth. The environmental impacts of the extraction process are high, due to large amounts of toxic  waste products including radioactivity.

China is currently the world’s leading producer and consumer of Rare Earth Elements, responsible for 95% of production in 2010.  A monopoly on precious resources generates geo-political power.

• Scandium  – Prenu biciclon (Take a bicycle)
• Yttrium – Visitu Resarö- (Visit Resarö /an island in Sweden where a rare earth element was first discovered)
• Lanta – Ho, Sir John
• Cer- Estu lumo-  (Behold! Light!)
• Praeesodym- Verdo povas esti problemo- (Green can be a problem)
• Neodym- Cu vi ankan estis amiko de vento?- ( Are you a friend of the wind?)
• Samarium – Cu vi pivas auskulti min
• Prometium- Papa, Mike Sesdekuno (PM 61)
• Euopium- Mondo, mankas monon  (The world is losing money)
• Gadolinium- Trinku, deamikoj, trinku (Drink, friends, drink!)
• Terbium- Acetu en svislando (Buy it in Switzerland)
• Dysprosium- Estas malalirebla (It is unreachable)
• Holmium- Kiel forta! (How stong!)
• Erbium – Kontrau kataraktan (A cure for cataracts)
• Thulium – Vere, estas rara tero (truly a rare earth element)
• Ytterbium – Protektu la prezidenton! (Save the president!)
• Lutium – Ne fogesu min! (Forget me not!)

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• Medium: video, single channel video projection; to be shown in the Container
• Duration 5‘
• Video camera & editing: Erik Dettwiler

The video Matsogo shows a pair of hands crumbling a piece of cake and reshaping it into the same triangle shape that references the beginning slice.

Through the process of deconstruction to reconstruction, the essence and consumability of the piece of cake is undermined and lost. Although it is reformed into an object that resembles and has the same elements, as the cake it has lost its original function.

The sound track combines two songs from two different popular Setswana folktales. The songs are mixed together, thereby confusing and convoluting the narratives of the folktales in such a way, that there are three to five characters in an ongoing polylogue, that revolves around belief and disbelief, trust and betrayal.

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In recent years, countless extreme weather events clearly indicate that climate change is not only a future phenomenon but is already taking place. Some effects of global warming—desertification, more frequent droughts, less frequent but more intense precipitation, lower crop yields—inflame existing social conflicts. In the Global South, climate change aggravates the crises of poverty, violence, and unrest that result from the legacies of colonialism and neoliberal capitalism. This vicious circle fuels humanitarian crises and civil wars that amplify political, economic and environmental disasters.

Despite clear warnings, the ruling powers do not have a political agenda with a serious strategy to reduce use of fossil fuels, the main cause of global warming. A fossil-fuel fundamentalism seems to dominate throughout the globe.

Recently, some of Norway’s politicians have advocated extracting petroleum in one of the largest fish and aquatic life spawning grounds on the planet, the sea encircling the Lofoten archipelago. The deepwater drilling would have unpredictable effects on the fish populations and some of the world’s cleanest waters. With the idyllic landscapes of the Lofoten archipelago as its background, Leave It in the Ground describes the climate crisis not as a technical and scientific problem, but as a political problem. The film discusses how ecological and humanitarian disasters caused through global warming might topple old orders and open up possibilities that could lead to long-term social and political transformations, both positive and negative.

The film is accompanied by three photographic works evoking scenarios of a post-oil world.

Director and producer: Oliver Ressler
Narration text: Oliver Ressler & John Barker
The text is partly inspired by Christian Parenti, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (2011); Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell (2009); Naomi Klein, Capitalism vs. the Climate (2011).
Narrator: Andrew Golder
Camera, film editing: Oliver Ressler
Sound design, mix and color correction: Rudolf Gottsberger
Music from the album: Kate Carr, Songs from a Cold Place (2013)
Footage: Mosireen; Anonymous video makers
Special thanks to: Bassam el Baroni, Dorian Batycka, Derek Jarman, Tadzio Müller, Maren Richter, Odd Arne Sandberg, Berte Tungodden Ynnesdal

The film was commissioned by LIAF – Lofoten International Art Festival 2013, supported by BMUKK.

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Humans have had a huge effect on other life forms on our planet. The spread of urban areas has pushed many bird species out of our cities: some species long ago, other species have easily adapted to thrive in human dominated environments. This process of change in species composition is known as ecological succession. We do not experience this succession in our environment directly as this takes place over long periods of time, and wide areas.

Exodus is a reflection on, urban nature, urban succession and urban encroachment.

The calls heard in this piece are from birds native to what is now Berlin, however we only recognize the few which we encounter on a daily basis, such as the wood pidgeon, or the swallow. The sounds of the city are now predominately produced by the people living in it. The call of now exotic birds, such as the grey partridge, once a common companion featured prominently in the tales of the brothers Grimm, is no longer familiar, as this bird is neither able to find suitable habitat in our cities, nor in a countryside where intensive agriculture has led to the mechanization and simplification of the landscape. As birds are thus being pushed out of agricultural land, urban parks and forests become pockets of high biodiversity.

In 2015, the International Year of Soils, one in eight species of birds in Germany are at risk of extinction. One quarter of the bird species could be extinct by 2100. Whether we will be able to reverse this trend, and reserve land as habitat for wildlife depends on our how we manage our land, how we plan the development of our urban expansion, and the amount of resources we consume.

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“I started working with Móri in 2001. He is a ghost. He communicates to me through a whispering inner voice. I guess he might be an imaginary friend, but his persona is as real to me as let’s say Ronald Reagan, who I only ever saw on TV, but he was real to me nevertheless.

Móri has helped me with a number of artworks already.  He often wants us to dig holes into the ground. This time, he wanted to build a little home in Berlin. Móri says that he talks to the ground, that the ground is a being. Móri originates from the Middle East and migrated to Iceland in the 1500’s. He has been living in the moorlands for the last 500 years. Móri’s name is drawn from Moore, and translate directly into English as Moory. Maybe he is related to the Moros or the Berber people of North Africa, I’m not sure. He used to wander free around the highlands of Iceland, until he decided to come to Reykjavik. Maybe he is fighting for the highlands of Iceland,  trying to protect them, from the government which has been building so many dams and laying high voltage electricity lines across the highlands? I don’t know, he never told me. He is not really the intellectual type,  more the ground- connected silent type. As a matter of fact he is now digging a hole into the ground inside his little hut, without the government of Berlin knowing it. I don’t think that he is doing any shamanistic rituals inside the hole. He is singing Billy Joel and Nirvana songs and talking to himself. Sometimes he is silent for a long time- what he is doing then I don’t know. We have done five holes together before, and this is the sixth.

We should ask Móri what his art means.  He is not educated in art,  and is shy.  Please try anyway. Have a conversation with him from inside your head. He might answer. Maybe he can tell you a lot about soil, and about the significance it has for the Earth. And, perhaps in a conversation with him you can get ideas about how to organize our lives in cooperation with the Earth.

Móri once told me that not only is he silent, but that we all are, deep inside.
Egill Sæbjörnsson
Berlin
08.04.2015

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This work deals with the permanent and ubiquitous connection between soil and humans. It evokes and references the act of digging through stories told by diggers, digging for very different purposes. Some are studying the soil, sampling, observing and recording measured values. Others are cultivating or harvesting. Still others are transporting and building with soil. Four speakers will be installed under the buttress of the train tracks, which traverse the Gleisdreieck Park 10 meters above. The sound of the U2 train line becomes part of the installation, drowning out the composition as the trains pass by, adding a site specific element to the soundscape.

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Credits:
Director: Uli Henrik Streckenbach (uhsless.de)
Design: Uli Henrik Streckenbach, Ronny Schmidt (roschroom.com)
Modelling: Ronny Schmidt, Uli Henrik Streckenbach
Character Rigging: Maik Lochmann
Animation: Uli Henrik Streckenbach, Ronny Schmidt
Scarecrow Artist: Andrea Abendroth
Concept: Uli Henrik Streckenbach

Music and Sound Design: Marcus Illgenstein (illgenstein.de)
German Voice: Hilmar Eichhorn
Voice-over Recording Engineer: Sebastian Heyser
Foley Artist: Martin Langenbach, Metrix Media
Foley Recording Engineer: Christoph Wieczorek, Metrix Media

Foleys recorded at Metrix Media.
Voice-over recorded at VSI Verlin.

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Both political initiatives and local actions are necessary to secure the access to food and livelihoods for everyone. Measures for sustainable agriculture are already at hand, but they are often not applied – both on a small and large scale. And even if most of us live in cities, we all can do our part in saving soils all over the world.

»Better Save Soil« is the second collaboration between the IASS and the animation studio of Uli Streckenbach to raise awareness on soil issues.

Please also watch the first film »Let’s Talk about Soil« here.

Production: uhsless
Direction, Design, Animation: Uli Streckenbach, Ronny Schmidt, Robert Pohle
Music, Sounddesign: klingklangklong
Additional Effects: Dominik Grejc
Spider-Robot-Rigging: Sebastian Werner
Voice-Over: Celina Bostic

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