GMU:Life in an aquatic ecosystem/Cosmo Schüppel

// A SECOND SUCCENSSION GHOST STORY // RESEARCH PROJECT // COSMO SCHÜPPEL // BAUHAUS WEIMAR //

Research

Greece is being haunted by wildfires. Manifestations of climate-sins committed around the globe. Ghosts, Spectres, Premonitions of a chaotic future.

The so called "second succession" is the process of re-colonisation of beings, after an extinction. a second succession ghost story asks: How are wildfire-sites becoming alive over time? How are different beings participating? What role do humans play in this process?

How alive is the dead?
What colours live in the Grey?
Ghosts are almost like Memories - They disappear when I try to hold on.
Eat un-nutritious food.
Stare at a digital landscape.
Stuff yourself with Expectations.
Find hope in simple Ideologies.
We are shielded by Ghosts.
Is this, how being haunted feels like?

Conceptual

A silent room. Video Material from the aftermath of the Athens Wildfires 2024 is overlaid with written texts of the sensorial experiences of Wildfires. Athens suburbia is burned down and has become a haunted land, empty and dead – and still somehow alive with the memories and impressionsof when the fire roamed over it. While sensorial ghosts haunt the lost landscape, nature is beginning to live again. And there you stand, as a viewer – and i stook as a specter: We are also ghosts in this landscape.

Physical/Technical

The project is a large scale, 3-channel video installation: channel: Wide shots (4 min rhythm) channel: Detail shots (30 sec rhythm) channel: microscopy of ash samples (10 sec rhythms) The text switches between english, german and greek on the three screens.

Presentation of the research as voices (spoken/written) in the videos.