A belt around the Earth extending approximately five degrees north and south of the equator, the Doldrums are known to sailors around the world as an area that becalms sailing ships for weeks, without the possibility to navigate forth due to the collision of trade winds.

When I was invited to take part at Die Balkone–a series of urban interventions in Prenzlauerberg (Berlin) curated by Joanna Warsza & Övül Ö. Durmusoglu–, the image of windsails came up immediately into my head. Years ago, within my research into Norwegian fishing & coastal culture, I was given a pair of retired windsails belonging to a traditional wooden fisher’s boat. Trying to imagine a notion of steadiness, uncertainty and unclarity of the horizon’t sight, these sails could poetically enact a feeling of collective urban doldrums we lived in those pandemic times.

However, we quickly realised these windsails require a closer look and somewhat a flatter background to gain a better appreciation. Therefore, only a quick handy picture remains of that almost-windsailing balcony.

Having lived in the biggest open-pit copper mine in the world (Chuquicamata, Atacama Desert), whenever there is a chance to think of an urban intervention, I unavoidably think of copper. A mineral that has defined my artistic path, copper comes again and again to me as the pivotal mineral resource to think of urban development, architecture, global trade, speculation, and, ultimately, privilege. The privilege to live in this neighborhood comes with the responsibility to acknowledge the external costs of it, in this case, in terms of never-ending extractive mindsets. Copper is an energy messenger, conductor, connector. It is a mineral that symbolizes a rational notion of progress and connectivity, which makes the local dependent on the global; the inside on the outside; the digital on the analogue, and vice versa.

The raw copper sheet that hung from Joanna’s balcony, was most probably extracted from Chile (or at least from the ‘Global South’), and was meant to conduct energy inside an electromechanical circuit board in the GDR times, until the German re-unification provoked a twist in its purpose, ending as a wonder-material in an artist studio, outside gentrification’s tentacles.

A copper sheet hanging from a balcony, occasionally and unexpectedly blown by the spring breeze was for me a gesture of the interconnectedness we are all part of, which became more present in our daily routines under those pandemic times in 2021.

A video interview documenting the process is available here.

• Exhibited at:
  – 2021, Die Balkone 2  – Scratching the Surface, Prenzlauerberg, Berlin, Germany