Tanja Engelberts

In the 1950s, the Rhône River was declared dead. With the development of hydropower, the river changed drastically in post-war France. New canals took over, dikes were built against flooding, and the river was slowly dammed. In addition, due to its fast flow and cool temperature, the Rhône provided the ideal place for the development of several nuclear power plants and the chemical industry. The river became a hydraulic object, the boundaries between nature and technology slowly blurred.

Once a symbol of uncontrollable force, the river had been conquered – but how would the river describe itself? Inspired by Bruno Latour’s Parliament of Things, in which he argues that law and politics should not only be centred around people, but around all forms of life, I examine the river from an animistic point of view. I try to imagine what it’s like to be a fast-flowing river, slowly filling with artefacts of the Anthropocene over a 600-kilometre stretch. How do you capture a landscape that is steeped in chemical waste and is slowly disappearing due to climate change? The project comprises a video work, as well as a series of ceramics made from the Rhône’s clay.

Cities of Desire is the first presentation of an ongoing project about the North Sea and its economic landscape. The harsh conditions of the North Sea put the offshore industry amongst the ultimate symbols of man overcoming nature. Artificial cities of concrete and metal lie in an apparent empty sea. They leave a lot to the imagination.

After decades of prosperity and activity the North Sea landscape is changing. Low oil and gas prices and the exhaustion of wells have left some of the platforms abandoned.  Questions about the future arise: are we looking at monuments, decaying junk, or places of new possibilities?

The project consists of pictures that were taken during a two-week residency at the maintenance ship Kroonborg (NAM), combined with archival material from different offshore operators (Shell, Total, Wintershall). Printed on sheeted steel, the photographs show North Sea platforms – sometimes up-close, sometimes seemingly floating by. The horizon shifts up and down. The scratched steel comes to life in the sunlight, evoking a previous usage.  There is also a film of a solemn platform in which the only movement comes from the sea creating the feeling that time has no hold on these structures.

Decom is a portrait of a decommissioning yard, the place where oil and gas platforms come to die. These huge structures are lifted from the sea and broken apart, recycled and reused on land. My video work is devoid of any people; the machines have taken over to clean up the scraps of man.

The scrapyard has its own flow, and the film has the same rhythm. It is a slow pace – with tranquil wide shots introducing a sense of otherworldliness – punctuated by sudden bursts of violence. You see the same cycle at sea, when an oil or gas field reaches the end of production. Operators stimulate the field through fracking, causing the pressure to drop, followed by a violent explosion when the oil flows back up. The process is then repeated.