To Change Spreepark from a Noun to A Verb

Lara Almarcegui und Stefan Shankland at the Spreepark Art Space 

By Helene Romakin²

The exhibition "A Matter of Material," curated by Katja Aßmann, showcases the works of Lara Almarcegui and Stefan Shankland alongside the work of pioneer of Land Art Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty (1970), set in the historic Eierhäuschen. The 1892 building popular for its restaurant and bowling alley, and its proximity to the former and the only permanent amusement park in the GDR. Following a profound restoration, the Eierhäuschen reopened in March 2024, hosting exhibition and residency spaces, as well as a beer garden and a restaurant.

Almarcegui’s and Shankland’s artistic practices are considered part of an overall experience in the park’s public space at the exhibition opening, which, beyond the collaboration with the architectural collective raumlaborberlin and the designer Anna Saint Pierre, presents an extensive program of picknick interventions, design workshops, guided tours, and artist talks. The title “To Change Spreepark from a Noun to a Verb” derives from the observation of the art historian W.J.T. Mitchell, who, with the sentence "to change landscape from a noun to a verb," indicated that his interest in landscapes lies in what they do rather than how they are defined.³ For me, sites such as the Spreepark are such verbs, engaging with complex topics and activating certain transformative thoughts and concepts in a profound and intensive exchange with professionals from the culture sector. 

After more than 20 years of abandonment, the Spreepark has been brought back to life. Still in the process, the entire former amusement park area will reopen in 2026. Being at the Spreepark Art Space in Berlin means being "in the middle of things"; it is an attempt to "become embroiled in specific situations," as the anthropologist Anna L. Tsing would say.⁴

I see Spreepark Artspace as a place in the middle of things because it addresses so many pressing, contemporary topics and forms a platform of discourse to investigate a wide range of inherently interdisciplinary practices and research addressing historical, geological, ecological, anthropological, social, and political questions. This newly re-activated public space stands out for its approach of involving artists and architects from the very beginning in developing the site and creating permanent or ephemeral interventions, often using repurposed materials, and profoundly questioning construction development in the urban environment. The involvement of artists Lara Almarcegui and Stefan Shankland in such an endeavour means profoundly engaging with the site and its site-specificity on spatial and temporal scales that might otherwise fall under the radar.

Two important questions arise when dealing with the exhibition “A Matter of Material”: Why is there an increasing interest in the construction and demolition industries and their material, closely connected to land exploitation such as mining? And why should we, as citizens and individuals, pay closer attention to them? Construction and demolition materials represent the evidence of human interference on earth, which has led to a general perception of both urgency and intangibility.  In 2000, the atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen and the ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer introduced the term Anthropocene to announce a new epoch as the result of the enormous human impact on the Earth’s ecological systems.⁵

The Anthropocene describes a new period of geologic time, in which human activity is considered equal to, if not surpassing the major natural forces that influence the transformation of Earth’s geological and ecological environments. To fully grasp the extensive range of environmental implications, the new era has received many names and perspectives that extend beyond the initial framework of the Anthropocene. Among these terms proposed to capture the current epoch, the Capitalocene explicitly highlights the exploitative nature of global capitalism, responsible for generating environmental degradation. As T. J. Demos puts it, Capitalocene “refers to the geological epoch created by corporate globalization.”⁶ Within the Capitalocene, the pursuit of profit takes precedence over ecological sustainability, leading to the proliferation of extractivist practices along with environmental injustices, such as labor and species exploitation. These practices are considered to be driving forces systematically and structurally employed in this era. To look through the lens of the Capitalocene means to engage in a deep analysis of complex economic processes, seeking to identify the industries responsible and their interwoven exploitative structures along with political lobbyism.⁷

It’s devastating ecological, geological, social-economic, and political impacts are countless. The authors of The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change, Emily E. Scott, T.J. Demos, and Subhankar Banerjee describe it as follows:

“Extractivism identifies a political economy premised on the withdrawal of value without corresponding deposit: resources are removed from the Earth, profits from labor, and commodifiable data from plants, bodies, and information systems. Returned to their place is waste, toxicity, disease, exhaustion, and death.”⁸

Within this framework, Almarcegui’s and Shankland’s artistic practices, which involve working with construction and demolition materials such as rubble, gravel, sand, limestone, and waste minerals offer new strategies and narratives for addressing the devastating consequences of such exploitation. In their projects, Almarcegui and Shankland assume different roles as city planners, ecologists, activists, storytellers, engineers, material specialists, and enablers of site activation. They challenge the status quo not only of established routines but also scrutinize the very concept of the construction industry. They provide an example of how sites might enable strong responses without relying on ideas of representation.

In her projects, Lara Almarcegui deals with geological matter in an acutely unagitated manner, avoiding the rhetoric of catastrophism while plausibly demonstrating the urgency of acknowledging the consequences of long-term land exploitation. Within this context, Almarcegui investigates the origins of construction materials. Informed by conversations and collaborations from many disciplines such as architecture, urban planning, engineering, geology, and ecology, in her search for sites where basic materials such as gravel, iron, and clinker are extracted to be later used for the construction of buildings and entire cities, the artist traces built histories that surround us every day. 

The exhibition at the Eierhäuschen features Lara Almarcegui’s works Buried House, Dallas (2013) and Construction Materials, City of São Paulo (2006). Following her interest in architecture and construction, the artist first started calculating the materials of buildings. Single-handedly, she measured a building by calculating the volume and defining the materials. Where necessary, such as for the foundation of the building, Almarcegui consulted an engineer. Within a few years, the scale of her projects expanded from a building to a city, to an island, and even to the entire Earth. An insight into Almarcegui’s research process on the devastating scales of extraction is provided in the conversation “Earth Calculation,” published in the artist’s catalogue Béton in 2019, between Almarcegui and Winfried Dallmann, an Associate Professor at the Department of Geosciences at The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. The two worked together on the project Rocks of Spitsbergen, in which Almarcegui identified and calculated the sum total of the mass of geological components that make up the island of Spitsbergen. “What I seek to do is offer a vision of the island’s possible destruction through an exploration of its geological origins and future exploitation,” she commented on her project Rocks of Spitsbergen in 2014.⁹ With Earth Calculation, Almarcegui introduced her idea for a colossal new project, which “consists of calculating the total amount of Earth’s rock materials.”¹⁰

In 2013, Almarcegui presented a new work Buried House, Dallas with the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. For her artistic intervention, Almarcegui chose the Oak Cliff Gardens area, one of Dallas’s oldest neighborhoods that have undergone major transitions from a farming settlement to a prospering city, until becoming a shrinking and neglected area with derelict homes. Almarcegui collaborated with the Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity, an organization engaged in renovation and construction in Oak Cliff, with the intention of empowering and strengthening communities.¹¹ Together, they selected a house scheduled for demolition, tore it down, just to bury its remains on the same property in a previously excavated hole. With this work, Almarcegui not only highlighted a place with a complicated past, but she also captured a site in transition, at a pivotal moment of potential. With this newly gained awareness of Oak Cliff, Almarcegui hoped to inspire discussions: “When the space is empty, everything is the possibilities are abundant. These are places for dreaming, for thinking, they are blank spots, which are places of freedom. They are really necessary,” the artist commented.¹²

Given that Lara Almarcegui’s work operates on the boundaries of the urban environment, between regeneration, decay, and its perspective on seemingly ruinous, unworthy spaces that oscillate between order and disorder, Almarcegui’s practice has often been aligned with the tradition of the land artist Robert Smithson. With Buried House Almarcegui provides yet another connection to Robert Smithson, drawing upon an art historical reference to Robert Smithson’s Partially Buried Woodshed (1970). For this work, Smithson found a small shed on a university-owned farm at Kent State University in Ohio and commissioned a bulldozer to dump earth over it until the roof collapsed. Its original interior of “stored wood, soil, and gravel” was intended to remain inside.¹³ According to the art historian Robert Hobbs, Smithson, in reaction to the environmental conditions of the 20th century, developed a new strategy of looking at landscapes:

“He attempted to bring the ravaged landscape into his art. No longer looking for a primordial grandeur, for a startlingly beautiful landscape (…) Smithson immersed himself in the no longer useful fringes of the industrial world—abandoned rock quarries, tailings ponds, sludge heaps, idle tar pools, and retired oil rigs.”¹⁴

Almarcegui clearly shares an interest in “the history of the site, in particularly its geology, as well as the human interventions over a period of time,” as the art historian Marga Bijvoet comments on Smithson’s work.¹⁵ So does Stefan Shankland, as he states that geology has always been a strong reference point in his practice.

In the exhibition, Stefan Shankland presents a series of works produced in response to the site, following a profound period of research on minerals, waste, and navigating bureaucratic regulations in urban spaces. In his artistic practice, Shankland explores the creation and degradation of value within the construction and demolition industries. When is something considered valuable, and when is it simply regarded as waste? And further, what does the site consist of that we cannot see but might consider interesting? 

The artist examines things that systematically fall beyond the threshold of visibility and our consciousness. Defining collective blind spots by pointing to mineral waste is certainly one strategy to create awareness. Originally, in order to access wastelands or abandoned sites, Shankland was committed to compulsively photograph just about everything he could see. As a second step, in his studio, he would create inventories of the types of objects and materials he had photographed on these sites. Through these close readings of sites, Shankland observed “spaces, times, and materials that nobody wanted to take care of,” and thus, material inventories of unwanted entities became central to his work. 

At Spreepark, plans for transforming the park were already in place, when Stefan Shankland started his artistic research. Lists documenting its historical events, types of trees, and diversity of animals were systematically compiled on the site. However, Shankland discovered a missing list: The mineral composition of the park was not included in the mandatory observations prior to the renovation process. The minerals at Spreepark consist of naturally occurring minerals, minerals present in architecture and other constructions, and numerous hybrids of these combined—most of these minerals were initially classified as not worth preserving and therefore would have been disposed of as waste as part of the park development planning.

Throughout his work, Shankland discloses that waste is a social, normative, and cultural construction, as he explained in our conversation at the Spreepark Art Space in June 2024:

“At Spreepark, we could potentially use mineral waste resulting from the park's construction as a resource for other construction purposes. However, normatively speaking, this is not allowed because it is classified as waste. Furthermore, we cannot even store it due to the area's protected status as a natural environment. As long as it stood as architecture, it was acceptable, even as a ruin. However, once it is dismantled, it becomes waste and cannot remain here. There are many contradictions here... But what if we were to designate this pile, no longer architecture, as art or as a resource for future artwork? Could it stay on-site if we change the category through which we perceive it?”

This gesture of altering reality through art allows for the potential to nurture. In the artistic process, research without a predetermined outcome is acceptable because art can prioritize processes and aesthetic questions rather than requiring predefined problem-solving outcomes, unlike architecture. At this point, maybe the most significant divergence between Almarcegui and Shankland lies in how they handle the research they conduct. Almarcegui focuses her efforts on raising attention and awareness regarding the scale of the mining industry, leaving it to the audience to decide what actions to take. In contrast, Shankland introduces ideas of recycling, potential utilizations, and social engagement based on his research and the materials he works with. 

In the exhibition, there are several forms of recycled materials to be discovered. When entering the exhibition, a large textile installation in a variety of earth tones creates a blurry and ambiguous landscape. The artwork represents yet another potential outcome of working at the intersection of artistic practice and technological design. In collaboration with the designer and scholar Anna Saint Pierre, and with the support of Étienne Vinet, Stefan Shankland developed the textile installation through a process of in-situ recycling of mineral waste, using Saint Pierre’s technique of printing pigments derived from construction waste. Other works such as Endlessly the Twentieth Century and Melencolite (both 2024) play formally with certain aesthetic expectations of architectural materials. 

Beyond the exhibition, Shankland is creating one of the permanent artworks that will form the Spreepark from 2026. His project, STRATAPARK, responds equally to the landscape and to the collected waste material. It will consist of 40 objects and two larger landscape sculptures produced from 100 tons of demolition material collected on-site and recycled for functional use. Prototypes 1, 2, and 3 of the potential objects are placed in front of the entrance to the exhibition, connecting it back to the outside. 

In the outdoor location in Spreepark, another installation by Shankland is the result of a collaboration with the architectural collective raumlaborberlin. The RE.USE.UM is a shelf structure with different mineral materials in a public space that simultaneously serves as a working space for workshops with the local community. These hands-on educational workshops are designed to process and reuse the mineral waste that Shankland has collected at the Spreepark, thereby forming a platform for critical engagement, social connection, and exchange on-site. Within the structure, which is always accessible while the exhibition opening, moments of empathy are created. 

Given that Shankland’s interventions take place at the Spreepark, a site undergoing transformation, collaboration with raumlaborberlin seems natural. Both the collective and Shankland share an interest in research-based design and process-driven long-term projects. Their interventions often include exchanges with interdisciplinary experts as well as city residents, emphasizing the initiation of processes and a new-found potential for activation rather than focusing solely on problem-solving. They establish a profound connection to the site and facilitate its activation through daily use. 

Over years of architectural practice, the collective raumlaborberlin has accomplished an incredible number of projects that operate on connection, mutual interests, and shared experiences. The project Floating University launched in 2018, serves as a good example of a practice functioning as a transdisciplinary laboratory, establishing networks, and implementing research on urban space. The Floating University nurtured experimental approaches by staying pragmatic, applicable, accessible, and, most of all, site-specific. Within the model of the Floating University, raumlaborberlin asked, 

“Which tools do we need to live and work well in a resource-efficient manner in the future?”¹⁶

Even though the question is posed globally, the work of raumlaborberlin is never about megastructures but about creating "micro utopias.” The exhibition "A Matter of Material," as a mutual endeavor of the curator and the artists and architects involved, can be seen as a micro-utopia—a response against the processes of slow violence that we face not only at mining sites but also as a consequence in the urban realm.

In his book Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (2011), Robert Nixon explores the unequal environmental impact on marginalized, vulnerable, and disempowered communities, especially of the Global South. What Nixon understands as slow violence is

“a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all.”¹⁷

In his analysis, he highlights the issue of short attention spans that constitute our perception of violence as an immediate and temporary event. Violence tends to subjectively manifest as “explosive and spectacular in space,”¹⁸ while the calamities we are facing “patiently dispense their devastation.”¹⁹

Almarcegui and Shankland remind us that we should pay attention to this violence and that we are obliged to be observant and aware of our environment with all our senses to face the challenges of the Anthropocene. As the anthropologist Tim Ingold further suggests the reciprocity between humans and the environment is a matter of embodiment and the performative process of dwelling: 

“This means that in dwelling in the world, we do not act upon it, or do things to it; rather we move along with it. Our actions do not transform the world, they are part and parcel of the world’s transforming itself.”²⁰

Within their artistic practice Almarcegui and Shankland help us realize what it is we are moving along with. As for this matter, adapting to new realities of the Anthropocene should not be seen as giving up on something, but rather as gaining new insights and strength of position.