As producers, how do we talk in a meaningful way about the impact of human production on the earth?
For me, this is one of the most interesting and difficult questions, perhaps also the one that occupies me most in everyday life and in the direction of my artistic practice.
On a small scale, I can answer it with the decision to not have a very large studio, but with an outdoor workspace outside the city, as well as a small space for experimentation and discussion in Berlin’s city center at Frontviews. This sounds trivial, but in a time in which artistic success is measured by the size of production sites, quantities, and collaborators, it is an impactful decision. My sculptural work does not produce mass series with standardised, recognisable details.
I try to transform works that have not yet reached the full potential of their content and action over time and to develop once used material with the inscribed history of its failure. The Anthropocene is, after all, a term invented by man to specifically mark the significance of his appearance in the Earth’s chronological history. Because of the combination of will to implement and intelligence, mankind feels called to organise our planet, as well as those near us. To treat ourselves thereby as part of the whole is easier for us theoretically than practically. Driven by fear and systematically generated desire, we hollow out or overform our environment. These are exhausted sculptural acts, which will be examined for their legitimacy and appropriateness by the next generation at the earliest. Rather than merely treating the philosophical and practical approaches of art as presentable trophies of a standard of living or a world view, they must be integrated into fundamental decisions of relevant areas of life and production. If, for example, raw materials have to be extracted from the ground, the type and manner of an exciting and ecological form that is set in nature should be considered and designed from the outset. In architecture, too, the sculptural, material and social intervention exists in the whole and not in elements ‘glued on’ afterwards. The elementary and truly comprehensive thinking and designing is more exciting and necessary than ever, but it is failing at the moment because of the feverish adherence to material and administrative claims.
Anthropozän, 2021
Susanne Roewer is a sculptor based in Berlin.
Currently, Susanne’s work is shown at Galerie Kornfeld in Berlin:
Make It Your Own Story
Susanne Roewer + Hubertus Hamm
6 March – 17 April
Images: Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin.