The old shots smell like phenol and brown coal dust. In the spring of 1991, two documentary filmmakers travelled through the former energy triangle of the GDR, centred around the towns of Spremberg, Hoyerswerda and Schwarze Pumpe. In the midst of despair and resignation, they demanded analyses. Those who faced layoffs answered: “When there’s no work, there’s no work.” Or more simply: “Bang, out, gone, that’s it.” Thirty years later, Martin Gressmann and the documentarists from 1991 are not done yet with the fractures and open wounds of the industry liquidations right after reunification.
The comparison between the history – full of murky air and people who hide from the camera – and the apparently appeased present does not lend itself to make-overs; the landscapes that followed brown coal mining are not pretty yet, the river Spree is only halfway cleaned-up, the power plant is still one of the main CO2 emitters in Europe. You often have to look twice to understand that an important leap in time was made in the images. The dirt and the energy of the past keep coming back, and Lusatia continues to “serve and work” in the “subconscious of the distant capital”. Idiosyncratic texts and bold documentary manoeuvres generate an ambivalent mix of surfaces and deep strata, erosion and repair of an industrial landscape.