Memory Biwa

Works

Ozerandu

Date
2024

Material
Sound installation / Mixed Media

Description

“Ozerandu,” a name for the color red in Otjiherero, is the title of the immersive aural and mixed-media installation. The body of work is about the emptying of land and about iron ore extraction from southern Africa (Namibia and South Africa) to the Völklinger Hütte from the 1960s, and evokes material memory buried in the activation of a ruin as a postindustrialist site. Dust clouds raining red between the earth and sky—a recurring scene in the mining towns in the Northern Cape, South Africa, and the skyline of Völklingen—parallel the all-consuming effect of mining on people and the surrounding environment. Evoking the intimacies between people and land, the red dust from rocks and soil envelops all entities it comes into contact with.

The site-specific work, in the belly of the blower hall, recalls memory that is not solely contained there, but is traced through the migration of people and matter, opening up to a multitude of voices, augmented machines, and sonically plotted places. These spatial imaginaries unsettle linear discourses of progress and heritage.