"Supplement - 2: Exclusion Zones"
Text by Eva Wilson, Images by Susanne Kriemann
Artist Book 1537
Filip, a Vancouver-based publishing organization formed in 2004, “...to expand spaces for critical discussions on contemporary art”, offers the “Supplement” series. The second issue, “Exclusion Zones” unpacks Susanne Kreimann's photographic investigations of radioactive minerals and material, alongside other archival images and text by Eva Wilson. This artists' book speaks of entropy and decay; the historical uses of Uraninite (a radioactive, uranium rich mineral) in paintings; the resilience of plant matter in radioactive areas; and the use of radioactive substance in Kriemann’s work.
“At the time, the leady, fatty black substance was deemed worthless and only retrieved from mine dumps when its oxidized colours were discovered as useful in the productions of olive-green, grey and ochre pigments. Painters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries used concoctions of oxidized uraninite mixed with fresh egg tempera or oil made from local walnut crops to produce paintings that are radioactively contaminated: look at them and they will look back at you, not by means of the refracted sunlight glistening off their varnish in all the colour of the visible spectral range, but by the stealthy emanation of their own energies, radiating not just to your eyes, but through your clothes, your hair- and all the cells of your body.” (Wilson 6)
In this book, Wilson mentions the Gessenwiese test field in East Thuringia, which is an unlivable area for over 100 000 years for both humans and animals. Yet, plants have prevailed and are reclaiming this radioactive landscape. This space is reminiscent of The Chernobyl Nuclear explosion, where similarly, plants have survived an otherwise post-apocalyptic scenario. In “The Chernobyl Herbarium: Fragments of Exploded Consciousness”, Michael Marder mentions stories, meditations, and fragments about this space, alongside photograms of radioactive plant matter by Anaïs Tondeur from the site.
“Plants, for their part, break through the concrete, growing in its cracks and upturning massive slabs with their roots. They open everything and everyone to the outside… Plants will have been able to point out a new way. But what if, in the aftermath of Chernobyl over which the Sarcophagus presides, we have denied ourselves this simple, material, vegetal salvation as well? After all, rather than bury ourselves under a flowerbed, we have encrypted ourselves, body and soul, in the concrete.” (Marder 50)
Although Kriemann’s work and Wilson’s writing in "Supplements 2" is more so focused on the use of uraninite specifically, the ideas of temporality and radioactive substance overlap with Marders' observations. Using photography, archival material and radioactive plant matter, Kriemann’s work exercises time as its agency: it is self-aware of its own temporality. Because of this, her work will “fade over time due to the use of chemical properties and special pigments made from the radioactive plant matter.” (Wilson 8) Similarly to how paint still radiates through its viewers, this work will too. Wilson caps her ideas off so well: “Human future is radioactive, as is human knowledge of the past: what we know of the age of the Earth is extraterrestrial, irradiating, and entropic.” (15)
More about the artists, as written by Eva Wilson:
“Eva Wilson is a writer and curator based in London and is currently working on a doctoral thesis at Freie Universitat Berlin on the concept of virtuality and the virtual image in the nineteenth century. She is an editor for documenta 14 and was a researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies BildEvidenz at Freie Universitat. She was Director of Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, and a curator at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna.” (24)
“Susanne Kriemann is a Berlin-based artist and professor for artistic photography at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design and an advisor at the Jan Van Eyck Academy, Maastricht. Together with Aleksander Komarov, she founded the artist initiative AIR Berlin Alexanderplatz in 2010. Her work has been exhibited internationally at Arnolfini, Bristol; Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; Kunstverein Braunschweig; Prefix ICA, Toronto; and the 11th Shanghai Biennale, and has been published by Spector Books, Sternberg Press, ROMA, and Witte de With. Her artist books are testaments to her overarching concern with archiving-how past, present, and future is written, read, and rewritten-and the connections that can be found between art, literature and archaeology.” (24)
Additional Resources
Susanne Kriemann’s Website
Images from Susanne Kreimann’s solo exhibition "Falsche Kamille, Wilde Möhre, Bitterkraut"
Fillip, Vancouver based publisher
Michael Marder’s “The Chernobyl Herbarium: Fragments of Exploded Consciousness"
"Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl" by Robert Polidori and Elizabeth Culbert
Works Cited
Marder, Michael. “The Chernobyl Herbarium: Fragments of Exploded Consciousness.” Open Humanities Press. 2016. Pg 50.
Wilson, Eva. Kreimann, Susanne. “Supplement - 2: Exclusion Zones”. Fillip, Belgium. Ed. Jeff Khonsary. 2017. Print.
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