Organes industriels

Artists and lecturers Arzhel Prioul and Mathieu Tremblin staged a workshop with 36 students from the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Strasbourg (ENSAS). Their subject was the artistic use of urban billposting, with the Völklingen Ironworks providing an allegory of a world after the withdrawal from fossil fuels. The workshop posed the following questions: What future might be envisaged for a post-industrial wasteland and ruin? And: Which useful ecosystems can be hosted by a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
The second group produced a display on the subject of “plumes of smoke”. Here, the ironworks is reimagined as a body complete with “industrial organs”, which represent various social and environmental problems in an allegorical manner. Five locations within the ironworks stand for these problems, each narrated with its own story: the sintering hall symbolises the alienation resulting from work and worker protest; the blower hall stands for the release of carbon into the atmosphere; the blast furnaces represent global warming, the water tower the scarcity of water; and “Paradise” shows a possible redemption in the shape of a different form of extraction by this industry.

Jeanette Dittmar