Windkanter (English: Eoliths)

Windkanter (Eoliths) is a piece about our planet’s geological future. Stones in different sizes lay spread out across the ground and their forms remind us of weather’s force, which – over sufficient periods of time is capable of shaping rocks. Earth’s crust will be displaced, the surface submerged, eroded, hardened, or dissolved. Arriving there after a long period of time-travel, we would stand on novel ground. At some spots, however, we would encounter matter familiar to us: it is the result of manufactured constructions and artefacts – cities, monuments, airports, undersea cables, and millions of computers. Weathering and erosion of these objects will create a sedimentary layer consisting of materials created or enriched by humans. These are mostly metals such as iron and aluminium, but also bricks, ceramics, and glass. In a future geological epoch, rocks derived from our material nature will be found across the entire planet. Though its occurrence will be patchy, it will be completely independent of the bedrock below it. This is a geological novelty, a result of megacities constructed over almost all degrees of latitude and longitude. These rocky "Plateaus" - as geologists refer to them - will integrate into the stone image of Earth’s timeline. Stefanie Koemeda uses these man-made materials to sculpt outcroppings from the future city-plateau-rock. She thereby triggers questions about the fragility of our human presence on planet earth as well as our future materialistic legacy.

Artistic Statement

In order to emotionally examine the condition of our species living on planet earth, I travel in time. I wander into the past looking for fragile and uncertain signs of humans. Observing early stages of an object of investigation is always insightful to me and I desire to capture and materialize the findings. If I go further in the past, I reach times in which earth has not yet felt naked human feet walking on its surface. While being there I attentively view my surroundings, always conscious of the curiosity that is a human observing the world that has never been observed by her kind.In taking the other direction and going to the distant future, I’ll see the world long after the last humans have vanished from its face to investigate whether we leave something in the crust of planet earth that is singular and noticeable at all.I am not fully entrenched in the present nor am I in a professional discipline. I am a biologist and an artist yet I am neither. With these conditions as a framework of my method I always run the risk of loosing my confidence and my identity as an artist. Therefore I create heavy and molecular objects made of long lasting materials for myself to hold onto.