Landscape Machines

With Landscape Machines, Erich Berger continues to investigate the topics of radioactivity and the landscape. Deep time, spectral phenomena, innate and anthropogenic landscapes are still at the center of his attention, only this time explored in the local context of Slovenia – the Žirovski vrh uranium mine and the human and non-human processes that shape its past and futures.

The installation consists of an artist text, a graphic representation and visual overview of the landfills Boršt and Jazbec, seismic and gamma radiation observatory, sonic and electromagnetic environment, and a proxy Landscape Machine Boršt in a cloudchamber.

The installation is the result of more than a year of research and fieldwork and is a kind of observatory for sensing the planetary machine. The installation itself is an apparatus that we can enter in order to observe the processes at work in the spatial and temporal dimensions below and beyond the threshold of our perception.

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The uranium ore field at Žirovski vrh was discovered in 1960. Sixteen years later a mine was founded, with the purpose to produce nuclear fuel for the Krško Nuclear Power Plant. The mining was suspended in 1990 and eight years later, the mine was shut down and an intensive remediation program began. Today, two landfills remain, Jazbec and Boršt. They are maintained with the idea of long-term stewardship carried out under the responsibility of the public company Rudnik Žirovski Vrh. Long-term stewardship currently entails 400 years of monitoring and maintenance needed to ensure protection of the environment and nearby residents. The half-life of uranium is about 4.5 billion years.

You stand on the southeastern slope of Črna gora, the Black Mountain. A short, late summer rain has just cleared the air, and the old asphalt road releases an aromatic smell of petrichor. You are about to position an array of microphones and sensors to capture the many audible and inaudible frequencies of the sonic and electromagnetic spectrum. You attune yourself to your surroundings and their different scales. You hear the insects and the wind and on the opposite hill, the harvesting machines. Church bells and a barking dog briefly interrupt the steady hum. With some of your circuitry, you soon expect to listen into the ghostly emissions of the atmosphere, the radio data transmissions and the ever-ongoing radioactive decay.